I have had a lot of conversations with people interested in participating in Percona Live this year, but are looking for ideas on what talks or tutorials to submit. I decided to put together a list of topics I think would make great sessions and topics I have heard you in the community ask about.
Generally speaking, talks show real-world architectures, deployments, and use cases are always well received and well attended. People love learning about and often gain inspiration from how other people are deploying and using their favorite databases. Submitting talks like “How my company deployed <insert database> to do <insert something interesting>” are uniquely yours and will be well received.
Also good advice: Don’t be afraid to submit. Many people talk themselves out of talking or submitting for fear that their session is too basic or may not be “good enough”. Often 101 talks are very helpful for people not only at the conference but also those looking to start out later on ( slides/videos will be posted online ). If you need some help, reach out to me at [email protected] and I will be happy to help you with slide review, ideas, or by doing a walkthrough of your talk ahead of time.
If you are a company with a product looking to speak and highlight the product, the best talks avoid product pitches, instead of focusing on how to overcome or solve a particular problem. Show us something cool, teach us something new, show us how others are using the software.
Here is Hoss’s big list of ideas broken into categories (this is not an exhaustive list, just the top of my head):
PostgreSQL:
- Kubernetes for the PostgreSQL DBAs
- PostgreSQL for Oracle DBAs
- Best Practices for PostgreSQL on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud
- PostgreSQL Schema Design
- Securing PostgreSQL
- Performance Tuning PostgreSQL
- Geo-Distributed PostgreSQL
- Using JSON Datatypes within PostgreSQL
- Setting up and Optimizing Patroni
- PostgreSQL Deep Tuning Secrets: Most people know the easy options for tuning, but what are some hidden ones.
- PostgreSQL Query Design Tips and Tricks
- Setting up PostgreSQL for Analytics workloads, features, and tricks for analytics environments
- Large Scale PG: The challenges of running PostgreSQL at scale, tips and tricks at scale, sharding, etc
- War Stories: People love hearing about how people built their environments and what the setup looked like. Use cases are awesome.
- PostgreSQL tuning walkthrough
- The SRE guide to maintaining, optimizing, and fixing PostgreSQL
- How to extend PostgreSQL ( Building an extension )
- Finding, tracking, and fixing Disk IO bottlenecks in PostgreSQL
- Secrets of the all-important vacuum
- PostgreSQL Indexing overview: which index types work best in what workloads
- Migrating to PostgreSQL from SQL Server, Oracle, or other databases
- Monitoring PostgreSQL 101: What should you be monitoring, and what alerts should you setup
- Backup best practices for PostgreSQL
- Timeseries Data in PostgreSQL
MySQL:
- Kubernetes for the MySQL DBAs
- Best Practices for MySQL on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud
- MySQL Schema Design
- Securing MySQL
- Performance Tuning MySQL
- Geo-Distributed MySQL
- Using JSON Datatypes within MySQL
- MySQL Deep Tuning Secrets: Most people know the easy options for tuning, but what are some hidden ones.
- MySQL Query Design Tips and Tricks
- Large Scale MySQL: The challenges of running MySQL at scale, tips and tricks at scale, sharding, etc
- War Stories: People love hearing about how people built their environments and what the setup looked like. Use cases are awesome.
- MySQL tuning walkthrough
- The SRE guide to maintaining, optimizing, and fixing MySQL
- Finding, tracking, and fixing Disk IO bottlenecks in MySQL
- Monitoring MySQL 101: What should you be monitoring, and what alerts should you setup
- Using the MySQL Shell – Tips, tricks, even an overview
- War stories/Use Cases of deploying InnoDB Cluster or PXC (architectural overview, etc.)
- Backup best practices for MySQL
MongoDB:
- Kubernetes for the MongoDB DBAs & Developers
- Topics on: MongoDB Sharding, Rebalancing, picking your shard key, etc
- Walking through identifying and drilling into a slow down in MongoDB
- MongoDB Schema Design/Validation
- Deep secrets of MongoDB ( things people don’t often use )
- Securing MongoDB
- MongoDB Backup and restore best practices
- Monitoring MongoDB 101: What should you be monitoring, and what alerts should you setup
- Large Scale MongoDB: The challenges of running MongoDB at scale, tips and tricks at scale, sharding, etc
- War Stories: People love hearing about how people built their environments and what the setup looked like. Use cases are awesome.
- The SRE guide to maintaining, optimizing, and fixing MongoDB
MariaDB:
- Best Practices for MariaDB on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud
- MariaDB Schema Design
- Securing MariaDB
- Performance Tuning MariaDB
- Geo-Distributed MariaDB
- Using JSON Datatypes within MariaDB
- MariaDB Deep Tuning Secrets: Most people know the easy options for tuning, but what are some hidden ones.
- MariaDB Query Design Tips and Tricks
- Large Scale MariaDB: The challenges of running MariaDB at scale, tips and tricks at scale, sharding, etc
- War Stories: People love hearing about how people built their environments and what the setup looked like. Use cases are awesome.
- Finding, tracking, and fixing Disk IO bottlenecks in MariaDB
- Monitoring MariaDB 101: What should you be monitoring, and what alerts should you setup
Misc Databases:
(We would love to hear from other people using other databases not listed.)
- Topics on using Redis, Elastic, OpenSearch, Cassandra, Couchbase, etc are all welcome
- Multi-database topics at the conference generally are well received and often well attended. Things like using Redis and PostgreSQL together are great topics.
- There is a lot of Buzz around “NewSQL” solutions, Yugabyte, TiDB, Cockroach, etc. Introduction talks as well as advanced use cases would be very interesting.
Infrastructure:
- Kubernetes 101 for DBAs – Let’s be honest many DBAs may not be used to this
- Topics on best practices for databases running on containers/Kubernetes is very timely and welcome
- Linux Tuning Tips and tricks for database servers
- Topics showing concrete tools/methods for the automation of infrastructure and backend tasks are really good as well.
Development:
- Diving into ORMs comparing the pros and cons of different ORMs is interesting
- Talking about best practices for different types of programming languages with your favorite database is also a good topic ( Go, Python, PHP, etc )
- Fixing, Tuning, and Optimizing MySQL/PostgreSQL for your favorite 3rd party application (WordPress, Drupal, etc.)
- Full Stack Tuning: Tools/Methods for walking through issues from user pain, through code, and down to the database
- CI/CD tips, tricks, best practices when dealing with databases
- Schema Migration Best Practices
- Effective Testing Code/Database Changes
- Database Error Handling 101
- Connection Management 101
- Connecting Your App to A Highly Distributed, Geo-Located Database
- Storing Time Series Data
- Accessing Data From Multiple Data Sources/Types
Miscellaneous/General:
- Show us new features or extensions in your favorite database
- Topics on deep tracing, troubleshooting, and internal debugging often gain a great audience (bpftrace, flame graphs, etc.)
- How to test your backups (any database) when your data set is huge
- Talks on new technologies and products out on the market, not a product pitch however, show us/teach us something cool
Note all these are merely suggestions and ideas. There may be lots of talks/topics that are super interesting not listed. If you don’t see something you like or think you can do, feel free to reach out and we can talk and I can help you create a talk that is uniquely you. Space is limited for speakers, so picking a topic above won’t guarantee a spot, but these are topics that generally are well received.
What do you think? Did I miss something? Do you have a topic you would like to see? Drop it into the comments section below. See you at Percona Live!
