PGConf.EU Community Events Day: CfPs closing soon

This year, PGConf.EU organizers opened a new call for our first Community Events Day. Normally, the day before the main conference (before the talks) is reserved for training sessions where different companies can host workshops. This time, the idea was to open a call for community organizers, collect event ideas and let each event be organized by community volunteers.

I was part of two proposals: the PostgreSQL & AI Summit and the PostgreSQL on Kubernetes Summit. Fortunately, both were accepted! The beauty of the PostgreSQL community is how quickly we come together around topics that interest us and how many of us volunteer to take part in organizing.

For the Kubernetes Summit, I worked with Floor Drees and for the AI Summit with Ellyne Phneah and Torsten Steinbach. Before sending the proposals, we reached out to a group of individuals who were willing to participate so we could be sure to curate a strong program, one that amplifies the voices of people working on different parts of Postgres, from different companies and with different perspectives.

Now it's your chance to submit talk proposals or share your interest in joining panel discussions. For the PostgreSQL & AI Summit, please submit your talk by 31st of August. For the PostgreSQL on Kubernetes Summit, the deadline is 1st September.

^{Image credit: Ellyne Phneah}

PostgreSQL & AI Summit

We'll host the PostgreSQL & AI Summit on October 21st, 13:30 - 17:00 in Room Lambda.

AI developments affect all of us in one way or another and for Postgres there are many interesting angles to explore. We can use AI techniques to improve Postgres itself. We can make Postgres the natural home for AI workloads, turning it into a "AI-native database". And we can build AI applications on top of Postgres, making it the foundation for the next wave of AI-driven tools. At first these may look like separate areas, but in practice they are closely connected.

We envision the day as highly interactive, with short talks on PostgreSQL, AI, and everything in between. The program will also feature panel discussions on emerging trends and best practices along with unconference-style sessions designed to gather feedback and brainstorm future developments.

If you’re thinking about submitting a talk, here are a few ideas:

• AI-based tuning and optimization of PostgreSQL
• AI-driven operational automation for PostgreSQL
• Conversational copilots and Text-to-SQL for PostgreSQL
• Integrating unstructured data with PostgreSQL and AI
• Vector indexing and search (pgvector, extensions and alternatives)
• How to build RAG apps with Postgres
• Data preparation and vector embedding generation in PostgreSQL
• PostgreSQL-based Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers
• Agentic AI application patterns and real-world use cases with PostgreSQL
• Conversational analytics and business intelligence on PostgreSQL data
• GPU acceleration for AI workloads in PostgreSQL (e.g. vector indexes, ML on GPUs)

We’re looking forward to exchanging ideas, sharing our work and learning from each other.

PostgreSQL on Kubernetes Summit

We'll host the PostgreSQL on Kubernetes Summit on October 21st, 09:00 - 12:30 in Room Gamma.

It’s clear by now more and more people are running Postgres in cloud-native (and cloud-neutral) environments. As someone who has served on several conference program committees, I’ve seen firsthand how strong the demand is to learn more about this space: how to run Postgres on Kubernetes, how to choose between different operators, what they do well and where challenges remain.

For this summit, we reached out to maintainers and developers of Postgres operators (like CloudNativePG, Crunchy and Zalando) and invited them to participate so we can all sit together, share experiences and learn from each other. We also want to explore how Postgres itself can better support Kubernetes workloads whether patches in Postgres or Kubernetes could make running Postgres in a cloud-native way even better.

This isn’t only about developers. We want to hear from platform teams and DBAs who run Postgres on Kubernetes day-to-day, often at scale. Production stories, best practices and lessons learned are all welcome. And if you’re someone who has reservations about Kubernetes, we’d like to hear from you as well, what hasn’t worked, where it falls short and why. Those perspectives are just as valuable for the discussion.

Like the AI Summit, we’ll keep the talks short and use the rest of the time for open discussions and shared learning. Please submit your ideas, we’d love to hear from you.

What else is there?

There are ten events in total that day and as far as I know, participants will be able to move between sessions freely. Check out the rest of the program and reserve your spot. I’ve listed them below so you can see if anything catches your interest:

• Community Summit – PGConf.EU Edition
• Patroni Community Summit
• Extensions Showcase
• Community Organizers Conf
• Establishing the PostgreSQL Standard: What’s Postgres Compatible?
• Conference Code of Conduct Management
• Volunteer Training
• Crafty Slonik

See you on Community Events Day 🎉

If you haven't booked your flights yet, make sure you be arrive on October 20th so you can join us on October 21st. For accepted speakers of the Community Events Day, there will be free entry tickets for the whole day on October 21st. If you'd like to attend the events, just add the Community Events Day as an add-on to your regular registration ticket. And if run into any issues with registration, please email the organizers at contact@pgconf.eu.

I honestly think this day will be even more fun than the regular talks. It will give us a chance to network around focused topics and connect with others who are interested in the same things, a chance to socialize and probably grow your network for the rest of the conference. I find these type of events really important, especially for those who are joining the community recently. It might feel intimidating to enter a close-knit community like Postgres but smaller focused events help break the ice.

We’ll also make sure there’s time to chat during breaks, join discussions and have Q&A sessions, since the plan is to keep talks short (10–15 minutes) and spend the rest engaging in conversations. That way, the day is less about talks and more about learning from each other, especially about how we can collaborate and improve Postgres and its ecosystem.

We can’t wait to see you there! Stay tuned for the full program once the CfPs close and let us know how we can make the events even better.

Thanks for reading 💙