Sarah Conway
Head of DevRel @ Data Bene
Sarah Conway is a DevRel specialist and technology evangelist with over 12 years experience in the field, with a significant focus in the worlds of open source and PostgreSQL. An expert with many hats, she's taken on many roles over time including frontend developer, software engineer, developer advocate, cloud evangelist, product marketing manager, conference organizer, diversity & inclusion leader, technical writer, and animal rescue founder & current president. Currently working as the head of developer relations at Data Bene, while running her own DevRel agency Talk to Me About Tech.
POSETTE 2025 Talk
Postgres Storytelling: Cunning Schema Design with Creative Data Modeling
Evelyn Kates was not sure how to get started designing the database schema for a complex application. She has been commissioned to track the results of the Chess tournament. Evelyn’s colleagues advised her to meet the grumpy DBAs in the cellar of the building to get some help, but instead of a grumpy dude, she found Monica DeBea, the talented yet underrated support engineer who was capable of taking up any challenge. Using her experience, Monica sat with Evelyn and a coffee - two coffees - and they set themselves to the creative and rewarding task of data modeling.
In this presentation in the format of an illustrated storytelling, you will learn some principles of data modeling, letting PostgreSQL guarantee data integrity. This will help you build the business logic in the model itself, giving you extra powers as software developer, while learning to collaborate with your DBA team. We believe that with this talk you will want to start applying these principles to your current and future projects.
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Speaker
Interview
About the Speaker
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Tell us about yourself: career, family, passions
I'm a developer relations specialist, first and foremost, and long-time PostgreSQL community volunteer & event organizer. I work as…
- head of DevRel @ Data Bene, a PostgreSQL company providing support, consulting, & training,
- owner of the DevRel agency Talk to Me About Tech, and
- founder of the animal nonprofit 2 Rabbit Rescue.
I'm also a musician (mostly violinist/violist) of over 20 years. Additionally, sustainability, the environment, animal rights, open source, and community are all incredibly important to me.
About the Talk
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What are you looking forward to, the most, during your talk?
The storytelling aspect! It should be a very different format than your typical talk.
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Which other talk at this year’s conference would you like to watch and why?
Karen Jex is presenting on "Managing Postgres at scale: Challenges, Tools & Techniques" which is, of course, a highly useful topic and one that typically poses a lot of challenges.
There are several extensions in development at Data Bene, and pg_psi is one of them, designed to help you work with PSI and react to system events. Cédric Villemain discusses this in "Resource Control Admission – I have a date with my PSI".
About PostgreSQL
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What inspired you to work with PostgreSQL?
TBH? The community. I came into the world of open source, Linux, and PostgreSQL at 14 and was immediately accepted into the community without any hesitation (at least, from my perspective). So, I've been a part of it ever since.
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What is your favorite PostgreSQL feature?
It can handle so many different data types! It's not your average database—it can be adapted and configured for just about any use case.
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What are your favorite resources for learning about PostgreSQL?
Finding conferences that record their sessions, and identifying / watching key relevant topics is a great way to learn just about anything. Otherwise, these are both great resources:
About POSETTE & Events
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Have you enjoyed previous POSETTE (formerly Citus Con) conferences, either as an attendee or as a speaker? If so, what did you enjoy most about it?”
I really appreciate that this is a fully virtual, free-to-attend event that's high quality and focused on PostgreSQL. It's hard for me to travel due to a bunch of reasons, so being able to still network and attend a full-day conference like this is really fun. Past events have all been really accessible and nicely produced and still feel very much to be community events.
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What other PostgreSQL events in 2025 are you excited about and why?
Student PG Data Day is coming up quickly this April 24th in Chicago, IL (1 day before pgDay Chicago, in the same location!) to aid students and junior devs, and it's run by Prairie Postgres which is a fabulous new nonprofit located in the Midwest US.
I'm also highly excited for PgDay Lowlands as it'll be at the Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam, Netherlands this year. Last year's event had a lot of engagement and fun talks (both full sessions and lightning talks), and this year includes panels too.
There's another new event called Postgres Extensions Day 2025 on May 12 in Montréal that's focused on PostgreSQL extension development—excited to see how it turns out.
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What advice would you give to fellow speakers preparing for a PostgreSQL conference?
Don't forget to highlight your network on LinkedIn, Mastodon, etc. where you're speaking, and what you're speaking about. You have folks that want to see the content you create—let them know about it! Conferences generally share recorded versions of talks as well after the event; these are great to highlight as well or link on your portfolio.
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What would be helpful to know for a first-time speaker?
It really helps to have water available. Also, remember to stop & breathe. Both are simple tips, but easy to forget (& they make a huge difference).
Open Forum
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Is there anything you’d like to share with the Postgres community attending this year’s POSETTE: An Event for Postgres?
I'd love to connect! Especially if you'd like to collaborate on cool open-source projects or events—it's my jam.
Join the conversation
Use the hashtag #PosetteConf