Thread: European Group

Hi guys,

   Following the chat we had on IRC a few days ago, I am writing
informally to inquire about the constitution of an European Group of
PostgreSQL users, a network of national PostgreSQL User Groups spread
all over Europe.

   One of the main reasons for this is not only to foster the adoption
of free software and - in the specific case - PostgreSQL in the
European Community, but also to help the promotion of the product all
over Europe by reducing costs of production for brochures,
merchandising, gadgets and the like.

   While organising the first edition of the Italian PostgreSQL Day,
which day after day is getting the proportion of an European
conference rather than national, we faced a few problems: the lack of
promotional materials in Italian.

   One problem of shipping brochures, gadgets, etc. from the US is not
only delivery costs, but charges, taxes, and delays due to custom
checks. In some cases even loss of boxes.

   I believe that an organised community of European PUGs (synergy of
local PUGs) together with rational localisation processes could reduce
the costs and guarantee a high level of uniformity around the world,
with better and more efficient outcomes from a promotional point of
view.

   Anyway, if you are interested, we could even dedicate some time
regarding this issue during the next PGDay, which will be held in
Prato, Tuscany on July 7 2007.

   Thank you very much for your attention.

Regards,
Gabriele

Hi Gabriele,

You went on #postgresqlfr two times and we didn't had the time to chat a
bit. I'm sorry about this. We'll try to do better next time :)

Gabriele Bartolini a écrit :
> [...]
>   While organising the first edition of the Italian PostgreSQL Day,
> which day after day is getting the proportion of an European
> conference rather than national, we faced a few problems: the lack of
> promotional materials in Italian.
>

PostgresSQLfr has some if you want.

http://svn.postgresqlfr.org/browser/materials/advocacy/trunk/brochurePG.odt?format=raw
is our 2006 flyer for Solutions Linux. I can send you the current one by
email. Susanne has our last flyers, perhaps she can bring them at
PGday.it as I read on the IRC that she wants to come.

We don't have much more materials. PostgreSQLde had more stuff at
FOSDEM. I took some of them with me to try something in French.

>   One problem of shipping brochures, gadgets, etc. from the US is not
> only delivery costs, but charges, taxes, and delays due to custom
> checks. In some cases even loss of boxes.
>

Perhaps dalibo can do something for this. I'll talk with them about that.

>   I believe that an organised community of European PUGs (synergy of
> local PUGs) together with rational localisation processes could reduce
> the costs and guarantee a high level of uniformity around the world,
> with better and more efficient outcomes from a promotional point of
> view.
>

Yep, could be interesting.

>   Anyway, if you are interested, we could even dedicate some time
> regarding this issue during the next PGDay, which will be held in
> Prato, Tuscany on July 7 2007.
>

Perhaps I can make it. I'm not sure actually. I'll try to see if others
in the french community are interested to come. To talk on this issue (
EU), I think they'll be. Unfortunately, there is also RMLL (Libre
Software Meeting) the week after. PostgreSQLfr will have a booth
there... hmmm, it'll be a bit hard to be everywhere but we can try.

If you want a french translation for your PGday.it website, I can work
on it.

Regards.


--
Guillaume.
<!-- http://abs.traduc.org/
      http://lfs.traduc.org/
      http://docs.postgresqlfr.org/ -->

Gabriele Bartolini wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
>   Following the chat we had on IRC a few days ago, I am writing
> informally to inquire about the constitution of an European Group of
> PostgreSQL users, a network of national PostgreSQL User Groups spread
> all over Europe.

