pgeu elections - candidates and presentations

Hello!

This is the official list of candidates for the PGEU elections, including their
presentations, in alphabetical order (by first name - just to confuse you).

Elections will open tomorrow (May 10th), and be open until May 23rd.

Results will be published as soon as possible after that date.

For more information about the elections, please see
http://www.postgresql.eu/about/elections/.

List of candidates
------------------
* Andreas Scherbaum
* Dave Page
* Devrim Gunduz
* Gabriele Bartolini
* Guillaume Lelarge

And their presentations:

Andreas Scherbaum
-----------------
I'm working with PostgreSQL since around the 7.0 release, back then I
started developing "table_log" which became open source. For several
years now I'm translating the PostgreSQL weekly news into the german
language and run the pg_docbot in many PostgreSQL IRC channel. During
the year I help organize the PostgreSQL presentation for several events,
as example: FOSDEM, CLT, PGDay, FrOSCon, CeBIT. In addition I take care
about the merchandising (like mugs, shirts or the blue plush elephants)
and write articles in several german magazines. During the last two
years, as a member of the board, I was involved in many decisions around
the European PostgreSQL User Group.

My primary goals for PGEU for the next years are:

- Create more attention on PostgreSQL and the user groups.
- Support existing local user groups and help create new ones.
- Support and participate in events to promote PostgreSQL.
- Expand the PostgreSQL user base.

Thank you for your support!

Dave Page
---------
I've been a user and contributor to PostgreSQL since 1998 when I
started the pgAdmin project. Since then I've contributed to related
projects such as Slony, psqlODBC and Npgsql as well as to the server
itself. As a core team member, I'm responsible for our installers
which I'm able to provide with the resources provided by my employer,
EnterpriseDB. I also help maintain our project infrastructure and
websites.

I believe that the future of the project lies in collaboration between
our individual contributors and commercial contributors. Without the
individuals we wouldn't have the passionate community behind the
project, working on new features, helping other users and evangelising
to their friends and colleagues about PostgreSQL. Without commercial
contributors we would struggle to market ourselves against commercial
competitors or even other Open Source databases with commercial
backing, and we would find it near impossible to produce major new
features which require hundreds or thousands of hours of work from
individual developers.

I think it is essential that the project continues to strike a balance
between the needs of those two types of contributors, and if elected
to the board, that is a belief that will be taken into account in all
the work I'm involved in.

PostgreSQL Europe is primarily involved in the promotion of PostgreSQL
and acting as an umbrella user group organisation. Whether or not I
am elected, I expect to help organise our annual conference as I have
in previous years. As a board member, I will also work to ensure that
we continue to invest in the promotion of PostgreSQL, not only through
the European conference, but also by working with other usergroups and
commercial contributors around the world to coordinate our efforts to
provide consistent messaging about PostgreSQL and where appropriate
collaborate on the development and production of marketing, education
and training materials.

Thank you for your support.

Devrim Gunduz
-------------
I have been working on open source since 1997. I started as a desktop
Linux user first, then started coding perl and PHP. I heard about
PostgreSQL at around 1998 at university, but my first production usage
was at 2000. Then, I began working as a system administrator, as well as
PostgreSQL consultant at Turkey.

I first started doing website maintenance with Justin Clift, and also
did some internal stuff, around 2001. I began supplying unofficial RPMs
for unsupported distros around 2002, in order to help community. In the
mid-2003, I set up a company which gave PostgreSQL support in Turkey and
also 2 more countries near us, which were really big clients.

Towards the end of 2004, Lamar Owen passed RPM maintainership to me, and
I also started maintaining PostgreSQL related packages for Fedora. At
the end of 2005, Command Prompt offered me a job, and I started working
for them. It lasted 50 months, and with great sponsorship and support
from Command Prompt, I set up first PostgreSQL RPM repository.

Now, I have a separate repository. As of now, I'm maintaining 60+
packages for it, and also ~30 for Fedora. I'm still supplying RPMs for
PostgreSQL FTP network.

I am also part of website team. Even though I'm not doing much work over
the last years, I do contribute when I'm needed. I was one of the
sysadmins, but now I'm not a part of that team.

I am also a part of Turkish Linux Users Association, and I was a board
member at 2006.

My goals for the PostgreSQL EU Group are:

* Extending PGEU activities to more countries at EU.
* Extending pgday.eu, in order to be the biggest PostgreSQL event in the world.
* Figure out more ways to invest more money to PGEU.
* Expand PostgreSQL User Base in EU.

Gabriele Bartolini
------------------
I have been a passionate member of the PostgreSQL community since 2007, when I
felt the need to organise an event in Italy to show how good PostgreSQL was.
My main contributions to the PostgreSQL community so far:
* the foundation of two non-profit organisations for the promotion of
PostgreSQL: the Italian PostgreSQL User Group and PostgreSQL Europe
* the organisation of the first Italian PostgreSQL Day in 2007 - at that
time the biggest Postgres community event ever to be organised in Europe - and
the first European PostgreSQL Day in 2008.

These experiences have given me a solid understanding on how to manage community
events and open-source communities from both a financial and an administration
standpoint.

If I get elected, I will make sure that PostgreSQL Europe will:
* participate to events for the promotion of PostgreSQL as database solution
in the government sector, at all levels (European and local)
* support local associations to promote PostgreSQL by participating to
open-source events or by organising local events for Postgres
* reinvest money into to the PostgreSQL project growth

Guillaume Lelarge
-----------------
I worked with PostgreSQL since 6.5 release. I first contributed by
translating the 7.4 PostgreSQL manual, and its command-line tools, into
French. This effort still goes on. Right now, manuals from 7.4 to 8.4
are available in French. Since a few years, I try to contribute with
code. My main work remains in pgAdmin (translations, bugfixes, and new
features), but I also added some functionalities in PostgreSQL 8.4, and
9.0. I also gave some patches for phpPgAdmin, pgPool, pgpoolAdmin,
check_postgres.pl. I try to participate as much as possible in the
events organized by the community (PGDay.fr 2008, PGDay.eu 2009) to
either help in the organization or giving a talk, and by other free
communities (talks during RMLL 2008, Parinux). Finally, I try to
communicate about PostgreSQL, usually by writing articles in a french
Linux magazine.

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/