Debra Cerda Blog Posts

Welcome to January. The inbox is overflowing. Q1 goals just dropped. Everyone's talking about resolutions. Here's one worth keeping: Take care of yourself this year.

Not the vague "self-care" that means eye masks and bubble baths (though those are fine). Real, sustainable wellness. The kind that keeps you energized and passionate.

Let's be honest. Tech is hard on people.

Burnout is real. The always-on culture. The 2 AM pages. The pressure to constantly learn, constantly ship, and constantly perform. It catches up with everyone eventually.

Work-life balance is a myth. We've been chasing a fantasy. Integration is more realistic: finding ways to make work and life coexist without one consuming the other.

The Professional Development & Wellness Track at Postgres Conference: 2026

The Professional Development & Wellness track at Postgres Conference 2026 tackles the human side of technical careers. Learn from practitioners who've navigated these challenges and come out stronger.

Topics include:

• Managing and recovering from burnout
• Career advancement strategies
• Leadership development
• Communication skills for technical professionals
• Mental health in tech
• Work-life integration (not balance—integration)
• Building resilience
• Mentorship and sponsors
• Navigating career transitions
• Finding meaning in your work

These aren’t soft skills - these are survival skills. The technical skills that get you hired and motivate you. The human skills keep you going.

Postgres Conference 2025 Professional Development Track Highlights

Listen or watch sessions from the Postgres Conference 2025: Professional Development Track on YouTube.

Register for Postgres Conference: 2026

Postgres Conference: 2026 takes place April 21-23 in San Jose, California. The theme is Energizing People with Data and Creativity, and nothing needs more energy than the people doing the work.

Early bird registration is available now! Purchase your General Admission tickets here.

Call for Postgres Conference 2026 Speakers & Trainers

If you've navigated career challenges and can share lessons from your professional journey, we want to hear from you. The CFP is open across all tracks. Share what you've learned.

CFP closes January 30, 2026: Submit here.

Postgres Conference 2025 in Orlando, held March 18–21, brought together PostgreSQL professionals from around the world for a week of deep technical learning, professional development, and intentional networking. With expanded tracks and thoughtfully curated sessions, this year’s gathering balanced core database expertise with a growing focus on holistic professional growth.

Event Highlights

• Expanded Tracks: In addition to the core DevOps, and Essentials tracks, the conference introduced Professional Development and Variants & Cloud tracks. These additions reflected the complexity of today’s tech environments and the evolving needs of those who manage them.

• Keynote Address: Malika Boukhelifa’s keynote, “Code Your Way Out of Burnout,” addressed the role of mental health in sustainable tech careers and provided attendees with strategies for long-term success.

• Technical Deep Dives: Popular sessions on pg_vector, analytics with DuckDB, and PostgreSQL partitioning strategies demonstrated the community’s interest in advanced features and real-world applications.

• Professional Development: The new track featured sessions on leadership, communication, and soft skills. Certified Wellness Coaches were also available onsite, offering support and tools to help attendees prioritize mental wellness alongside technical growth.

• Community and Networking: Conversations flowed freely in workshops, hallway meetups, and evening events like the tropical-themed buffet. The size and format of the event allowed for stronger peer connections and genuine knowledge exchange.

This year’s more focused format was intentional. The smaller scale fostered deeper discussion, better engagement, and more actionable takeaways. Whether tackling database replication or burnout prevention, attendees walked away with tools they could apply immediately. We would not be able to accomplish this without the generous support of our sponsors and partners.

Looking ahead, we plan to cap attendance in future years to preserve the quality and depth of the experience. Postgres Conference is no longer designed to be the largest event. Its goal is to be the most effective.

Want to stay updated on future Postgres Conferences and community news?
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PostgreSQL is more than a database. It's the foundation developers build on.

Every application has a data layer. The decisions you make there—schema design, query patterns, extension choices, performance trade-offs—shape everything that comes after.

What You'll Learn in the Dev Track

 The Dev track at Postgres Conference 2026 is where developers share what they've learned building real applications with PostgreSQL.

