Solutions Linux 2005 Paris : debriefing

Hi all,

First of all, all members of the french association PostgreSQLFr want
to sincerely thanks Jan Wieck for his presence there during the 3 days
of the expo.

He just did awesome, as expected. The presentations he did on Slony did
hypnotize everybody watching it. Everybody there told me it was of a
real interest, high-skill and really sympathetic presentation.

Jan you are Welcome to come back here at anytime!

To be brief, 80% of the visitors of the booth were professionals, from
"I heard once about PostgreSQL" to "I got a (high skill!) question".

What we will remember of, is the general high skill of people who came
on the booth. Most of them did test PostgreSQL for professional
production purpose and choose it for the good overall results of their
study. Really a high skill for some of them. Seems then the advocacy we
do and the infos we give in French on PostgreSQLFr.org has really
something to do with it. Many people said that the French comunity was a
real good idea, since PostgreSQL lacked an "official" representant here.
This is really encouraging for us here, and give us even more energy to
continue the efforts.

Our booth was never empty, there was always a visitor (up to ~10 at some
moments!) exchanging his experience with us. This has been really
remarked... This much remarked that the organizator of the expo told us
he will double the capacity of the booth next year.

We received the 2nd price of the expo for the "best new association" of
the year. Since our Association (~an US "fundation": non profit
organization, meant to advocate PG and support users) just officialy
born on the 1st Feb 2005.

Now, PostgreSQLFr has *tons* of projects since many people came on the
booth with interesting ideas. We just caught what people need in the
real world, what we need to change on our web site, what has to be
developed, etc.

Finaly, I want to thank every single people who helped me so far. I
bought the PostgreSQLFr.org domain exactly one year ago (Feb 6th 2004),
and put 4-6 static pages on it. I was so scared to be seen like a fool,
carrying such a name alone here :-)...

But many people join me, mostly during summer 2004, and we were able to
set up this french speaking community here. Since then we now turned
into an official organization. So its a special thanks I want to give to
Bruce for the idea he suggested me last year. Thanks a lot Bruce!

Let's continue the story!

Note: web site stats here... Just look at 2004's progression of hits up
to 100K hits in January :-) :

http://www.postgresqlfr.org/stats/

--
Jean-Paul Argudo
www.PostgreSQLFr.org