PostgreSQL Berlin March 2026 Meetup

Zalando is graciously hosting us for our first Meetup in 2026. And we are doing it a bit different: we have two rooms, and two talks in parallel. This gives you the opportunity to choose between two talks, for a total of four talks.

PLEASE BRING YOUR PHOTO ID
USE THE MAIN ENTRANCE TO BHW ON THE SIDE OF UBER ARENA

Agenda

Two sessions run in parallel in rooms codenamed "Auditorium" and "Festival"

18:30 - doors open: registration, networking, and drinks

19:00 - 19:05 Auditorium, "Event intro" by Sergey Dudoladov, Senior Database Engineer in Zalando.

Auditorium: Track A

19:10 - 19:55 "How we made WarehousePG Open Source (again)" by Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum, a WarehousePG Principal Engineer at EDB and a Founding Member of PostgreSQL Europe
19:55 - 20:15 Networking, Q&A, and pizza
20:15 - 21:00 "From 20 seconds to sub-second: Speeding up CloudNativePG wake-ups" by Tudor Golubenco, CTO of Xata

Festival: Track B

19:10 - 19:55 "The Role of PostgreSQL in the AI World" by Narendra Tawar, Sr Database Specialist SA, AWS
19:55 - 20:15 Networking, Q&A, and pizza
20:15 - 21:00 "Modernizing Postgres Communication with Hackorum", by Kai Wagner, Percona

21:00 - 22:00 Networking, Q&A, and pizza
22:00 - The End

Abstracts

How we made WarehousePG Open Source (again)

WarehousePG is an Open Source fork of Greenplum Database, which by itself is a fork of PostgreSQL. The project was born after the upstream project was made closed source.
This talk gives a quick overview of the history of both projects, which already spans more than two decades. We then dive into the reasons for creating a fork, and all the stumbling stones we had to pass in order to make this project open source again. We also talk about the challenges of CLAs (Contributor License Agreements) and what implications the PostgreSQL and Apache Licenses have for the project.
Speaker: Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

The Role of PostgreSQL in the AI World

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to revolutionize industries, the need for robust, scalable, and efficient data management solutions has never been greater. PostgreSQL, with its extensibility, performance, and advanced data capabilities, plays a crucial role in enabling AI-driven applications. This talk explores how PostgreSQL supports AI workloads, from managing vast datasets and integrating with machine learning frameworks to leveraging extensions like PostgreSQL ML, TimescaleDB, and JSONB for AI-ready storage and querying. Attendees will gain insights into best practices for using PostgreSQL in AI pipelines, optimizing performance for AI inference, and harnessing the power of open-source innovation to drive intelligent decision-making. Whether you're a data engineer, AI researcher, or PostgreSQL enthusiast, this session will showcase why PostgreSQL is an essential component in the AI ecosystem.

From 20 seconds to sub-second: Speeding up CloudNativePG wake-ups

CloudNativePG (CNPG) is a popular and battle-tested operator for running Postgres on top of Kubernetes. At Xata, we’ve been using CNPG and extending it in several different directions. One of them is implementing a scale-to-zero plugin: clusters hibernate when inactive and they wake up automatically when new connections are created.
After adding scale-to-zero, we’ve faced the challenge that the CNPG wake-up from hibernation is rather slow.This is an optimization story about how we reduced the wake-up times from 20+ seconds to under one second.
Speaker: Tudor Golubenco

Modernizing Postgres Communication with Hackorum

In 2026, the debate over whether mailing lists are still "state of the art" continues to divide developers. While some view them as relics, we cannot neglect the unique benefits of their decentralized, archival nature. Rather than fighting over platforms or ignoring the friction, Hackorum asks a simpler question: Why not just improve the user experience?
Hackorum transforms the daunting mailing list "firehose" into a modern, forum-style interface without breaking the underlying email culture. It is designed to lower the barrier for new contributors while providing power tools for veterans:
Seamless Integration: Real-time sync between mailing lists and daily sync of the Commitfest status.
Modern UX: Per-message read tracking, tagging, and contributor profiles.
Enhanced Coordination: Shared notes and mentions to streamline complex reviews.
We have to stay open minded and willing to expand our horizon and as such Hackorum is rapidly evolving. While our roots are in development, we are currently expanding to include broader mailing lists like -general and -docs. Our goal is to make the entire Postgres ecosystem more accessible and usable for everyone. Join us for a demo of the latest updates and help us shape the future of Postgres communication.
Speaker: Kai Wagner

About the speakers

Andreas Scherbaum has been working with PostgreSQL since 1997. He is involved in several PostgreSQL related community projects, member of the Board of Directors of the European PostgreSQL User Group and also wrote a PostgreSQL book (in German).
Since 2011 he was working for EMC/Greenplum/Pivotal and tackled very big databases. Until 2024 he was doing the same - but with maybe even more and bigger databases - for Adjust GmbH in Berlin.
Now he's working at EDB as WarehousePG Principal Engineer and is helping customers with even larger databases.

Tudor Golubenco is the CTO of Xata, a Postgres platform with branches and zero-downtime, reversible schema changes. Before Xata, Tudor worked as a tech lead at companies like Elastic and Oracle.

Narendra Tawar - Sr Database Specialist SA
I am accomplished database professional with 21 years of comprehensive experience across Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and MySQL environments, with specialised PostgreSQL expertise since a decade. Currently serving as a Senior Data Migration Specialist at AWS, I architect and execute complex enterprise migration strategies while actively expanding into Generative AI technologies to enhance migration efficiency and optimize data workflows. My core competencies include database architecture, performance optimization, migration planning, and cross-platform data integration, combining decades of hands-on experience with modern cloud methodologies to deliver scalable, reliable data solutions that bridge traditional database principles with emerging AI capabilities.

Kai Wagner - I’m Kai, a Senior Engineering Manager at Percona with almost two decades of "bleeding" open source in my DNA. From the Linux Kernel and Ceph at SUSE to leading PostgreSQL development today, my career is built on a foundation of transparent communication and community-driven innovation. In my free time, I'm a handball, agility and movement coach for various ages and teams, next to spending time with the family and on the house.

Note

We will again take notes who signs up and does not show up. This information will be used to provide seats to others at future events. Plain and simple: please only sign up if you plan to attend.