Welcome to Postgres Women India monthly newsletter, May 2026.
We are excited to highlight several key initiatives and events aimed at empowering women in #Data, #AI, and #Postgres ecosystem.
Postgres Women India proudly joins the global PostgreSQL community in celebrating 30 years of innovation, collaboration, and open-source excellence.
As part of the celebrations at PGConf.dev, a special women-led breakfast brought together community members to recognize the contributions, leadership, and growing impact of women in the PostgreSQL ecosystem. The gathering reflected the spirit of mentorship, collaboration, and community that has helped PostgreSQL thrive for three decades.
We were honored to be represented by our Chair and Chief Mentor, Hari Kiran, and extend our gratitude for his continued support of the Postgres Women India community.
As PostgreSQL marks this significant milestone, we celebrate the contributors, volunteers, mentors, advocates, and users worldwide who have helped build one of the most trusted and successful open-source database communities.
Happy 30th Birthday, PostgreSQL! Here’s to many more years of innovation, learning, diversity, and community growth.🐘
Hari Kiran attended PGConf.dev 2026 in Vancouver on behalf of OpenSource DB and represented Postgres Women India during the Postgres Women Breakfast, joining PostgreSQL community members from across the globe for one of the premier PostgreSQL community events.
The conference was filled with insightful discussions, community collaboration, networking opportunities, and knowledge sharing around the PostgreSQL ecosystem.
Hari had the opportunity to participate in two meaningful panel discussions on Day 1:
“Beyond the Source: The Human Architecture of PostgreSQL” alongside Floor Drees, Jimmy Angelakos, Miaolai Z., and Valeria Kaplan, discussing contributor journeys, sustaining communities, and preventing burnout in open source.
“Onboarding New Community Members to PostgreSQL” with Cornelia Biacsics and Robert Haas, highlighting the importance of creating welcoming experiences for newcomers in the PostgreSQL ecosystem.
Another exciting moment from the conference was Hari delivering a lightning talk at PGConf.dev, contributing to the vibrant exchange of ideas and technical discussions within the community.
One of the memorable highlights of the event was meeting and interacting with renowned PostgreSQL contributors and community leaders, including Tom Lane, along with members of the PostgreSQL Code of Conduct Committee such as Floor Drees and Gary Evans.
Representing Postgres Women India at the Postgres Women Breakfast was another proud moment, reinforcing the importance of diversity, inclusion, and community participation across the open-source ecosystem.
PGConf.dev 2026 once again showcased that PostgreSQL is not just a database technology, but a global community built on collaboration, learning, mentorship, and shared passion for open source.
With PGConf.dev 2027 already announced for Montreal, the PostgreSQL community eagerly looks forward to another incredible gathering next year.
Postgres Women India is proud to recognize Shveta Malik, Principal Software Developer at Fujitsu, as our Postgres Woman of the Month for May 2026.
Shveta is an active contributor to PostgreSQL, focusing on Logical Replication and working closely with the open-source community on feature design, review, and validation of upstream contributions. Her work on replication slot synchronization and enhancing logical replication failover robustness has strengthened the PostgreSQL ecosystem.
A significant milestone in her open-source journey came in 2025 when she was recognized as a Significant Contributor to PostgreSQL, highlighting her growing impact within the global community.
Before her PostgreSQL contributions, Shveta spent over a decade working on the Oracle Database Optimizer, gaining extensive expertise in query optimization, execution planning, and database performance tuning.
We celebrate Shveta’s technical excellence, dedication, and continued efforts in advancing PostgreSQL. Her journey serves as an inspiration to aspiring contributors and women in open source.
Read more about Shveta and her PostgreSQL journey https://lnkd.in/dH5aPEvS.
We’re excited to feature Sayli Khedekar as our #RookieOfTheMonth for May 2026.
Sayli Khedekar is a passionate Database Administrator with nearly a decade of experience in Oracle and growing expertise in #PostgreSQL on AWS RDS. Driven by real-world production challenges, she has been actively transitioning into a #PostgreSQL-focused Database SRE role with a strong focus on reliability, observability, automation, and cloud-native practices.