This isn't theory. This is practice.

Real architectural decisions. When to denormalize. How to handle multi-tenancy. Whether to push logic into the database or keep it in the application layer. Hear how experienced developers made these choices and what they learned.

Modern stack integrations. GraphQL APIs. Event-driven architectures. Microservices. Serverless functions. PostgreSQL fits into all of them, and you'll learn the patterns that actually work.

Extensions in production. pg_vector for semantic search and AI applications. PostGIS for location features. Full-text search that scales. Custom data types that model your domain perfectly. Learn from teams using these in real applications.

Performance that matters. Query optimization from the developer's perspective. Schema designs that perform at scale. Lessons learned when users actually showed up..

Topics in the Dev Track

• Application architecture patterns with PostgreSQL
• Schema design and data modeling
• Query optimization for developers
• ORMs, query builders, and database access patterns
• Building APIs backed by PostgreSQL
• Testing strategies for database-backed applications
• Lessons learned from production applications

Postgres Conference 2025 Highlights

Check out how presenters tackled PostgreSQL topics and get a preview of what to expect in 2026. Listen and watch highlights in our Postgres Conference 2025 YouTube playlist.

Register for Postgres Conference: 2026

Postgres Conference 2026 takes place April 21-23 in San Jose, California. The theme is Energizing People with Data and Creativity, and the Dev track is where data meets the applications that innovate and make it useful.

Early bird registration is available now! Purchase your General Admission tickets here. 

Call for Postgres Conference 2026 Speakers & Trainers

If you like building applications with PostgreSQL and can help others learn from your development experience, why not share your experience? The CFP is open across all tracks. Share what you've learned.

CFP closes January 30, 2026. Submit here. 

Core PostgreSQL knowledge compounds over time. Understanding data types, indexing strategies, query optimization, and transaction behavior provides value regardless of framework, application architecture, or PostgreSQL version.

The Essentials track at Postgres Conference: 2026 is dedicated to core PostgreSQL knowledge. If it's in the documentation or should be, this is where we explore it thoroughly.

This isn't beginner content. Every core concept has complexity worth understanding.

What You'll Learn in the Essentials Track

Data types beyond the basics. PostgreSQL's type system includes arrays, JSONB, ranges, and custom types that solve problems other databases punt to the application layer. Learn how to leverage these types effectively.

Indexing strategies that actually work. B-tree, GIN, GiST, BRIN, and hash indexes each exist for specific reasons. Understand when to use which, how to read EXPLAIN output, and when indexes hurt more than they help.

Query optimization fundamentals. Go beyond adding indexes. Understand the query planner, statistics, joins, and execution strategies to write performant queries from the start.

Transaction isolation in practice. MVCC, isolation levels, and locking behavior aren't just academic concepts. Learn how they affect real applications and how to prevent production incidents.

Documentation deep dives. PostgreSQL's documentation is legendary, but dense. Sessions in this track surface buried knowledge and make it actionable.

Topics in the Essentials Track

• Data types deep dives (JSONB, arrays, ranges, custom types)
• Indexing strategies and trade-offs
• Query optimization and EXPLAIN analysis
• Transaction management and isolation
• Constraints and data integrity patterns
• Configuration and tuning fundamentals
• Backup, restore, and recovery basics
• Security fundamentals
• SQL features that PostgreSQL does better
• And more!

Postgres Conference 2025 Essentials Track Highlights

Check out how presenters tackled complex PostgreSQL topics and get a preview of what to expect in 2026. Listen and watch Essentials track highlights in our Postgres Conference YouTube playlist.

Register for Postgres Conference: 2026

Postgres Conference 2026 takes place April 21-23 in San Jose, California. The theme is Energizing People with Data and Creativity. Understanding the fundamentals gives you the foundation to be creative.

Early bird registration is available now! Purchase your General Admission tickets here. 

Call for Postgres Conference 2026 Speakers & Trainers

Want to share your expertise? If you like to dive deep into PostgreSQL fundamentals and can help others understand them, we want to hear from you. The CFP is open across all tracks. Share what you've learned.

