Prairie Postgres just turned two! We say “community building” often, maybe not always thinking about what it means, but looking back on the past two years, I can confidently say the most important achievement, the one I’m most proud of, is reshaping the Chicago Postgres Community.
Gradually, our gatherings transformed from a group of experienced DBAs plus a dozen newcomers who sat quietly and didn’t ask any questions because they didn’t know where to start, to a gathering of curious developers, data scientists, and yes, both junior and experienced DBAs are here – how could we keep going without them? Each talk sparks a lot of questions; people stay engaged in conversations long after it ends. It’s not just about “Do you have job openings in your organization?” It’s also (and mostly) about knowledge sharing, talking about passion projects, and building connections.
I am not saying it happened during these last two years; things started to change a while ago, but the changes were empowered by the sense of ownership: it’s our organization, our meetups, and it’s up to us to make the most of them.
Another exciting change is the growth of our connections with other technical meetups. We have strong ties with Chicago Code&Coffee and the Chicago Ruby and Django communities, and we are planning our first joint meetup with ChiPy. We are also exploring ways to strengthen connections with the Chicago AWS meetup and the Databricks meetup.
Working together. Building connections. Building community. All I was dreaming about 
What am I looking forward to? What would I like us to achieve in our third year?
First, the geography. There is more Postgres in the greater Midwest than just Chicago, and Prairie Postgres is happy to help give it a jump start. Reach out to us – you know where we are!
Second, building connections with educational institutions. So far, there is nothing major to report, except that we have some students coming to our meetups, but we hope we can do more.
Finally, we hope to be more instrumental in helping those just entering the IT workforce take the first step. If you have any ideas about what we can do, please reach out!