Her curiosity and hands-on learning approach led her to build open-source tools like pg-snap-anon and pg_query_guardian, inspired by practical production incidents and designed to improve database safety and operational reliability. Sayli is also deeply interested in AI-assisted DBA tooling, pgvector, and modern PostgreSQL engineering practices.
A firm believer in continuous learning and community collaboration, she credits Postgres Women India for strengthening her PostgreSQL journey and continues to contribute, learn, and grow within the open-source ecosystem.
Check out this link to know more about her: https://lnkd.in/gUGUZMQX
At Postgres Women India, we believe strong tech communities are built not only by engineers and database experts, but also by the incredible women who enable ecosystems to grow every day.
Introducing EnableHER — an initiative to celebrate women driving impact across the Data, AI, and Open-source ecosystem through community building, platform growth, operations, outreach, partnerships, design, events, and engagement.
EnableHER will spotlight inspiring women who create opportunities, foster collaboration, and strengthen communities in meaningful ways.
Postgres Women India is proud to feature Bhavani Indukuri as our EnableHER of the Month.
Bhavani is a Senior Software Engineer II at DigitalOcean, a Cloud Native leader, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India 2025 Co-Chair, and an active community advocate. With over a decade of experience in distributed systems, platform engineering, and DevOps, she has made significant contributions to both technology and community building.
From a Telugu-medium educational background to becoming a respected voice in the Cloud Native ecosystem, Bhavani’s journey is a testament to perseverance, continuous learning, and leadership.
Her guiding principle comes from her father’s advice:
“Do your best in whatever you choose to do, because that defines who you are.”
Bhavani believes that talent can come from anywhere when given the right opportunities. Through mentorship, public speaking, and community engagement, she continues to inspire women to pursue their goals with confidence.
For Bhavani, EnableHER means empowering women through support, mentorship, and encouragement, helping create stronger communities and opening doors for future generations to dream bigger.
Read her inspiring story and learn more about her journey https://lnkd.in/g7F7vNGu
Aarti Nadekar – Sharing insightful articles about PostgreSQL community
Praveena Sivasankar – Sharing insightful articles about AI which are essential for any company.
📌 June 13, 2026 – PGDay Pune 2026 – A community-driven PostgreSQL conference bringing together users, developers, DBAs, architects, and open-source enthusiasts for a day of technical talks, networking, and knowledge sharing. 👉 More details & registration: Postgres Pune
📌 June 17, 2026 – Distributed SQL Summit (DSS) Mumbai 2026 – Join database professionals and technology leaders to explore distributed SQL, cloud-native databases, and modern data architectures. Hari Kiran, Founder of OpenSource DB, will be speaking at the event. 👉 Register here
📌 June 18, 2026 – Posette 2026 Livestream – Hari Kiran’s pre-recorded session for Posette 2026 will be streamed as part of this global online PostgreSQL conference featuring speakers and community members from around the world.
📌 June 20, 2026 – PreSales Collective Meetup – OpenSource DB is proud to sponsor this event, bringing together pre-sales professionals, solution architects, and technology leaders for learning, networking, and community engagement.
📌 June 27, 2026 – PgVizag Meetup #6 – PostgreSQL enthusiasts come together for technical talks, community discussions, and networking opportunities. Call for Papers is now open! CFP Deadline: June 17, 2026. 👉 Submit your talk: CFP – Visakhapatnam PostgreSQL group | Registrations
Talk Title: PostgresML: Revolutionizing Machine Learning with SQL
In today’s data-driven world, organizations often struggle with complex machine learning infrastructures and data movement challenges. This talk introduces PostgresML, a game-changing PostgreSQL extension that brings machine learning capabilities directly into your database. We’ll explore how PostgresML enables developers and data teams to perform sophisticated ML operations using familiar SQL commands, eliminating the need for separate ML systems. Through live demonstrations, we’ll showcase practical implementations of model training, real-time predictions, and GPU acceleration features. Whether you’re a database engineer, ML practitioner, or technical lead, you’ll learn how to leverage PostgresML to simplify your ML pipeline, enhance security, and accelerate deployment. Join us to discover how this innovative tool is bridging the gap between traditional database operations and modern machine learning workflows.