Sounds like a very good idea - but what about those who don't have a
local user group at all? ;-)


//Magnus

Guillaume Lelarge wrote:

> Hi Gabriele,
>
> You went on #postgresqlfr two times and we didn't had the time to chat
> a bit. I'm sorry about this. We'll try to do better next time :)
>
> Gabriele Bartolini a écrit :
>> [...]
>>   While organising the first edition of the Italian PostgreSQL Day,
>> which day after day is getting the proportion of an European
>> conference rather than national, we faced a few problems: the lack of
>> promotional materials in Italian.
>>
>
> PostgresSQLfr has some if you want.
>
> http://svn.postgresqlfr.org/browser/materials/advocacy/trunk/brochurePG.odt?format=raw
> is our 2006 flyer for Solutions Linux. I can send you the current one
> by email. Susanne has our last flyers, perhaps she can bring them at
> PGday.it as I read on the IRC that she wants to come.
>
> We don't have much more materials. PostgreSQLde had more stuff at
> FOSDEM. I took some of them with me to try something in French.
FOSDEM was cute horrible, we sold all we have and gave all flyers away
(including the french flyers) ...
But we try to reorganize stuff.

regards

Susanne

Magnus Hagander wrote:
> Gabriele Bartolini wrote:
>
>> Hi guys,
>>
>>   Following the chat we had on IRC a few days ago, I am writing
>> informally to inquire about the constitution of an European Group of
>> PostgreSQL users, a network of national PostgreSQL User Groups spread
>> all over Europe.
>>
>
> Sounds like a very good idea - but what about those who don't have a
> local user group at all? ;-)
>
That is a good question. There are either some austrian at postgresql-de
and afaik some belgians at postgresqlfr. Ithink an eu usergroup is a
very good idea for the countries where are not so many persons.
>
> //Magnus
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
>        subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@postgresql.org so that your
>        message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
>

Gabriele Bartolini wrote:
>
>   While organising the first edition of the Italian PostgreSQL Day,
> which day after day is getting the proportion of an European
> conference rather than national, we faced a few problems: the lack of
> promotional materials in Italian.
For a german exhibition, we ordered some blue plush elephants. The guys
sold them all after a few hours.
To order 1000 are much cheaper than to order 10.
May be, we should think about ordering this elephants together with all
european usergroups.
What do you think?

Susanne

Magnus Hagander skrev:
>>   Following the chat we had on IRC a few days ago, I am writing
>> informally to inquire about the constitution of an European Group of
>> PostgreSQL users, a network of national PostgreSQL User Groups spread
>> all over Europe.
>
> Sounds like a very good idea - but what about those who don't have a
> local user group at all? ;-)

Who said a user group has to be larger than one person? And in our case
we are at least two that want to be in the swedish user group! :)

I'd love to get my hands on some promotional material like these cool
mugs I saw that just has the elephant and the word "PostgreSQL" on it
(they work for every country). Language neutral postgresql stickers
would be nice.

I would personally buy some for myself and some that I can hand out to
others for free.

/Dennis

Susanne Ebrecht a écrit :
> Gabriele Bartolini wrote:
>>
>>   While organising the first edition of the Italian PostgreSQL Day,
>> which day after day is getting the proportion of an European
>> conference rather than national, we faced a few problems: the lack of
>> promotional materials in Italian.
> For a german exhibition, we ordered some blue plush elephants. The guys
> sold them all after a few hours.
> To order 1000 are much cheaper than to order 10.
> May be, we should think about ordering this elephants together with all
> european usergroups.
> What do you think?
>

Sure, that would be great. I need to ask the other postgresql-fr guys
but I'm OK with it.


--
Guillaume.
<!-- http://abs.traduc.org/
      http://lfs.traduc.org/
      http://docs.postgresqlfr.org/ -->

Susanne,

Great idea! and with 1000 elephants even some customizing becomes affordable... PostgreSQL in the ear for example.

Wow, that would be so cool...

Harald



--
GHUM Harald Massa
persuadere et programmare
Harald Armin Massa
Reinsburgstraße 202b
70197 Stuttgart
0173/9409607
fx 01212-5-13695179
-
Python: the only language with more web frameworks than keywords.

Hello all,

On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 14:27:47 +0100
"Gabriele Bartolini" <gabriele.bartolini@gmail.com> wrote:

>    Following the chat we had on IRC a few days ago, I am writing
> informally to inquire about the constitution of an European Group of
> PostgreSQL users, a network of national PostgreSQL User Groups spread
> all over Europe.

sounds very good for me.


>    One of the main reasons for this is not only to foster the adoption
> of free software and - in the specific case - PostgreSQL in the
> European Community, but also to help the promotion of the product all
> over Europe by reducing costs of production for brochures,
> merchandising, gadgets and the like.

