For the last few weeks, I have been spending a lot of time on logistics and other aspects of organizing a PostgreSQL event in Singapore – pgDay Asia 2016 . Well, it is not any event but the first ever pan-Asia Postgres conference covering Asia and Pacific. It is a 2-day conference to be held along with FOSSASIA  in Singapore. The first day of the event is a dedicated day for Postgres related talks and will be on 17th March 2016. The second day (19th March 2016) is held along with the 2nd Day of FOSSASIA on 19th March 2016.
Looking back at my own journey as a propagator of Open Source and Advocate of PostgreSQL adoption in the region, I can say it has been a long way. I can still recall the very first of our Postgres Meetup Group Meetups – PUGS . It was proactive of Ashnik to come forward with the initiative to create the user group and HackersapceSG to host the meetups. Eventually the meetup started growing, though not very rapidly but steadily. We could see some returning faces for every meetup and I started getting requests for “When is the next Meetup?”. Since then, it has been an upward journey.
I am not too surprised to see that today Singapore is hosting a Postgres Conference and India is not far behind, there is another Postgres Event – pgDay India which will be held in India later this month, where Ashnik is a Gold Sponsor to support the effort to grow the PostgreSQL community by increasing awareness in the Indian market. This has gone hand-in-hand with adoption of Postgres in enterprises and their willingness to explore more options. During the last meetup in Singapore, I met some folks from Tier-1 global banks. It was nice to know that they have some internal initiatives to explore alternatives to proprietary databases.
The adoption of Postgres has also been very good in other parts of Asia. That is quite apparent from the fact that Postgres User Group in India is hosting their 2nd consecutive pgDay in Bengaluru (India). I travel around in ASEAN for Postgres trainings and I have been to almost over 10 trainings in last one year in different countries, with attendees from Banks, Stock Exchanges, Telcos, Retail Chain etc. This shows how large enterprises are either already using or seriously evaluating Postgres as an alternative. To further strengthen the story of adoption, we had paper submissions from all over the Asia and Europe and US for the pgDay Asia. We have people coming in from India, Pakistan, Russia, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, Sweden, USA and many more in Asia and outside it.
Companies like EnterpriseDB and Ashnik have played a key role in this adoption and have also helped the user groups to flourish. They have fast tracked the adoption with training and their quick-setup PoC, provides confidence to enterprises with 24×7 support option, provides them with enterprise grade features and tools and services and solutions to go with the tools. They have also been encouraging and helping community and the user groups to flourish and host events at large scale with sponsorship and local support.
If you are a Postgres enthusiast and evangelist, don’t miss pgDay India in Bengaluru on 26th Feb. It has a keynote opening delivered by Robert Haas, a very passionate technocrat and respected individual in the PostgreSQL community and Chief Database Architect at EnterpriseDB. Also, if situation allows, you must be in Singapore from 17th March to 20th March to attend the first ever pan-Asia Postgres Event. There will be a great opportunity to meet with Postgres users and developers from all across the world. Our keynote speaker – Bruce Momjian, the founder of PostgreSQL Community will be talking about Past, Present and Future of PostgreSQL. We have many other topics ranging from internal know-hows of Postgres to best practices to some really cool architectures and use cases with Postgres.
While you are in Singapore, you can also attend one of the largest FOSS events – FOSSASIA to be held from 18th to 20th March.