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Speaker Interview with Stéphane Schildknecht

Could you briefly introduce yourself?
Hello, I’m Stéphane Schildknecht. Living in France, I do PostgreSQL consultancy all over France, and Europe, since the beginning of the century.
I was the first director of the board of PostgreSQLFr, which I help settle in 2004, and has been until 2010.
I am PostgreSQL regional contact for the french-speaking Europe, one of the moderator of pgsql-fr-generale and regularly help on french translations.
I am managing director of Loxodata, The french PostgreSQL consulting company.
How do you engage with the PostgreSQL Community?
I started with PostgreSQL in 2001, for an important project in french national health. I liked what I saw, and jumped into that project.
A few years later, with some other French people we decided to create PostgreSQLFr, a non-profit organization for French-speaking PostgreSQL users in 2004/2005.
I had my first PostgreSQL talk in 2004.
In 2005, we had our first booth in Paris during the major opensource event in France.
In 2008, I helped Jean-Christophe Arnu to organize the first PGDay.fr with PostgreSQLFr in Toulouse (France).
I'm also involved in translations or proofreading French translations for press releases, and regional contact for the french-speaking Europe.
Have you enjoyed previous pgconf.eu or FOSDEM conferences, either as an attendee or as speaker?
I missed Prato, but since then, I was in every pgconf.eu conference. I think it’s one of the best places to meet people contributing to with PostgreSQL, and people working with PostgreSQL.
What will your talk be about, exactly? Why this topic?
It will be about the different ways a consulting company can help enterprises to acquire PostgreSQL knowledge and skills.
We will try to show that it is possible to have part-time help onsite or remote.
We observed that many companies try to get a full time expert, and that may really hard for many companies. It may be time to change that point of view.
What is the audience for your talk?
Every person involved in finding resources to work on PostgreSQL project can find some advice on a different way to handle the problem.
What existing knowledge should the attendee have?
No knowledge is needed. It is not about PostgreSQL technique. It is all about handling lack of skilled resources.
What is the one feature in PostgreSQL 12 which you like most?
I would say Generated Columns is the first feature I could mention. But, I should also mention Reindex Concurrently or Foreign Keys on partitioned tables.
Which other talk at this year's conference would you like to see?
There are so many ;-)
Which measure, action, feature or activity would—in your eyes—help to accelerate the adoption of PostgreSQL?
Education is one of them.