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The latest geekSessions event info is here, and it’s going to be better than ever! Join us on Tuesday, October 2 at the City Club in SF for a great panel discussion, catered reception, and open bar.
For this session, we’re diving into database design—both from the perspective of traditional best practices as well as new technologies and techniques on accelerating the performance and increasing the availability and integrity of data in high-demand environments.
We’ll tackle a broad range of data related issues such as when to normalize versus de-normalize, when to use an RDBMS versus an alternative, pros and cons of various platforms, and pros and cons of building more sophisticated data management into the application layer.
Event Info
What: geekSessions 1.2: Designing Beyond the Database
When: Tuesday, October 2nd, 6:00pm-9:00pm
6:00pm - Registration, open bar, and appetizers
6:30pm - Panel discussion and Q&A (bar closed)
8:00pm - Open Bar, dinner, and networking
Where: The City Club of SF, Google Map: 155 Sansome, 10th Floor
How: A limited number of tickets are now open to the public! Get them while they last.
Transportation: Parking can be a bit tricky in the financial district at this time, so it’s highly recommended you take public transportation. If you must drive, your best bet may be to park in the parking structure for the Metreon over on 4th and Mission and walk to the event.
3 hours isn’t enough, you say? Ticketholders will be emailed details of the geekSessions after-party!
Submit a Question for the Panel
Got something you’re itching to ask? Use our form to submit a question for the panel. Selected questions will be asked by the moderator.
About the Panelists
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Lead, Sun Microsystems
Josh Berkus is primarily known as one of the Core Team of the world-spanning, open source database project, PostgreSQL. He has been involved with various open source projects since 1998—including OpenOffice.org, LedgerSMB, Bricolage, and OpenBRR. He currently sits on the board of Software in the Public Interest, Inc. Sun Microsystems employs Josh in its Database Technology Group as the strategic lead for Sun’s PostgreSQL for Solaris product offering.
Arnold Goldberg
Senior Director of Systems Engineering, eBay
Originally involved in the conversion of the site to Java, Arnold’s group is now involved in many parts of the site’s infrastructure. These areas include eBay’s Appserver usage, Presentation Technologies being used, Data Access Layer frameworks, Build and Release Systems, Application Frameworks, and many other aspects of running the site and developing eBay’s Java-based products. He’s been at eBay for more then 6 years.
Paul Querna
Senior Software Engineer, Bloglines
Paul Querna is employed as a Senior Software Engineer at Bloglines, where he works on the Bloglines distributed file system, custom BerkeleyDB based databases, and other backend systems. He is involved with many open source projects and is a member of the Apache Software Foundation. When he can find spare time, he likes to hack on the Apache HTTP Server and the Apache Portable Runtime projects.
Chad Walters
Search Architect and Director of Search Engineering, Powerset
Chad Walters is the Search Architect and Director of Search Engineering for Powerset, where he focuses on taking Powerset’s natural language search technology to web-scale. Before joining Powerset, Mr. Walters served as Websearch Architect for Yahoo!. In this role, he provided technical leadership spanning the Websearch organization with an emphasis on runtime query serving infrastructure. Mr. Walters also has expertise in online storage, virtual machines, and virtual memory. Prior to Yahoo!, Mr. Walters held leadership positions at i-drive.com/Anuvio Technologies and Connectix Corporation. He holds a B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University.
Sponsored By
“No, this is not my boyfriend’s computer,” reads the image at the top of the She’s Geeky website—a funny but all too true quote about the still male-dominated tech industry.
This is why we’re thrilled to join forces with She’s Geeky to help promote and encourage women in technology. To all the geekSessions ladies out there, you should definitely check out The She’s Geeky (un)Conference, happening October 22-23 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Tickets are $125 and you can register on the website.
If you would like to help out, She’s Geeky is still accepting sponsorship so email them at shesgeeky at gmail dot com for more information.
