Claire Giordano
PostgreSQL significant contributor & head of Postgres community efforts at Microsoft. Member of PGCA Board of Directors. Chair of POSETTE Talk Selection.
CFP / Call for Proposals
POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2027
Call for Proposals (CFP) is open
until Sunday 3 Jan 2027!
Every great event starts with great speakers. Whether you’re new to public speaking or as experienced as it gets, we’d love to hear your stories about Postgres and its extensions & tools too—like Citus, Patroni, & more.
We’d love to consider your talk proposals (yes, you can submit more than one) about Postgres and the rich tooling and extensions in the Postgres ecosystem. To make things easy, we’ll take care of the pre-recording and video production of accepted talks. You’ll just need to show up virtually when your video is livestreamed to answer questions in the online chat—with your favorite cup of tea (or coffee) in hand. All talks are in English.
New this year:
When you submit a proposal, you’ll pick a length—a 20-minute talk or a 5-minute lightning talk.
Important dates & deadlines
- 13 Nov 2026 Call for proposals opens
- 3 Jan 2027 CFP closes at 11:59pm PST (UTC−8)
- 13 Jan 2027 Speakers notified
- 26 Jan 2027 Schedule & sessions announced
- 4 Feb 2027 Virtual speaker meet & greet
- Weeks of 8 & 15 Feb 2027 Pre-record all talks
- 30–31 March 2027 POSETTE happens! Join the event in chat
What would make a good topic
for a POSETTE 2027 talk proposal?
The theme for POSETTE 2027 is education. We’re hoping your talk proposals share your expertise & what you’ve learned, so others can benefit too. Any Postgres topic is welcome, as a 20-minute talk or a 5-minute lightning talk. Here are a few ideas to get you started.
- Postgres internals & hacking
- New Postgres features (or your favorite older ones)
- Generally interesting Postgres knowledge & tips
- Performance tuning & benchmarking
- Data modeling & SQL tricks
- Building AI apps with Postgres
- Analytics on Postgres
- JSON, graphs, queues, & more in Postgres
- Lessons from running Azure Database for PostgreSQL
- What’s new with Azure HorizonDB
- Security best practices
- Replication, HA & DR
- How AI agents are changing Postgres workflows
- Using Postgres with Python, Java, .NET, & more
- Extensions & tools like PostGIS, Citus, & Patroni
- Success stories & interesting failures
- Postgres community
How to submit talk proposals
for POSETTE
Thank you for considering our CFP! We’d love to hear your story. For our call for speakers, you can submit a proposal on Sessionize.
The Sessionize form will ask for things like:
- Session title & description
- Bio details, including a 1000x1000 (minimum) headshot
- Permission to share your photos, bio info, & video of your talk online
- Your time zone (for scheduling)
- Bit of background on you, your qualifications, your speaking experience, links to other talks/videos, if they exist
- Choice of talk length: 20-min, or a 5-min lightning talk
Do you still have questions?
You’ll find lots more info in the POSETTE FAQ, or you can reach out for advice on the #posetteconf channel on the Microsoft Open Source Discord.
Be sure to check out the Code of Conduct for the event, too.
CFP is open until Sun 3 Jan
January will be here before we know it. As a reminder, the CFP will close on Sunday 3 January at 11:59pm PST (UTC−8).
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Pick the length that fits your story
A 5-minute lightning talk is perfect for one great idea. If your story needs more setup, go for 20 minutes.
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Your Postgres story is more interesting than you think
Some of the best talks are about how you used Postgres to solve a real problem. You don’t have to be a Postgres hacker to give a great talk.
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Choose a title that makes people curious
Your talk will live on YouTube long after the livestream, and the title is what gets people to click. You don’t have to be provocative, but you do have to fill the (virtual) room.
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Be specific about what people will learn
Don’t be vague! Spell out what your audience will take away.
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Tell us about yourself
Fill in your bio and the speaker experience section—we read it all. Include links to past talks and slides if you have them. If you’re new to speaking, tell us how you’re going to prepare.
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Teach us something
Talks about products—Azure or otherwise—are welcome, as long as people walk away having learned something (and not feeling sold to).
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Get ideas from last year’s talks
Watch the POSETTE 2026 talks on YouTube to see the kinds of topics and titles that got accepted.
Want more tips? Check out Tips on how to get your conference talk SELECTED.
Talk selection team
Our talk selection team will bring different perspectives from across the Postgres, open source, and cloud database communities. What they have in common: they all love Postgres.
Adam Prout
Distinguished engineer & VP at Microsoft. Founding architect of the Azure HorizonDB cloud database. Previous: co-founder of MemSQL / SingleStore.
Daniel Gustafsson
PostgreSQL major contributor & committer working at Microsoft. Longtime PostgreSQL conference organizer. Founder & organizer of Nordic PGDay.
Melanie Plageman
PostgreSQL major contributor and committer working at Microsoft. Focusing on IO, statistics, & vacuum subsystems. Organizer of PGConf.dev.
Selection Process
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Everyone reviews every proposal.
Each of us reviews all talk proposals on our own, along with anything you share in the Speaker Experience section of the submission.
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We compare 3 proposals at a time.
We use the Comparison evaluation method in Sessionize, which is based on the Elo rating system used in chess. What’s especially fair about this method is that at any given point, we’re only looking at 3 proposals, so we don’t have to remember how we voted on a similar proposal the day before. The result is our Phase 1 ranking: a rough draft.
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We look at the whole schedule.
Next come holistic considerations: we want a balanced, diverse set of topics, teaching styles, and speakers. This means speakers from around the world, not just one corner of it. (POSETTE 2026 speakers came from 19 countries and 23 companies.) We also accept only one talk per speaker, so we de-duplicate.
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We want a mix of Postgres voices.
Postgres hackers, open source users, extension & tool builders, Azure customers, and engineers from Microsoft and other Postgres companies all have great stories to tell. People expect Microsoft’s Postgres experts to share what they know, especially about Postgres on Azure—and we want plenty of speakers from outside Microsoft too.
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We discuss, then vote.
In a long Phase 2 meeting, anyone who wants to change the ranking has to make a case for it. We discuss, ask questions, advocate, and vote—over and over—until we land on the final schedule. The chair joins the Phase 2 discussion but votes only to break a tie.
Join the conversation
Use the hashtag #PosetteConf
Brought to you by the Postgres team at Microsoft
Members of the Postgres team at Microsoft—including the Postgres committers & contributors, the people who work on Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure HorizonDB up in the cloud, the Citus open source database engine, and across the Postgres ecosystem—are all proud to host POSETTE: An Event for Postgres. We hope you enjoy it!
In partnership with
