PgUS 2008 end of year summary - Mailing list pgsql-general

Hello,

It is now 2009 and time for a, "Thanks for all the laughs 2008!"

2008 was the year that PgUS spent getting its feet under itself. We
formed our board, filed all of our legally required paperwork, paid a
lot of money to attorneys, held elections and even managed to have some
fun by working on parts of our mission. Many goals for 2008 were met.

We have ensured that when the new board was seated the majority of our
logistical infrastructure was in place. CPA, Legal, etc...

Our Attorney is:

Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
1300 SW Fifth Avenue
Suite 2300
Portland, OR 97201

Our CPA is:

Alten Sakai & Company LLP
1815 SW Marlow Ave., Suite 218
Portland, OR 97225-5187

We have retained Alten Sakai for not only standard CPA activities but
also book keeping and general accounting. The goal being that those
focusing on the success of PgUS are not book keepers or accountants.
PgUS will be able to focus on actually educating people on PostgreSQL in
the United States. Through our relationship with Alten Sakai we will be
able to provide monthly financial statements to our members in a
reliable manner. Expect to see the first detailed statement in March.

PgUS closed out the year with ~ 10k USD. We have no outstanding payables
and only one outstanding receivable. This leaves us with enough money to
handle any sundry expenses through 2009 including Accounting and Legal
fees.

Our community efforts included:

We started the process of working on our strategy with education. Part
of that conversation can be found here:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgus-general/2008-08/msg00036.php

Michael Brewer who is heading up that strategy will be posting an update
to the website shortly.

We worked with PostgreSQL Conference, U.S. to hold West:

http://www.postgresqlconference.org/

We presented at Northern Arizona State.

In 2009:

We will seat the four elected members of the board:

Richard Broersma, Jr.
Andrew Dunstan
Greg Sabino Mullane
Robert Treat

We will also work with PostgreSQL Conference, U.S. to hold East, West,
and LFNW PgDay.

We hope to hold several free classes and seminars on PostgreSQL as well
as continue an aggressive move into education. Getting students and
professors to start using PostgreSQL is a key to ensuring a strong
relationship with potential new community members over the long term.

We want to hear from our members.  How is it that PgUS can help our
members with their PostgreSQL needs? How would our members like to
participate with PgUS? Are there members out there that have just been
waiting for an opportunity to participate? What is that opportunity?
What talents do you have and how would you like to use them?

For those who want to help but are not sure exactly how, here are some
ideas:

  * Drupal expertise
    The PostgreSQL.US site runs on Drupal + PostgreSQL

  * Speakers (PgUS will sponsor as it is able)
    We are actively pursuing every speaking engagement possible. We
    need more than one person to handle these engagements.

  * Tutorial writers
    This can be everything from how do I perform a backup with
    PostgreSQL to working with Pylons and PostgreSQL.

  * Community incursion
    We need guerrillas to start educating other communities on a more
    aggressive level and helping make sure that their postgresql
    support is top knotch. An very simple example is Drupal. They have
    an open issue list for Drupal 7 that is explicit to PostgreSQL.
    It can be found here:

    http://groups.drupal.org/node/17671


Lastly, please make note of our address change. Our new address is:

United States PostgreSQL Association
1767 12th Street
#149
Hood River, OR 97031

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake
President
United States PostgreSQL Association (PgUS)

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