Обсуждение: Presenting PostgreSQLFr.org and its future

Hi all,


First of all, I apologize to not have been in this mailing list before :)


Well, I met Bruce Momjian at Linux Solutions 2004 in february 6. On the 7th,
while I got back home, I dediced to buy postgresqlfr.org domain, with the idea
to set up a French Community for PostgreSQL.

The web site started in 8th february, with few pages on it. What I had in mind
is that many IT pros in France were hesitating in migrate from proprietary RDBMS
to PostgreSQL.

Since I was a consultant in RDBMS (mainly PG!) in an Open Source company for
2 years, I have some relationships with IT Pros that already migrated to PG. I
asked them to fill a questionnaire, what few did.

After that, we started to test Drupal (drupal.org), one of the few serious CMS
that supports PostgreSQL. Finaly our site is 100% Drupal powered and it suits
our needs.

We have now 120+ registered users, the web site has 50K hits a month, with 5K
different people (awstats). So we are proud of this success. A few months ago,
the link on postgresql.org to our Fr site boosted clearly our site. :-)

We translate and post there yet every mail of the pgsql-announce ML. Plus some
do write articles about precise technical matters. For example, the usage of
python embedded in PG, or Slony tests, etc.

But overall, the *most* seen pages are still those about IT Pros testimonials.
since the "book" (drupal term to designate collated pages/articles) has been
setted up (a month..), it has been read 600+ times, printed 400+ times (exported
in plain text). I think those testimonials serve a lot IT Pros that want to
convince their hierarchy that time has come to migrate to PG :)

This encourage us to keep the web site up to date!

We wonder too that it could be interesting for the advocacy.postgresq.org site
to translate testimonials to english.

The future:

* we're planning to set up an "association": its a french legal term to
designate people that join to work together, but for non profite purpose.
Typically, to serve others, like a humanist matter. This allows to have a bak
account, and manage money a bit: when someone donates (sometimes
state/region/city support it too), the money goes to this account, managed by a
few representants (president, secretary, and treasurer). This method give also
all the transparency that we want, and protects every person in it legally,

* when this is done, we'll look for partenership of commercial entities, or
 governemental ones. Because we need cash for the following:

  - the web site is planted on a friend's OpenBrick : he paid alone the machine
    and he's still paying gently for us the hosting. This is not a way to work
    for us.=> having money to buy a server and hosting it

  - we'll have a booth at Linux Solutions 2005: we need to buy posters and
    tshirts to make the booth sympathetic (sourcewear.com) Im planning to ask
    O'Reilly and
    Eyrolles (eyrolles recently migrated its web commercial site to PG and
    added a testimonial to pgfr.org!...) to let books about PG in the booth.


Okay, I almost said here what I wanted to inform advocacy people about.

Any idea or support would be much appreciated. Thanks a lot!


--
 Site perso : http://www.argudo.org
 PostgreSQL : http://www.postgresqlfr.org
 l'APRIL    : http://www.april.org

Jean-Paul,

> Well, I met Bruce Momjian at Linux Solutions 2004 in february 6. On the
> 7th, while I got back home, I dediced to buy postgresqlfr.org domain, with
> the idea to set up a French Community for PostgreSQL.

Great!  BTW, do you have any idea whom this "Cit@delle" company which owns
postgresql.fr is?

> The web site started in 8th february, with few pages on it. What I had in
> mind is that many IT pros in France were hesitating in migrate from
> proprietary RDBMS to PostgreSQL.

Yes.   Previously, our French community has been rather small, and French
people are not so interested in joining English-only mailing lists.

> After that, we started to test Drupal (drupal.org), one of the few serious
> CMS that supports PostgreSQL. Finaly our site is 100% Drupal powered and it
> suits our needs.

Looks good.

> But overall, the *most* seen pages are still those about IT Pros
> testimonials. since the "book" (drupal term to designate collated
> pages/articles) has been setted up (a month..), it has been read 600+
> times, printed 400+ times (exported in plain text). I think those
> testimonials serve a lot IT Pros that want to convince their hierarchy that
> time has come to migrate to PG :)

Way cool.

> We wonder too that it could be interesting for the advocacy.postgresq.org
> site to translate testimonials to english.

Yes, although the Advocacy.postgresql.org site will soon be folded into the
general www.postgresql.org.     If your members would be willing to
translate, we would be glad to have them.

> * we're planning to set up an "association": its a french legal term to
> designate people that join to work together, but for non profite purpose.
> Typically, to serve others, like a humanist matter. This allows to have a
> bak account, and manage money a bit: when someone donates (sometimes
> state/region/city support it too), the money goes to this account, managed
> by a few representants (president, secretary, and treasurer). This method
> give also all the transparency that we want, and protects every person in
> it legally,

I would like to work closely with you in this.   We are currently working on a
Non-profit Foundation in the United States to support PostgreSQL, and there
should definitely be some official relationship between the two entities.
If it could be made to work, might it be possible to expand your group to an
EU-wide organization, or are you focussed on French-speaking Europe
exclusively?

> * when this is done, we'll look for partenership of commercial entities, or
>  governemental ones. Because we need cash for the following:

This is something we *need* to coordinate on; it would not do for you and I to
hit up the same company for a donation, seperately.  Let's talk.

>   - we'll have a booth at Linux Solutions 2005: we need to buy posters and
>     tshirts to make the booth sympathetic (sourcewear.com) Im planning to
> ask O'Reilly and
>     Eyrolles (eyrolles recently migrated its web commercial site to PG and
>     added a testimonial to pgfr.org!...) to let books about PG in the
> booth.

Actually, if you have some $$ for shipping, I can send you both t-shirts and
books for the next convention (though the books will be somewhat out of
date).