Talk Title: Developers are decision-makers now. DevRel gets you there faster
DevRel as a role has existed since the 1990s, yet it remains one of the least understood roles in tech. Whether due to changing definitions, role titles, or evolving industries, DevRel has transformed significantly over the past few years—yet it continues to shape the devtool landscape. Since 2023, we’ve seen explosive AI growth alongside a surge in tech companies and technical talent. But who reaches these developers? Developers distrust traditional marketing. Who builds the samples, docs, tutorials, and SDKs they rely on? DevRel has become more critical than ever, especially as developers increasingly become decision-makers. In this talk, we’ll explore what DevRel is, how it drives impact, and how you can build an effective DevRel program.
Talk Title: DPDPA(Digital Personal Data Protection Act) Unleashed – Why It Matters for Women in Data
India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA) is reshaping how organisations collect, store and use personal data, with a phased, 18‑month rollout. This presentation explores what’s in policy and law, then dives into what it unlocks for careers in data, security and consulting—especially for women. As data architect ,designing database architectures, will try connect legal constructs (Data Principals, Fiduciaries, Consent Managers, the Board) to real-world data and database practices, and show how DPDPA can be a powerful career accelerator, not just a compliance requirement.
Talk Title: Where Technology Meets Customer Needs: Lessons from a Newbie Solutions Engineer
When I stepped into the world of open-source databases as a Solutions Engineer, I expected to feel overwhelmed, but I found a role that made surprising sense. In this talk, I’ll share my journey navigating PostgreSQL with the help of modern cloud platforms like Aiven and DigitalOcean, tuning tools like DBtune, and migration partners like Hexacluster. This isn’t a deep-dive into internals, it’s a practical, beginner-friendly session to reducing the friction of managing PostgreSQL in real-world environments. Along the way, I’ll highlight the often-overlooked role of a Solutions Engineer: the human bridge between customer needs and engineering solutions. If you’re a student, a DBA, a DevOps engineer or just Postgres-curious, you’ll walk away with not only tools to explore, but also a career path to consider.

Talk Title: Architecting Ethical and Responsible AI with PostgreSQL 18
Have you ever developed an Agentic AI application using an agentic framework such as langGraph and pgai extension and noticed you don’t get good results during testing or the results are biased towards a demographic. You don’t know what to do. Organizations developing Agentic AI applications using an agentic framework such as LangGraph and pgai extension often encounter issues during implementation and testing, including suboptimal performance or bias in results such as demographic bias. Identifying the root causes of these issues can be difficult without proper tools and methodologies. This session addresses these challenges by introducing Responsible AI interpretability and explainability techniques. Participants will learn how to understand and trace the model’s decision-making process, enabling them to identify why specific results are generated. These capabilities are essential for meeting compliance requirements in regulated sectors, including banking and insurance. Attendees will gain practical knowledge on building Agentic AI applications that incorporate Responsible AI principles, ensuring transparent, accountable, and fair outcomes.
Rumi ![]()
Talk Title: New features of PostgreSQL 18
PostgreSQL 18 continues the PostgreSQL project’s long-standing focus on performance, scalability, reliability, and developer productivity, building incrementally on the improvements delivered in PostgreSQL 15–17.
Rather than introducing disruptive changes, PostgreSQL 18 is expected to emphasize refinement and maturity across core subsystems such as query execution, indexing, concurrency, replication, and observability, making PostgreSQL even more suitable for enterprise-scale and cloud-native workloads.
Talk Title: Platform Engineering Unpacked: Architecture, Evolution, and Hard-Won Lessons
The way engineering teams build and deliver software has changed dramatically. We’ve moved from manual server setups to automated pipelines, from ticket-based operations to self-service workflows, and from siloed teams to platform-driven organisations. This shift gave rise to Platform Engineering, a discipline focused on creating the internal systems, golden paths, and tooling that empower developers to move faster with less friction.
