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Speaker Interview with Ilya Kosmodemiansky

Could you briefly introduce yourself?
I’am CEO and co-founder of Data Egret, a company which provides support services for clients who work with PostgreSQL.
How do you engage with the PostgreSQL Community?
I am co-organizer of PostgreSQL Frankfurt-am-Main Usergroup and part of the organisational teams of several conferences (PGConf.EU, FOSDEM PGDay, PG Day Russia). I am also a member of Community Code of Conduct Committee and Sponsorship Committee of PostgreSQL Project.
Have you enjoyed previous pgconf.eu or FOSDEM conferences, either as an attendee or as speaker?
Yes, I first went to pgconf.eu in 2013 when it took place in Dublin and I haven’t missed the conference and FOSDEM ever since.
What will your talk be about, exactly? Why this topic?
My tutorial will provide good starting point for people, who would like to learn how to approach configuration of their PostgreSQL instance. Postgres is traditionally very conservative about default values in postgresql.conf - general idea is, that with such parameters your database will work practically on any hardware. But for a typical production database, those parameters are simply not aggressive enough. I will provide alternative default values, which cover more realistic workloads and would be a better starting point.
What is the audience for your talk?
Anyone, who is starting working with Postgres or who has been working with Postgres for a long time, but have intentions to refresh their knowledge of postgresql.conf in and approach its setting in a more systematic way.
What existing knowledge should the attendee have?
Very basic knowledge about general architecture of PostgreSQL.
What is the one feature in PostgreSQL 12 which you like most?
It’s probably not the coolest “hot” feature, but I like all the impressive work that has been done by the community around the infrastructure for future improvements of backup/recovery system.
Which other talk at this year's conference would you like to see?
There are many good talks, I am personally interested in PostgreSQL's IO subsystem: Problems, Workarounds, Solutions by Andreas Freund. I am also quite curious about the new development in our conferences - this year there are two talks with non-coding topics that I’d also like to attend, the talk about non-coding ways to contribute to Postgres by Claire Giordano and a marketing talk by Valeria Kaplan.
Which measure, action, feature or activity would—in your eyes—help to accelerate the adoption of PostgreSQL?
Maybe a bit more user-friendliness in terms of materials we provide to Postgres newcomers. A good example is PostgreSQL documentation. It is an extraordinary piece of content, it has everything that one needs to know when starting to work with Postgres, however, even with brand new images it is still very much man page style. If you are just starting with Postgres you will be looking for guides - short documents, that would provide an overview before digging into detail and will summarize important topics with which one needs to start.