CFP closes January 30, 2026. Submit here. 

Are you interested in learning about the latest developments and best practices in PostgreSQL? 

Then you won’t want to miss next week’s Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2023! This annual conference brings together experts and enthusiasts from around the world to share their knowledge and experiences with the PostgreSQL community.

This year's conference will be held in San Jose April 20 and 21, 2023, at the San Jose Hilton, and promises to be another exciting and informative event. Attendees can expect a wide range of presentations, mini-tutorials, and networking opportunities, covering Postgres and open source related topics such as high availability, migration, security, machine learning, AI and much more.

Whether you're a seasoned PostgreSQL developer, a database administrator, or just curious about this powerful open-source database system, Postgres Conference Silicon Valley is the perfect place to learn and connect with like-minded individuals.

So why should you attend? For starters, you'll get to hear from some of the brightest minds in the PostgreSQL community. You'll learn about the latest trends and technologies, and gain valuable insights from real-world use cases and case studies. Check out our full program.

In addition, you'll have the opportunity to network with other PostgreSQL professionals and enthusiasts, and build relationships that can benefit you and your organization long after the conference is over. 

Be sure to stop by the exhibit area and chat with our incredible sponsors and partners, including our Conference sponsors CoreDB and Amazon Web Services (AWS) as well as our Cloud sponsor Google Cloud and Distributed SQL Summit (DSS) sponsor YugabyteDB. Our Conference Partners for this year include Airbyte, Command Prompt, Inc., DBeaver, Fujitsu, Neon, Nutanix, Percona, pgEdge and Community Partner OnGres.

Postgres Conference Silicon Valley is also a great chance to explore the local area, with plenty of opportunities for sightseeing, dining, and entertainment. A Welcome Reception will be hosted by YugabyteDB on Thursday evening for all registered attendees. 

So if you're looking to expand your knowledge of PostgreSQL, connect with other experts and enthusiasts, and have some fun along the way, be sure to register for Postgres Conference Silicon Valley today. We can't wait to see you there!

As part of the countdown to PostgresConf US 2018, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Elizabeth Zalman is the Co-founder & CEO of strongDM, the definitive data security product. Previously she was Co-Founder and CEO of the cross-device profile company Media Armor.

Liz will be presenting a breakout session "Do You Know Your Vendor Dependencies" on Wednesday, April 18, at 4 pm. Read what she has to say about Postgres and why to attend her session: 

Why PostgreSQL? What got you into it, and made you stick with it?

Featureful performance & proven reliability. Over the years I've found fewer and fewer reasons to consider alternatives beyond Postgres (two notable exceptions being redis-style KV and queues).

Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community.

strongDM hears a lot about how its customers use PG and its derivatives (Greenplum, the latest on Aurora, etc.) and we love sharing tips when appropriate.

What new features of PostgreSQL 10 are you most excited about?

As a security product, we're always happy to see security-related upgrades: SASL/SCRAM authentication is a popular option in several of database systems, and is a significant upgrade over the previous salted hashes. We also rely heavily on partitioning, so all related enhancements are welcome.Finally: although we generally wouldn't choose to run parallel queries in a primarily OLTP system, the promise of running analytic queries on a replica (rather than ETL'ing into an analytic database) is very appealing.

What features should be developed/improved and released in the next major upgrade?

Dynamic optimization for queries on partitioned tables. Right now if you run select * from date_partitioned_table where event_timestamp between NOW() and NOW() - interval '7 days'; It scans every partition because the result of NOW() is not knowable ahead of time. But it could optimize that query when it was asked to execute it. Instead of creating a static query plan it could say, I know I'm going to have to compute a list of partitions. So, let's just remember that. Then right before the query runs, it could calculate the list and run the query as though it had been planned with a static date range, and thus only query the affected tables. 

 Why should attendees come to your talk at PostgresConf US 2018?

In this talk, I'll share practical examples of breaches I've personally experienced along with advice on how to hold your vendors accountable, and hopefully make the topic of security a little less intimidating in the process.

