When we moved PostgreSQL Conference East (register here)from a three day to a four day conference, I was concerned about our ability to pull it off. Primarily our conferences have been centered about the who's who of PostgreSQL. A nice mix of known contributors and avid users. A lot of the users, we would already knew as they contribute on the lists.
The migration to four days caused a need to expand our base. We actively starting soliciting from decision makers, educators, users and community contributors. I also know that several of our sponsors have been doing the same. So far it has paid off, we have more registrations at this point, than we have had at any other point historically for one of the PostgreSQL Conferences. The change seems to have been a true blessing.
The influx of talks has been amazing. We don't have them all up yet but you can get a taste here. What I find truly great, is the amount of diversity in the talks. We have case studies from Vonage, in depth security talks from Magnus Hagander, Advanced talks on Transaction Isolation; even Core member Dave Page is crossing the pond to talk about the PostgreSQL Infrastructure. There seems no better time to hit the PostgreSQL Conference series than now. There is going to be content for everyone.
We have also kept up our promise to integrate tertiary communities into the conference with content on PostGIS, PHP, Python, Ruby and Grails.
I was truly skeptical of the conference change. My hat is off to Platinum Sponsor EnterpriseDB for convincing me it was a good idea.