--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

> I would like to work closely with you in this.   We are currently working on a
> Non-profit Foundation in the United States to support PostgreSQL, and there
> should definitely be some official relationship between the two entities.
> If it could be made to work, might it be possible to expand your group to an
> EU-wide organization, or are you focussed on French-speaking Europe
> exclusively?
>
>> * when this is done, we'll look for partenership of commercial entities, or
>>  governemental ones. Because we need cash for the following:
>
> This is something we *need* to coordinate on; it would not do for you and I to
> hit up the same company for a donation, seperately.  Let's talk.
>
>>   - we'll have a booth at Linux Solutions 2005: we need to buy posters and
>>     tshirts to make the booth sympathetic (sourcewear.com) Im planning to
>> ask O'Reilly and
>>     Eyrolles (eyrolles recently migrated its web commercial site to PG and
>>     added a testimonial to pgfr.org!...) to let books about PG in the
>> booth.
>
> Actually, if you have some $$ for shipping, I can send you both t-shirts and
> books for the next convention (though the books will be somewhat out of
> date).

If something like a non-profit organisation is planned in Europe I'm glad
to help. I was in the past thinking of such an organisation but due to
lack of time, nothing was done.
I was thinking of a subscription model such as transgaming.com 5 USD/EUR
per month from every subscribed user and depending on the amount of money
sponsor some postgres developers or postgres related projects.

Regards Ewald Geschwinde

Hi again,


First of all, sorry for the late reply, I had a lot of things being done before
going back on this subject.

> Great!  BTW, do you have any idea whom this "Cit@delle" company which owns
> postgresql.fr is?

Really not. Seems to be a classical computer services. Im going to ask them why
they buy this name. .fr domain names are really not easy to buy, even for a
company, it must proove the name is directly linked with the company...

Its another topic, I try to put a guy on it... lets see?

> Yes, although the Advocacy.postgresql.org site will soon be folded into the
> general www.postgresql.org.     If your members would be willing to
> translate, we would be glad to have them.

We'll do our best. Keep us on touch with it!

> I would like to work closely with you in this.   We are currently working on a
> Non-profit Foundation in the United States to support PostgreSQL, and there
> should definitely be some official relationship between the two entities.
> If it could be made to work, might it be possible to expand your group to an
> EU-wide organization, or are you focussed on French-speaking Europe
> exclusively?

No we'rent focused on a french-speaking organization only. But its already much
work to set up the entity nationaly. Lets see if we can do it in our country
first, Its hard to find people who will help during months and years...

>
> > * when this is done, we'll look for partenership of commercial entities, or
> >  governemental ones. Because we need cash for the following:
>
> This is something we *need* to coordinate on; it would not do for you and I to
> hit up the same company for a donation, seperately.  Let's talk.

Yeah, lets talk :-)

> >   - we'll have a booth at Linux Solutions 2005: we need to buy posters and
> >     tshirts to make the booth sympathetic (sourcewear.com) Im planning to
> > ask O'Reilly and
> >     Eyrolles (eyrolles recently migrated its web commercial site to PG and
> >     added a testimonial to pgfr.org!...) to let books about PG in the
> > booth.
>
> Actually, if you have some $$ for shipping, I can send you both t-shirts and
> books for the next convention (though the books will be somewhat out of
> date).

Oh really! This is really marvelous :-)

How can we build this up?.. Have we to buy you every item? Or just give you back
the money of the sold items? please tell me a bit more about it :-)

Dont be hurry, the convention is February 2005. ;-)

> Josh Berkus
> Aglio Database Solutions
> San Francisco

Thanks a lot Josh :-)


--
Jean-Paul ARGUDO

 Site perso : http://www.argudo.org
 PostgreSQL : http://www.postgresqlfr.org
 l'APRIL    : http://www.april.org

> If something like a non-profit organisation is planned in Europe I'm glad
> to help. I was in the past thinking of such an organisation but due to
> lack of time, nothing was done.

Thats where most of us are :-(

Thats why in my previous mail (reply to Josh), I tell it is difficult to such
things to be done, because I already know I can't do it alone. And, at the
moment, we are a bit too few to do it. Im currently finding people to rely on
for this project. But, Im sure this will be successfull.

> I was thinking of a subscription model such as transgaming.com 5 USD/EUR
> per month from every subscribed user and depending on the amount of money
> sponsor some postgres developers or postgres related projects.

Wow. This is a bit advanced for us. At first we want a non-profit organization
to be planted. We think it is the seed of everything. after that, why not hiring
people in doing some business around PostgreSQL?.. Why/ Why not...??

At this moment, we just want to plant our seed, nothing more. It is already a
huge work, since most of us here have family, children, jobs... Hope you
understand me :-)

Anyway, Thanks a lot for your help proposal, We'll keep you in touch about or
entity etc :)

I think a european organization around PostgreSQL should be based on national
ones. Like the FSF Europe is based on national organizations..

But lets talk about this in the right time, its a bit early.

Cya

--
Jean-Paul ARGUDO

 Site perso : http://www.argudo.org
 PostgreSQL : http://www.postgresqlfr.org
 l'APRIL    : http://www.april.org

On Mon, 2004-10-11 at 15:39, Jean-Paul ARGUDO wrote:

> At this moment, we just want to plant our seed, nothing more. It is already a
> huge work, since most of us here have family, children, jobs... Hope you
> understand me :-)
I know what you mean. you have hit my 3 points :)

> Anyway, Thanks a lot for your help proposal, We'll keep you in touch about or
> entity etc :)
>
> I think a european organization around PostgreSQL should be based on national
> ones. Like the FSF Europe is based on national organizations..
>
> But lets talk about this in the right time, its a bit early.

Agreed.

Let's move on with this foundation and if all things are running ok then
we can get the next steps right.

Regards EWald GEschwinde