PostgreSQLFr, the NPO and 1st booth

The second big step in the French PostgreSQL Community was to create a Non-Profit Organization, aka NPO. It was created during 2004~2005 winter, and announced on pgsql-fr-generale, by our 1st President, Stéphane Schildknecht.

This allowed us to have “officially” a booth at Solutions Linux 2005. This was the 1st official PostgreSQL booth in France ever!

“Allowed”, because only groups having a NPO could be represented here. Officially. Also, the big reason too to create an NPO is having a bank account, so we can manage our own money, and fund our own goodies.

I’ve tried to grab goodies with a mail to pgsql-advocacy. And basically, the answer was: do your own things, get your own money and sponsorship :-)) Very disappointing, but, they were all right! We learnt to swim being thrown at the water directly ;-)

We were so proud to have Jan Wieck as VIP on the stand, and Bruce again ;-)

At that time, Jan was developping Slony-I, that allowed replication for PostgreSQL before (the deeply regretted) Simon Riggs started to work on topics that will bring that into the core of PostgreSQL.

Speaking of Slony-I, and people missing in my heart, I miss a lot Christopher Browne too. Shall they all rest in peace…

Dalibo

Solutions Linux 2005 in Paris is not doubt another “big turn” in my career. A CTO of a big French company came to the booth. Passed the first ice breaker questions, he was quite direct:

• Guys.. I don’t want to tell me PostgreSQL is great, I know it already. I have it in production, and my concern is more that if the support by the community you do, thru the pgsql-fr-generale mailing list is great, I still need a profesional to actually guarantee me SLAs…

On that, we did have no answer to give. But clearly, that really started to pop in my mind: “maybe that’s the time to start a thing here?…”

PostgreSQL was at 7.4… Version 8.0 was in development…

So Dalibo was created with a friend of mine I met at IdealX: Dimitri Fontaine. Dimitri was the one bringing two other guys, one of them is Damien Clochard, and the other one was Alexandre Baron.

Dimitri told me like “don’t start that PostgreSQL company alone… My friends want to start a linux-like company… Why don’t you go with us, so you’ll do your PostgreSQL thing in it?..”

So I did, and it was a great idea :-)

The company quickly grew up, but quite fast (less than a year) into “PostgreSQL only”.

A few years after the start, Alexandre left the company, Dalibo had become something he didn’t want to, specialized in a given technology).

Dimitri left 2 years after or so. So out of 4 founders, I had to run the company with Damien. I can say I never worked with someone that different from me. I can say too it was the best time of my life, I miss working with Damien so much!

Of course, we had the chance to have many (many) great colleagues in that company. Probably many dozens were hired, and most decided at some point to go elsewhere. This company helped many people become real experts of PostgreSQL. Some did left and still are that. Others stayed in there, and still are too.

I’m very proud of what has been accomplished with Damien and ex colleagues of this company. It was vibrant, challenging, interesting. It was a time in my life where I tested everything I wanted to test in terms of work organization, decision making, products creations. We did so many mistakes, and learnt so much… That was really fun.

I am particularly proud that in 2011, we decided with Damien, to basically “give away” the company to the workers themselves, including ourselves. That why this company is a cooperative since 2012, where quite everything is decided by consensus, sometimes, by vote.

At some point, I wanted to start over a new project, going on new technologies for PostgreSQL. Unfortunately, the team at this time didn’t follow me on that. Maybe I was (and I am still) too crazy :-)

After 16 years of great work, great people and great projects, I decided to resign and do something else.

That’s clearly something I believe looking back: there are people that create, start over things, changing ideas into real business.

And then, once the business is launched, there are people that maintain it or/and make it grow.

I did both. But the “creator” inside me was waking up… So, I prefered do something else :-)

PostgreSQL Europe (2008)

PostgreSQL Europe NPO started in 2008, after we decided to do so with people like Andreas Scherbaum, Dave Page, Magnus Hangander and Gabriele Bartolini. That was during a “PGDay” in Prato, on October 17th and 18th 2008.

This PG Day was just after the 1st PGDay Fr ever, that took place on October, 4th 2008. It was organized by my friend Jean-Christophe Arnu, we was one of the PostgreSQLFr board at that time.

For the record, PostgreSQL Europe has quite the same statutes PostgreSQL Fr has, just because, PG EU is like PG FR legally : a NPO based on French Law of 1901, and legally based in … Paris :-)

I stayed at the PG Eu board for 4 years (2 mandates of 2 years each), as the treasurer of the NPO. Because it was very preferable that the Treasurer of a French NPO be.. French. Just because the banks are French too. So that’s why people like Guillaume Lelarge, Julien Rouhaud and Laetitia Avrot were past PG EU treasurers.

PG Eu and PG Fr have the same goal, both want PostgreSQL better known, advocate it, etc. But there are some differences in how the 2 are run, PG Eu does a ton of PG events (not only PG Conf Eu, they run conferences all over Europe, including the one in Paris), while PG Fr only runs one conference a year, called PG Day France. Each year we organize a conference in a different city in France. This year was in Lille, last year, Strasbourg… And in 2025 we will be in Bordeaux. But we also maintain the PostgreSQL.fr website that has many services, and also host a group of professionals, I’ll blog about The Cross-Enterprise Work Group another day…

Also, the PG Day France is run exclusively in French, while the PG Day Paris is run exclusively in English. It is also different teams that organizes it.

I must say I’m very glad and happy to have it like this, just because diversity is great for people, and also, it’s less work for me and friends at PG Fr :-)