In this session, I’ll walk through the evolution that brought us here and why Platform Engineering has become a strategic priority across industries. I’ll share the architecture patterns that define successful platforms, how self-service emerges as a core capability, and the practical dos and don’ts learned from building real-world internal platforms.
Attendees will gain a clear understanding of:
Why DevOps wasn’t enough, and what Platform Engineering solves
The natural evolution from scripts → automation → abstractions → platforms
What makes a good platform (and what absolutely doesn’t)
How to design developer-centered systems and golden paths
My firsthand lessons from enabling engineering teams at scale
This talk gives a foundational, experience-driven view of what Platform Engineering really means today and how teams can start their journey the right way.
Our idea explores the implementation of AI-driven query optimization in PostgreSQL, addressing the limitations of traditional optimization methods in handling modern database complexities. We present an innovative approach using reinforcement learning for automated index selection and query plan optimization. Our system leverages PostgreSQL’s pg_stat_statements for collecting query metrics and employs HypoPG for index simulation, while a neural network model learns optimal indexing strategies from historical query patterns. Through comprehensive testing on various workload scenarios, we will validate the model’s ability to adapt to dynamic query patterns and complex analytical workloads. The research also examines the scalability challenges and practical considerations of implementing AI optimization in production environments.
Our findings establish a foundation for future developments in self-tuning databases while offering immediate practical benefits for PostgreSQL deployments. This work contributes to the broader evolution of database management systems, highlighting the potential of AI in creating more efficient and adaptive query optimization solutions.
This talk provides an introductory overview of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), exploring key concepts and their application in building intelligent systems. It will highlight the essential AI/ML techniques, such as supervised and unsupervised learning, and discuss practical use cases in modern industries. The session also focuses on how PostgreSQL, with its powerful extensions like PostgresML, TimescaleDB, and PostGIS, supports the development of AI-powered applications. By leveraging PostgreSQL’s ability to handle complex datasets and integrate machine learning models, participants will learn how to build scalable, intelligent solutions directly within the database environment.
Success is a multiplier of Action, External Factors and Destiny.
Out of these three, the only controllable aspect is our action. Again, action is the result of our EQ, IQ, SQ, and WQ (Willingness Quotient) together.
We all want to be successful and keep trying to motivate ourselves with external factors. We read inspirational books, listen to great personalities, and whenever possible upgrade ourselves with more knowledge and the list goes on.
Indeed these are excellent motivators, but in this process, we forget the most important source of energy, YOU!
We read other stories to feel inspired, thinking “I am not enough!”
But, the day we start accepting ourselves, introspect, understand, and align our life purpose with our routine, we find the internal POWER. This is a continuous source of motivation and energy which we need at down moments. When we feel, lonely, stuck and seek help, our inner voice is the greatest companion.
But, how many times do we consciously think about our “Subconscious”?
“Journey to Self” is our structured coaching program where we take back focus from the outside and delve deep inside to find our inner strength. Focusing on self-acceptance and personal growth
I believe everyone has POWER within them!
Let’s be the POWERHOUSE!
Human, AI, and Personalized User Experience for DB Observability: A Composable Approach
Database users across various technical levels are frequently frustrated by the time-consuming and inefficient process of identifying the root causes of issues. This process often involves navigating multiple systems or dashboards, leading to delays in finding solutions and potential downstream impacts on operations.
The challenge is compounded by the varying levels of expertise among users. It is essential to strike the right balance between specialized and generalized experiences. Oversimplification can result in the loss of critical information, while an overwhelming amount of data can alienate certain users.
Developers and designers are constantly navigating these trade-offs to deliver optimal user experiences. The integration of AI introduces an additional layer of complexity. While AI can provide personalized experiences within databases, it is crucial to maintain user trust and transparency in the process.
The concept of personalized composable observability offers a potential solution. By combining the strengths of human expertise, information balance, and AI-driven personalization, we can create intuitive and user-friendly experiences. This approach allows users to tailor their observability tools and workflows to their specific needs and preferences.