What sessions are you most excited about attending at PostgresConf US 2018?

I am looking forward to attending “Reducing the Surface Area of Risk in Data Security” by Tim Gorman and “General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with Azure Database for PostgreSQL” by Mark Bolz.

What is your favorite aspect of PostgresConf US?

Being able to network with and learn from a unique community! I’ve found practice to really be one of the best ways to learn about databases.

 What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres? 

 I’ve found practice to really be one of the best ways to learn about databases. Get your hands dirty: try breaking things and then fixing them! 

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2018, and buy your tickets soon!

Postgres Conference is built and supported by people who care deeply about the Postgres community. We're looking for individuals who want to go beyond volunteering and help shape the conference and the community’s future.

What Organizers Do

Organizers are community stewards who help lead and sustain the conference. This role involves:

• Ongoing collaboration: You'll work with other organizers to plan, execute, and optimize the conference year-round.
• Flexible contributions: Step in where you're needed, whether that's logistics, community outreach, programming, or day-of coordination.
• Building community: Help create a welcoming space for learning and connection.

Time Commitment

Involvement varies by role and season. Most of the year requires lighter engagement. Activity increases during planning phases and peaks during the conference itself.

Who Should Apply

 We welcome both first-time contributors and experienced community leaders. If you believe in open collaboration and want to strengthen the Postgres community, this role is for you.

Get Involved

Contact us at organizers@postgresconf.org to learn more about becoming an Organizer.

In the spirit of fun and creativity, we offer this whimsical view of operations excellence. No matter what holidays you observe—or if you observe none at all—we hope this season brings you time for bonding, joy, and repose. Happy holidays from the Postgres Conference team. 

Let's talk about the greatest operations professional of all time: Santa Claus.

Think about it. Every December 24th, Santa executes a global deployment with a one-night SLA. Zero downtime tolerance. No rollback option. The whole world is watching, and failure is not an option. His operations credentials are impeccable:

Global Distribution Network. Billions of deliveries across every time zone in a single maintenance window. Try explaining that SLA to your stakeholders.

Real-Time Monitoring. He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. Santa's observability game is unmatched. He knows if you've been bad or good—that's behavioral analytics at scale.

Massive Database Management. The naughty/nice list is a production database with billions of records, updated continuously throughout the year. Annual refresh cycle. No data loss. Ever.

Failover Systems. Remember when the weather nearly took down Christmas? Rudolph wasn't just a reindeer with a shiny nose. Rudolph was a failover solution implemented under pressure. That's incident response.

Capacity Planning. Cookies and milk at every stop. Presents for every child. Sleigh weight distribution. Santa doesn't wing it. Santa has a plan.

Workforce Management. Elves are working year-round across multiple workshops. Reindeer training programs. Quality assurance on every toy. That's operational excellence.

The Ops Track at Postgres Conference: 2026

If Santa ran PostgreSQL, he'd be attending—or presenting at—the Ops track.

The Ops track at Postgres Conference: 2026 is for everyone managing PostgreSQL in production. You'll learn from practitioners sharing hard-won operational wisdom. Topics include:

• Deployment strategies and automation
• Monitoring and observability
• Performance tuning
• Backup and recovery
• High availability and replication
• Capacity planning
• Security hardening
• Automation and orchestration
• Managing PostgreSQL at scale

Postgres Conference 2025 Ops Track Highlights

Listen or watch sessions from the Postgres Conference 2025: Ops Track on YouTube.

Register for Postgres Conference: 2026

Postgres Conference: 2026 takes place April 21-23 in San Jose, California. The theme is Energizing People with Data and Creativity. Nothing says creativity like keeping production databases running smoothly under pressure. 

Early bird registration is available now! Purchase your General Admission tickets here. 

Call for Postgres Conference 2026 Speakers & Trainers

Want to share your expertise? If you like managing PostgreSQL in production and can help others learn from your operational experience, we want to hear from you. The CFP is open across all tracks. Share what you've learned.

CFP closes January 30, 2026. Submit here.