Since some of us are on most events around, you could even save some
shipping costs and of course, there is one reason more to meet
together ;-)


>    While organising the first edition of the Italian PostgreSQL Day,
> which day after day is getting the proportion of an European
> conference rather than national, we faced a few problems: the lack of
> promotional materials in Italian.

Tell me, what you need, i can try to organize it.
It seems, that i will take over this job from Susanne and already know,
that i have to reorder shirts (black, white) and elephants.


>    One problem of shipping brochures, gadgets, etc. from the US is not
> only delivery costs, but charges, taxes, and delays due to custom
> checks. In some cases even loss of boxes.

Right after David will tell me a bit more about my last mail, i will go
and ask a forwarding agency about all the paper stuff ;-) Or does
anybody know a bit about shipping from EU to USA?


>    Anyway, if you are interested, we could even dedicate some time
> regarding this issue during the next PGDay, which will be held in
> Prato, Tuscany on July 7 2007.

I will try to attend and then we should try to make things a bit more official.


Kind regards

--
                Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
 (Ferenc Mantfeld)

On Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:20:54 +0100
Susanne Ebrecht <miracee@miracee.de> wrote:

> Gabriele Bartolini wrote:
> >
> >   While organising the first edition of the Italian PostgreSQL Day,
> > which day after day is getting the proportion of an European
> > conference rather than national, we faced a few problems: the lack of
> > promotional materials in Italian.
> For a german exhibition, we ordered some blue plush elephants. The guys
> sold them all after a few hours.
> To order 1000 are much cheaper than to order 10.

Thats not entirely correct: i talked friday with the manufacturer and
got the information, that it will get much cheaper if we order 3000
elephants. Thats the amount they start producing somewhere in far east.
Anything below this is handwork in and from Germany. But of course,
prices get a bit lower and you save shipping costs.


> May be, we should think about ordering this elephants together with all
> european usergroups.

[X] Yes


Just my impression from Linuxday in Chemnitz: we had 5 elephants and
they was gone saturday after half a day. So i will decide to order some
more the next time we have a booth.


Bye

--
                Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
 (Ferenc Mantfeld)

Dennis Bjorklund wrote:
> Magnus Hagander skrev:
>>>   Following the chat we had on IRC a few days ago, I am writing
>>> informally to inquire about the constitution of an European Group of
>>> PostgreSQL users, a network of national PostgreSQL User Groups spread
>>> all over Europe.
>>
>> Sounds like a very good idea - but what about those who don't have a
>> local user group at all? ;-)
>
> Who said a user group has to be larger than one person? And in our case
> we are at least two that want to be in the swedish user group! :)

Certainly. But you can then rephrase it - consideration should be taken
for those countries that have very small user groups ;-) Such a european
group could be very useful for these people - inside or outside a 2-3
person usergroup ;-)


> I'd love to get my hands on some promotional material like these cool
> mugs I saw that just has the elephant and the word "PostgreSQL" on it
> (they work for every country). Language neutral postgresql stickers
> would be nice.

yeah, me too. I can send you some japanese stickers if you want, I got
huge amounts from Hiroshi :-)

//Magnus

We are about to organize Russian PUG this spring, I hope we'll have
something before PGCon in Ottawa.

Oleg

On Sun, 4 Mar 2007, Guillaume Lelarge wrote:

> Susanne Ebrecht a ?crit :
>> Gabriele Bartolini wrote:
>>>
>>>   While organising the first edition of the Italian PostgreSQL Day,
>>> which day after day is getting the proportion of an European
>>> conference rather than national, we faced a few problems: the lack of
>>> promotional materials in Italian.
>> For a german exhibition, we ordered some blue plush elephants. The guys
>> sold them all after a few hours.
>> To order 1000 are much cheaper than to order 10.
>> May be, we should think about ordering this elephants together with all
>> european usergroups.
>> What do you think?
>>
>
> Sure, that would be great. I need to ask the other postgresql-fr guys but I'm
> OK with it.
>
>
>

