Elizabeth Christensen - Postgres Women India

Introduction:

Thank you for the invitation to participate! I have a background in open source software and technical writing / publishing. I currently work at Crunchy Data as the Director of Content Marketing where my focus is on Postgres and data analytics technical education. I have a Postgres meetup locally where I live in Kansas City and host an online Postgres meetup for anyone called Postgres Meetup for All. I also serve on the Board of the United States Postgres Association – that focuses on events, education, and professional development for those working in PostgreSQL.

Journey in PostgreSQL

The first database I worked with was Microsoft SQL server so I knew about SQL a bit before I heard about Postgres. I first heard about Postgres when my team was transitioning from IIS to Apache and we were checking out open source database options that would run on Linux. Soon after I married a Postgres person, David Christensen. David has been involved with Postgres for the last 15 years and over the last 10 years we’ve worked together. My skills and interest in the project have evolved quite a bit. David and I are the only married couple where both people have code patches in the project (though there are several other couples working in Postgres together).

Can you share a pivotal moment or project in your PostgreSQL career that has been particularly meaningful to you?

Working for Crunchy Data has been a pivotal moment for me, especially working with Craig Kerstiens. I started out helping Craig with all kinds of things at Crunchy Data and he saw my interest and skills in technical writing and education and encouraged me to spend more time pursuing those interests. Since I’ve been with Crunch Data I’ve learned so much about Postgres, being able to work with our engineers on really interesting projects and events. Crunchy Data has encouraged me to attend and speak at many events in the last few years too.

Contributions and Achievements:

I haven’t faced too many challenges with Postgres to be honest. In fact, I’ve found the Postgres community to be incredibly supportive and interested in my participation and contributions. Many of the Postgres leaders are seeking more involvement from women in the community and this has been a great time to be involved.

Have you faced any challenges in your work with PostgreSQL, and how did you overcome them?

Community Involvement:

I host a couple meetups which is a really great opportunity to work with users and others in the Postgres community. In my work with the pgUS Board, I often exhibit at developer conferences like Djangocon or Pycon where I get a chance to talk with users about Postgres and help folks get involved in the project. I also really like engaging with the broader developer community to talk about Postgres and create more exposure for the project. I am active in my local tech guild and our local developer conference.

Can you share your experience with mentoring or supporting other women in the PostgreSQL ecosystem?

I have several female friends in Postgres and we’re all supporting each other – though it is a bit ad hoc. pgUS has a diversity program that helps women and minorities attend Postgres conferences and I’m always eager to support that initiative. I am so impressed with what Postgres Women India is doing – to support the women in Postgres in a formal way with a newsletter and other programming.

Insights and Advice:

For women just starting out, there’s so much out there for you. Pick a few things to really dig into, you can’t be good at everything. I personally like to stick with things I”m good at – so just follow your sense with success. If something is working for you and it feels right, go in that direction.

Are there any resources (books, courses, forums) you’d recommend to someone looking to deepen their PostgreSQL knowledge?

For Postgres resources, there’s so many good blogs out there so I really enjoy following the Planet Postgres (https://planet.postgresql.org/) blog aggregator. I also really enjoy reading the Cooper Press Postgres weekly publication and the pgMustard newsletter. The Postgres FM podcast is something I also like and I can do that while I’m away from my keyboard.

Looking Forward:

Two things are really exciting to me – 1) Analytical workloads: There is a lot happening now with Postgres and merging transactional workloads with analytical workloads. Crunchy Data has a new hybrid data warehouse and there’s a couple other projects that fuse DuckDB or other tools to make Postgres better for OLAP workloads. I think there’s a lot of potential for Postgres adoption to grow into new fields for data science and analytics with this. 2) AI: With the pgvector extension, you can store AI embeddings from any LLM in the database and also enhance LLM data with local data. Postgres is almost like a data exchange layer for anyone that wants to use LLMs in an application. I think that will dramatically increase Postgres adoption as more developers work with AI and LLMS.

Do you have any upcoming projects or goals within the PostgreSQL community that you can share?

I would love to speak more internationally and I had a lot of FOMO seeing the recent Postgres India conference so I’d love to go to that in the future. I think I’ve planted the seeds for quite a few initiatives like my meetups, other Postgres events, and some of my work with the pgUS board. I’m mostly excited to continue to put effort into these and see how everything grows.

Personal Reflection:

Being part of the bigger Postgres community for me is about helping people get started and connected to the right resources to knowledge. I believe that quality education is the key to creating a diverse software community. So I want to be part of helping people get started and learn more to become better at Postgres – no matter where they start.

How do you balance your professional and personal life, especially in a field that is constantly evolving?

I’m really lucky that a huge part of my job is about learning. Either learning about Postgres features I’ve not used before or things coming out in new versions. I get to spend a lot of time learning, doing research, and then creating educational content for users. I like to do some kind of learning every week while I get outside and that’s usually listening to podcasts. Don’t tell my boss but occasionally I’ll watch talks about Postgres from my pool.

Message to the Community:

If you’re a woman looking to be involved in Postgres, there is a place for you here. Come and join us! My DM’s are open and I’d love to e-meet more friends in India.