https://postgr.es/p/787
I'm sharing the slides and transcript from my talk about the PostgreSQL Europe Diversity Task Force at PostgreSQL Development Conference 2025.
It's an extended version of the 5 minute lightning talk that I gave at FOSDEM PGDay earlier this year, with some updates on what we've achieved.
If you want a shorter read, feel free to check out the annotated slides from the lightning talk instead!
You may or may not already know that that PostgreSQL Europe (PGEU) launched a Diversity Task Force last year.
- But why have we created the diversity task force?
- Who’s working on it?
- What’s being done?
- How can you get involved?
and, maybe more importantly, how can we help you?
Firstly, and briefly, what does diversity actually mean?
This poor little word has unfortunately had some bad press recently but, in a nutshell, it just means variety.
Especially
“The inclusion of people of different races, cultures etc. in a group or organisation”
Gender and race are often the first things that spring to mind when people talk about diversity,
and of course, those are important.
But diversity is also about:
- your work experience and current job role,
- how and where you grew up,
- the language you speak,
- whether or not you have children or other caring responsibilities,
- any physical disabilities or neurological differences you may have,
- your educational background,
- and much, much more.
This is far from an exhaustive list!
There are so many different things that bring variety to our community, and so many attributes that make each of us unique.
I encouraged the audience to go to Stacey Haysler's talk Everything You Need to Know About Diversity in 25 Minutes later the same day.
[The slides are available on the conference website.]
Why do we have a diversity task force?
It’s no secret that there are challenges in terms of diversity across the entire tech industry,
and the Postgres community isn’t immune from that.
But diversity has been shown to be good for everyone, not just for those who are currently underrepresented.
We know that diverse people bring unique skills and viewpoints,
making the Postgres project better for all of us.
It’s important that everyone feels welcomed, represented, and valued within our community.
My experience is that the overwhelming majority of people in the Postgres community agree with this sentiment, which is fantastic,
but there are things that all of us can do better to make it a reality.
For example, [I encouraged the audience to] take a look around you.
If most of the people around you look a lot like you,
try to imagine how it might feel to be one of the people who doesn’t look a lot like you.
[You could try this yourself at the next tech event you go to.]
If the team organising an event looks like this [picture on slide]
and if the speaker lineup looks like this [picture on slide]
(and this is a real, recent example),
it’s easy to understand why not everyone feels represented or included.
And it’s easy to see how we may unconsciously be giving more opportunities to people like us,
and therefore continually getting feedback that supports our own existing biases.
It’s really important to say that this is not a criticism of the folks that organise Postgres conferences.
The people who do that are volunteers who generously give up their free time and energy
and who work extremely hard to put on events for the benefit of the Postgres community,
often with little thanks or reward.
I’m very grateful for the work they all do.
The idea is to help organisation teams, providing them with the tools, guidelines, and other resources they need
so they can work towards getting more diversity in their organisation and volunteer teams, their speaker lineups and their audiences.
This is all about reaching out to, and welcoming in new people, and bringing more seats to the table.
It's certainly not about shutting out any of the amazing people who are already here.
Who’s working on this?
Let me introduce the PostgreSQL Europe (PGEU) Diversity Committee,
the folks who are doing the initial work to put in place and oversee the PGEU diversity initiatives that can be carried forward by the whole community.
This photo was taken at PostgreSQL Conference Europe (PGConf EU) 2024 where we had our kick-off meeting.
As with most people in the Postgres community, I wear multiple hats.
I want to say a big "Thank you" to Crunchy Data for supporting me and enabling me to do the work I do in the Postgres community.
Stacey Haysler, also wearer of many hats (including the literal one in her photo),
has kindly joined us in an advisory capacity. She shares the wealth of experience and knowledge that she has from putting in place similar initiatives in other communities.
Stacey is President of the United States PostgreSQL Association (PgUS) and creator of the original PostgreSQL Community Code of Conduct.
Working alongside us we have...
Valeria Kaplan, who helps to organise community conferences, is a part of the PostgreSQL Funds Group and Chair of the PgUS User Group Committee.
Stefanie Janine Stölting, a long time database and web developer
who has been active in the Postgres community for many years, giving talks, writing extensions, serving on selection committees
and providing technical support in user groups.
Floor Drees, who is an open source community advocate.
As well as her boundless energy and enthusiasm, Floor brings a wealth of experience from other tech communities,
she is on the PostgreSQL Code of Conduct Committee,
and organizes PGDay Lowlands
[registrations for the 2025 edition open at time of writing!].
Jimmy Angelakos is a Systems and Database Architect, a Postgres conference organiser, volunteer and speaker, and also a PostgreSQL book author.
and Flavio Gurgel, a longtime Postgres DBA.
Flavio is a Staff Infrastructure Engineer at leboncoin where he participates in an in-company diversity group,
and is treasurer of the PostgreSQLFr (French-speaking PostgreSQL community) association.
Gülçin Yıldırım Jelínek, who features in the group photo, launched and organises the Diva: Dive into AI event,
and she’s co-founder and organizer of the Prague PostgreSQL Meetup.
Unfortunately for us, Gülçin has had to step down from the committee because she has too many other commitments,
but she’s still actively working on diversity in Postgres and in tech in general.
I want to take this opportunity to thank Gülçin for the work that she did during the first months of the task force.
But, of course, diversity and inclusion isn’t something that just just gets implemented by a committee or by a task force.
Everyone in the community has a role to play and can make a difference in their own way.
You obviously don’t need our permission or blessing to implement things to improve diversity and inclusion,
but if there’s anything we can do to help with whatever it is you want to do, please let us know,
and, of course, we’d love to hear about the things you’re doing, and help you to get the word out to the rest of the community.