Good news! For everyone that missed out on our July event, we’ve posted the podcasts and slide presentations on the event. Thanks to everyone who came and congratulations to the winners of the Arcscale skateboards and the B-hive iPhone!
See below for the audio, video, and slide presentations for July’s geekSessions 1.1
Audio[display_podcast]
Video
Coming soon.
Slide Presentations (in order of presentation)
With over 150 confirmed tickets sold, this event is SOLD OUT. Podcasts of the event will be available in the Past Events section later this week.
If you can’t make it in person you can still Submit a question for the panel and then watch the podcasts.
As always, thanks to everyone for helping us get the word out. We’re looking forward to a great event!
It’s both a blessing and a curse—web startups work long hours building products that everyone loves only to face the threat of being killed by their own success.
This month, geekSessions tackles the topic of how to keep your web infrastructure alive and thriving when demand goes through the roof. We’ve put together a great panel of people who’ve experienced the “Hockey Stick” first hand and will come to share the lessons they’ve learned and answer your questions. Our speakers hail from Digg, Friendster, Meebo, and VideoEgg.
Join us on Tuesday, July 31st from 6 to 9 PM at the elegant City Club in downtown San Francisco. Come for the panel and stay for an informal catered reception to continue the discussion. Oh, and don’t forget—there’s an OPEN BAR!
Event Info
What: Web Infrastructure: Surviving the “Hockey Stick”
When: Tuesday, July 31st, 6:00-9:00pm
Where: The City Club of SF, Google Map: 155 Sansome, 11th Floor
How: A limited number of tickets are now open to the public! Get them while they last.
Transportation: Parking can be a bit tricky in the financial district at this time, so it’s highly recommended you take public transportation. If you must drive, your best bet may be to park in the parking structure for the Metreon over on 4th and Mission and walk to the event.
3 hours isn’t enough, you say? Stay tuned for details of the geekSessions after-party being organized by Sean Plaice of Yelp!
Submit a Question for the Panel
Got something you’re itching to ask? Use our form to submit a question for the panel. Selected questions will be asked by the moderator.
About the Panelists
Jonathan Abrams
Founder, Friendster and Socializr
Jonathan Abrams is the founder, CEO, and Junior Computer Programmer at Socializr, an online service for sharing event and party information with your friends. Jonathan is an award-winning serial entrepreneur who created the pioneering social networking service Friendster in 2002. Jonathan is the inventor of a United States Patent for a “System, method, and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks.
Nick Heyman
VP of Operations, VideoEgg
Nick Heyman has over a decade of IT experience, most recently at Facebook, one of the leading social networks in the US, where he was responsible for scaling the infrastructure of the site from 2 million to over 14 million users. He also worked in operations at another popular social network, Friendster. Nick started out his IT career in 1995 working for the Secretary of the State of Rhode Island where he helped build and launch one of the first web-based legislative tracking systems in the country.
Ron Gorodetzky
Senior Systems Administrator, Digg
Ron attended University of California San Diego after which he did small scale computer consulting. In 2004 he was asked to help administer a small server for a side project called Digg, a social news site. Soon after he co-founded and acted as Director of Technology for Revision3, an online production company and distributor. Both ventures have become quite successful in their own spaces.
Sandy Jen
Founder, meebo
With a BS in Computer Science from Stanford, Sandy founded meebo in 2005. Today, Meebo’s users exchange over 80 million instant messages a day! She is primarily responsible for the server side development of meebo. This includes coding up new features but also architecting a scalable, robust server infrastructure to interface with the front-end.
Sponsored By
The next session will address how to survive that wonderful problem of having your traffic, users, queries, hits, etc. increase exponentially or “hockey stick” as the popularity of the site rises. We’re bringing in a few heavy hitters who have been there and lived to tell the tale from some of the biggest sites around.
Due to the popularity of the last event we are investigating a larger venue. Details to follow shortly… stay tuned!
