My Postgres experience at PGConf EU 2025 in Riga (with lots of photos)

Missed PGConf EU 2025 in Riga? No worries, this trip report aims to give you highlights, reflections, and a ton of photos to give you a feel for the vibe. But where to begin? So much happened, it’s a bit hard to choose what to share.

Quick context: PGConf EU is a traveling Postgres conference that lands in a different major European city each year (you can read about the history here). This was its 15^th edition—and my 6^th time attending. I still remember how welcoming people in the Postgres community were back in 2018 at my first-ever PGConf EU in Lisbon: shout-out to Boriss Mejías, Dave Cramer, Jonathan Katz, Lætitia Avrot, Magnus Hagander, Peter Eisentraut, Renee Huinker, Tom Lane, and others who made me feel like I belonged. (Ok, enough name dropping.)

Also: maybe it’s the half-Greek in me, but I always feel at home in Europe.

To make this trip report easy to scan, I’ve organized it by the different “hats” I wore at the conference: (a) Speaker; (b) Microsoft was a Gold sponsor; (c) PostgreSQL contributor in the hallway track; and (d) Attendee soaking it all in. Hence, this table of contents:

• 01 – Speaking at PGConf EU
• 02 - Microsoft team & sponsorship of PGConfEU
• 03 – Working the hallway track as a PostgreSQL contributor
• 04 – Being an attendee (alt title: Why people love PGConf EU)
• 05 - Photo Gallery of Speakers
• 06 - Photo Gallery with the Microsoft team at PGConf EU
• 07 - Photo Gallery of PGConf EU vibes

To make this easier for you to read and scan, let's use bullets.

• Speaker dinner: The night before the conference kicked off, speakers gathered for dinner nearby, just a short walking distance from the conference. It was a good chance to swap stories with people who understand the hard work behind every slide.
• Pre-conference half-day summits: This year, organizers tried something new: ~10 half-day summits instead of sponsor tutorials. I’m curious to see the results, to see if this experiment changes how content evolves for the Tuesday.
• Talks & tracks: The PGConf EU 2025 schedule has 4 tracks, ~73 talks (including keynotes and sponsored sessions),plus 10 lightning talks. It was a packed schedule.
• Video recordings: Good news, most talks were recorded and will be on YouTube soon.
• Photos: Scroll down for a gallery of speaker photos (and yes I missed snapping pics from some friends because teleportation isn’t a thing yet.)
• My talk about contributions to PostgreSQL 18: Together with Postgres committer Daniel Gustafsson, we analyzed contributions to Postgres 18 in the areas of governance, code, build farms, translations, packaging, mentoring, conferences, user groups, podcasts—and even financial contributions. Why? Because shining a light on the people behind the project matters.
• Slides from my talk are published online already: Behind Postgres 18: the People, the Code, & the Invisible Work

Figure 1: Mindmap of the different types of Postgres 18 contributions covered in Claire Giordano’s PGConfEU 2025 talk titled “Behind Postgres 18: the People, the Code, & the Invisible Work”

Why does sponsorship matter?  Because it helps keep PGConf EU thriving which means more learning, more hallway conversations, and more collaboration amongst PostgreSQL contributors.

• Microsoft’s Gold sponsorship: Big thanks to the Azure Marketing team for making this possible. Sponsorship isn’t just a logo—it funds the spaces where users build new skills and knowledge and where the Postgres developer community shares ideas to push the project forward.
• Seeing Microsoft teammates IRL: It was so good to see teammates in person—and to break bread together… which reminded me why in-person time matters.
• Booth crew appreciation: Huge shout-out to my teammates who worked the booth—answering questions about our Postgres open source work and the Azure Database for PostgreSQL managed service—while some of us focused on the hallway track.
• Observation about the Microsoft team: A leader from another Postgres company said he was impressed by how the Microsoft people all seem to get along so well. 😊 I love the compliment but I feel like this is true across many Postgres companies. It’s a global project after all.
• Activity Book for PostgreSQL love: Many booth visitors asked about v5 of Activity Book for PostgreSQL. We hear your feedback and will try to make it happen next time. It’s heartwarming to hear from people who have used the Activity Book to help their kids and family understand their work on the world’s most advanced open source relational database.

A decade ago I didn’t understand the hallway track. I thought a conference was all about the talks. But the hallway track is where magic can happen, with serendipitous conversations, feedback loops, and strategizing how to move things forward.

• Discussion of PG18 contributions: Loved hearing thoughts about how to make it easier to track (and recognize) contributions to the PostgreSQL project. Including for the people who do the messaging translations!
• Podcast feedback: Talking Postgres came up a lot, including the recent episodes with Boriss Mejías and Andres Freund which were still top of mind for listeners. And some people even gave me ideas for future Talking Postgres guests!
• POSETTE Call for Proposals: Ran into former POSETTE speakers and supporters. If we didn’t chat about it: the CFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026 will open in November. In the meantime, save the date: POSETTE 2026 is on June 16-18, 2026.
• Dinner on the last night: Lots of different dinners pop up spontaneously on the last night of a conference. I felt so happy to be with 30+ Postgres people that night—building bridges with people, debating complex issues, and celebrating the PG community. Thank you to Bruce Momjian from EDB and Joe Conway and Rob Treat from Amazon for partnering together with Microsoft and me to organize it.

What makes PGConfEU so special? It’s the people. Well, it’s the people and all the energy, learning, and ideas they bring to the table.