What have we done so far, and what are our plans?
We’re always told that we need SMART goals for our projects:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
"Increase diversity in the PGEU community" is a worthy goal, but it’s not a SMART goal. It’s not even particularly specific.
But as luck would have it, defining the first, specific, goal of the task force was actually quite simple.
Here’s how I remember the conversation going when I joined the PGEU board at the beginning of 2024:
Board: We need a diversity task force. Who wants to lead it?
Me: Maybe. Before I commit to anything, what are the objectives of the diversity task force?
Board: ...
OK!
Objective number 1: Define the objectives of the diversity task force.
The rest of the goals could wait until we’d done that.
We defined phase 1 as a research phase to:
- Identify where improvement is most needed.
- Ask the community what their expectations are.
- Agree an initial budget for the work.
- Identify metrics to measure progress.
We hit another sticking point at the “measurable” part.
We’re data people. We want to be able to quantify where we’re starting from and what the issues are, and we want concrete ways to measure progress.
To do that we need stats, numbers, metrics… but we don’t currently have any of those.
We can look around us and see that we have a lack of diversity.
We can listen to people’s experiences and understand how the things we’re currently doing could be improved,
but we don’t actually collect any kind of demographic information.
We’re working on making changes to the conference system that will let us collect some useful information (on an anonymous, voluntary basis).
But, of course, we’re not sitting around waiting for that information before we get started.
In the meantime, we’re focusing on the things that we can achieve; the things we can do something about,
and that we know will benefit the community whether or not we can measure their impact.
We’ve chosen to focus on inclusion and accessibility, making our community and our events as welcoming as possible to as many people as possible.
Which helps towards our goal of increasing diversity.
We’re setting short-term goals as we learn what does and doesn’t work, as we get more of an idea of what’s needed,
and as we try to fit the diversity task force work around all of the committee members other commitments
- We worked to get the task force up and running for PGConf.EU 2024.
- We got our initial plans, budget etc in plae for the end of 2024 so we could start actively working on things.
- We’re working to get as many initiatives in place as we can for PGConf.EU 2025.
What have we achieved so far?
Every project needs stickers, of course so one of the first things we did was design a Diversity Task Force logo, and have some shiny stickers printed!
If you’re interested in the process behind the design of the logo, the meaning behind the colours etc. there’s a whole page about it on the PGEU website.
We did a lot of behind-the-scenes research, planning and setting up infrastructure, and also:
We recently published our first annual report,
and have committed to publishing an interim report every quarter to keep the community up to date.
We have some specific plans, some of which are already underway, including:
- Setting up a scholarship scheme for conference attendance (folks can already apply, even though we don’t have a formal application process in place).
- Starting a dialogue with conference organisers to offer help, resources etc.
- Joining the Hidden Disabilities (Sunflower) Scheme,
to help make conference organisers and volunteers aware of some of the needs of people with hidden disabilities,
and to provide lanyards, assistance and reassurance to conference attendees.
- Providing diversity training for conference organisers and volunteers.
We have plenty of other ideas, but detailed plans for the future will depend on feedback and requests from the community, and on volunteers willing to help.
Rather than work alone and reinvent the wheel, we’re also joining forces with, supporting the efforts of,
and learning from other groups within the Postgres Community and beyond. For example:
The PgUS Diversity Committee, Postgres Women India, and the PGEU Diversity Task Force all had posters in the Poster Session so please go and have a look at those to learn more about them.
Hopefully, you’re now wondering:
- How can I help?
- How can I be involved?
- How can I learn more about what’s being done?
You can
- Email your ideas, comments and questions to the committee at diversity(at)postgresql.eu.
- Join our Telegram group (email to ask for an invite).
- Consider becoming a PGEU member.
- Spread the word about the diversity task force.
You don’t need to dedicate lots of time to diversity initiatives,
and you don’t have to get involved in any official Diversity Task Force work.
There are lots of simple, everyday things you can do to help make the community more inclusive and welcoming and therefore help to increase diversity:
- Be conscious of using inclusive language.
- Learn about, and challenge your own unconscious bias.
- Practice empathy and be kind and patient.
- Ask what you can do to help.
- Listen to what underrepresented folks have to say, and amplify their voices.
- Like and share posts that promote diversity and inclusion.
Get involved in discussions such as the one at the Community Summit to share ideas and help move initiatives forward.
How can we help you?
I’ve touched on most of these already, but here are some of the things that we can do to help, depending on your role:
If you’re organising a conference or a meetup, reach out to us for suggestions and guidelines for creating an inclusive, accessible event,
grants for diversity-related initiatives, diversity training for volunteers.
If you’re attending a conference and need financial assistance to travel,
if you’re new to Postgres conferences and need a conference buddy,
or if there’s anything else that could make an event more accessible to you, let us know.
If you’re a conference speaker, or you’d like to speak at a conference, we can offer mentorship,
we can find someone to listen to you practice, we can help with reviewing your slides for accessibility.
And if there’s anything else that you need, whatever your role, let us know and we’ll see what we can do.
Finally, how can you stay informed about what we’re up to?
To find out more about the task force, including reading about each of the committee members, visit the PGEU website (link in QR code).
Follow our LinkedIn Page,
or connect with us on Mastodon (@PostgreSQLEuropeDiversity@hachyderm.io) or Bluesky (@pgeudiversity.bsky.social) to stay up to date.
And (most importantly?) pick up a sticker for your laptop! Not only do they look adorable, but they’re great conversation starters.
Thank you!
https://postgr.es/p/787
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