This site is about a previous instance of this event. For the current event, please see the updated site.

Speaker Interview with Joe Conway

Could you briefly introduce yourself?
Greetings, I am Joe Conway.
I’ve been using PostgreSQL for over 20 years, and a major contributor and committer for much of that time. Additionally I am part of the PostgreSQL community sysadmin/infrastructure team, and the original author/maintainer of PL/R.
I currently live in northern Florida, USA, and am the VP Engineering for Crunchy Data.
How do you engage with the PostgreSQL Community?
I engage with the PostgreSQL Community pretty much daily in one way or another.
I am subscribed to most of the English speaking user and developer mailing lists and participate when I can. As part of the sysadmin team I interact through special mailing lists and on IRC. I also help manage the PostgresOpen and PostgreSQL@SCaLE conferences, participate on the PostgreSQL Funds Group, previously served as a director, and am currently a member, of the United States PostgreSQL Association, help moderate several of the community mailing lists, and promote the use of PostgreSQL via twitter, LinkedIn, and by other means. Last but not least, I occasionally write and/or commit a patch or two.
Have you enjoyed previous pgconf.eu or FOSDEM conferences, either as an attendee or as speaker?
I have attended and spoken at several past pgconf.eu and FOSDEM conferences. Both events have always been excellent and well attended in my experience.
What will your talk be about, exactly? Why this topic?
My talk is about using PostgreSQL, PostGIS, and R (via PL/R) together to ingest and analyze spatial data. The use case illustrates using MODIS satellite raster data to draw conclusions about vegetation density trends within a specific administrative geographical boundary.
This topic is important because spatial data analysis is increasingly important in many use cases. Not enough people are aware how well PostgreSQL can handle those use cases when augmented with the appropriate set of extensions.
What is the audience for your talk?
The audience for this talk is anyone interested in spatial analytics.
What existing knowledge should the attendee have?
The attendees should have a moderate level of experience with PostgreSQL, and some experience with PostGIS. It would be helpful to have some familiarity with R as well, but I will try to fill the knowledge gaps by describing what the code examples are doing in a fair bit of detail.
What is the one feature in PostgreSQL 12 which you like most?
Partitioning performance enhancements.
Which other talk at this year's conference would you like to see?
Everything About PostGIS.