• Would I go again? Absolutely. And if you’re a Postgres user or contributor and haven’t been yet, I hope you try to make it next year.
• Buzz & energy: Everybody I spoke to was happy to be there. The vibe was overwhelmingly positive.
• Women’s Breakfast: Attended even though I had to walk in the pouring rain. Well worth it.
• Fascination with PostgreSQL & chess: There was a chess competition at the conference, with results being tracked in a Postgres database (of course.)
• Inspiration from the PG community: So many conversations, so many ideas.
• Microsoft moments: Dinner with the team and gratitude for the Azure Marketing support of the Postgres community.
• Huge gratitude to organizers, talk selection team, & volunteers. PGConfEU 2025 in Riga was well worth the time.
• Hanselminutes podcast prep: Thanks to everyone who helped me prepare for an upcoming podcast episode with Scott Hanselman (on why Postgres is so popular): thank you! Will share as soon as it’s published.

In the photo gallery below, I captured pics of my Microsoft teammates on stage presenting (or those leading the pre-conference summits), as well as a few of my Postgres friends who were speakers. Often I had several friends presenting at the same time, so apologies to people I missed! Speakers with photos in the gallery are from these talks/summits:

• AIO in PG 18 and beyond, by Andres Freund of Microsoft [Link to slides]
• Beyond the How: Why Table Partitioning Truly Matters, by Derk van Veen of Adyen [Link to slides]
• Data modeling with PostgreSQL at the core of Software Development, by Boriss Mejías of EDB [Link to slides]
• Fast-path locking improvements in PG18, by Tomas Vondra of Microsoft [Link to slides]
• From Idea to CREATE EXTENSION: 4 Lessons from Building a Text Search Extension, lightning talk by Philippe Nöel of ParadeDB [Link to abstract]
• How to explain PostgreSQL to kids, by Naisila Puka of Microsoft [Link to slides)
• Operational hazards of managing PostgreSQL DBs over 100TB, by Teresa Lopes of Adyen [Link to slides]
• Panel Discussion: How to Work with Other Postgres People, with Boriss Mejías of EDB, Floor Drees of EDB, Jimmy Angelakos of pgEdge, & Karen Jex of Snowflake [Link to abstract]
• Patroni community summit, co-organized by Alexander Kukushkin of Microsoft & Polina Bungina of Zalando [Link to abstract]
• Postgres on AWS: Run 5X faster on metal, migrate anywhere, sponsored keynote by Ozgun Erdogan of Ubicloud (former co-founder of Citus Data) [Link to abstract]
• PostgreSQL as a Graph Database: Who Grabbed a Beer Together? by Taras Kloba of Microsoft [Link to abstract]
• PostgreSQL Community Summit, PGConfEU edition, co-organized by Teresa Giacomini of Microsoft & Andreas Scherbaum of EDB [Link to abstract]
• Improved Freezing in Postgres Vacuum: From Idea to Commit, by Melanie Plageman of Microsoft [Link to slides]
• Pushing Postgres Forward: From Open Source Contributions to Intelligent Tuning, by Adam Wolk from Microsoft. [Link to abstract]
• They grow up so fast: donating your open source project to a foundation (about the CloudNative PG project), by Floor Drees & Gabriele Bartolini of EDB [Link to slides]
• What You Should Know About Constraints in PostgreSQL (and What’s New in 18), by Gülçin Yıldırım Jelínek of Xata [Link to slides]
• Why the ($&(#&$ would you volunteer to be on a Code of Conduct Committee, lightning talk by Celeste Horgan of Snowflake [Link to abstract]

I love my job on the Postgres open source team at Microsoft—and so all these photos of our team are special to me. Seen in this photo gallery—in addition to the 9 Microsoft speakers and summit organizers at PGConfEU 2025—are: Bilge Korkmaz Erdim of Microsoft, Diaa Radwan of Microsoft, Satish Goel of Newt Global (a Microsoft partner), Serdar Kalkan of SAP, Joaquim Oliveira of the European Space Agency, Ryan Booz of pganalyze; and Gülçin Yıldırım Jelínek of Xata.

Missing from the photo gallery: I should have grabbed a pic of my meeting with Cornelia Biacsics and Jan Karremans from Cybertec (a Microsoft partner.)

What’s with the photos of socks? In the Microsoft photo gallery below, we share photos of people who came to the Microsoft booth wearing Microsoft socks from past Postgres conferences—and telling us how much they enjoy them.

A few more photos from PGConf EU 2025 that didn’t fit into the “speaker gallery” nor into the “with Microsoft team” gallery.

These photos begin with Magnus Hagander, Dave Page, and the blue Slonik elephant on stage at the end of the conference—and continue with pics of the hallway track (including chess!), shots of the foliage in Latvia, a wonderful end-of-conference dinner, a group shot of some PGDay Lowlands organizers, Chris Ellis showing off his views on debugging, and a delicious non-alcoholic mocktail.

Also: selfies with Steve Singer, Álvaro Herrera, Karen Jex, Ellyne Phneah, Joaquim Oliveira, Cornelia Biacsics, Floor Drees, Charis Charalampidi with Florents Tselai and Grant Zhou, Luigi Nardi, Teresa Lopes, Dave Cramer, and Joe Conway. Finally, the bag that Daniel Gustafsson purchased oh so many years ago for transporting the Slonik costume.