     Regards,
         Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, Research Scientist, Head of AstroNet (www.astronet.ru),
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University, Russia
Internet: oleg@sai.msu.su, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(495)939-16-83, +007(495)939-23-83

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 14:27:47 +0100
> "Gabriele Bartolini" <gabriele.bartolini@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>    Following the chat we had on IRC a few days ago, I am writing
>> informally to inquire about the constitution of an European Group of
>> PostgreSQL users, a network of national PostgreSQL User Groups spread
>> all over Europe.
>>
>
> sounds very good for me.
>
>
>
>>    One of the main reasons for this is not only to foster the adoption
>> of free software and - in the specific case - PostgreSQL in the
>> European Community, but also to help the promotion of the product all
>> over Europe by reducing costs of production for brochures,
>> merchandising, gadgets and the like.
>>
>
> Since some of us are on most events around, you could even save some
> shipping costs and of course, there is one reason more to meet
> together ;-)
>
>
>
>>    While organising the first edition of the Italian PostgreSQL Day,
>> which day after day is getting the proportion of an European
>> conference rather than national, we faced a few problems: the lack of
>> promotional materials in Italian.
>>
>
> Tell me, what you need, i can try to organize it.
> It seems, that i will take over this job from Susanne and already know,
> that i have to reorder shirts (black, white) and elephants.
>
May be, we have to think about, how we will handle european
costs/donations and if there is an organisation handling such stuff for
europe. In germany we are member of the ffis, that is an organisation
that handle donation either for other projects like debian. So we don't
care about contribution receipts and other law stuff.

>
>
>>    One problem of shipping brochures, gadgets, etc. from the US is not
>> only delivery costs, but charges, taxes, and delays due to custom
>> checks. In some cases even loss of boxes.
>>
>
> Right after David will tell me a bit more about my last mail, i will go
> and ask a forwarding agency about all the paper stuff ;-) Or does
> anybody know a bit about shipping from EU to USA?
>
I know, that shipping stuff from USA to germany is horrible. A little
bit like shipping stuff to Switzerland. I don't know the other way. But
I think, it is simple to figure it out.

Susanne

> Certainly. But you can then rephrase it - consideration should be taken
> for those countries that have very small user groups ;-) Such a european

How about regional groups. Nordic, Benelux, etc?

--

Med venlig hilsen
Kaare Rasmussen, Jasonic

Jasonic                 Telefon: +45 3816 2582
Nordre Fasanvej 12
2000 Frederiksberg      Email: kaare@jasonic.dk

On Fri, 2007-03-02 at 14:27 +0100, Gabriele Bartolini wrote:

>    Following the chat we had on IRC a few days ago, I am writing
> informally to inquire about the constitution of an European Group of
> PostgreSQL users, a network of national PostgreSQL User Groups spread
> all over Europe.

>    Anyway, if you are interested, we could even dedicate some time
> regarding this issue during the next PGDay, which will be held in
> Prato, Tuscany on July 7 2007.

Gabriele,

This is a very good idea.

I will be able to contribute actively to this idea over the coming
months as we approach the release of PostgreSQL 8.3 and beyond,
including attending various meetings around Europe.

From my side, I won't be able to contribute at all until *after* feature
freeze at the end of March. It's hectic now, but many of us will be able
to put more time in after feature freeze.

In answer to Magnus, I think a key goal of the group should be to
provide assistance and encouragement to allow creation of PUGs in all
areas of Europe that aren't fully covered, yet. Many PUGs are already
fairly large so I'd hope to gain their assistance and advice on how best
to achieve this.

--
  Simon Riggs
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

>
> In answer to Magnus, I think a key goal of the group should be to
> provide assistance and encouragement to allow creation of PUGs in all
> areas of Europe that aren't fully covered, yet. Many PUGs are already
> fairly large so I'd hope to gain their assistance and advice on how best
> to achieve this.
>
>

Hello,

Let me know if the PostgreSQL Fundraising Group can help in any way with
the European project.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

On Mon, 2007-03-05 at 04:22 -0800, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

> Let me know if the PostgreSQL Fundraising Group can help in any way with
> the European project.

Will do. Many thanks,

--
  Simon Riggs
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com