All about Aiven's first open source data technology event: Uptime 2022

On September 14 - 15, Aiven ran our first conference with the aim of bringing open source data technology communities together, all in one place. Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam was the perfect location for data enthusiasts to meet, learn and mingle over two days packed with talks, workshops, and geeky chat.

Pakhuis de Zwijger, Amsterdam

Bring the best open source data technology

We had some really great content covering some of the best-known technologies in the open source data space. Technologies like PostgreSQL, Apache Kafka®, OpenSearch®, ClickHouse®, and MySQL. We really wanted to bring a wide range of technologies to the audience, and were pleased to include in the schedule tools like Apache Pinot for real-time analytics, Apache Pulsar, Apache NiFi, Debezium, Vespa, and Grafana k6 for load testing.

Snapshots from the event. From left to right: Lorna Mitchell during the opening notes, Elisa Usai applauding for a talk, Karin Wolok presenting on stage, and Arlemi Turpault helping out workshop participants.

We had sessions on storage, streaming, how to make any of that even work on Kubernetes, but also observability and … dataviz bingo? You’re going to have to wait a bit while our talk recordings start to appear on the Uptime YouTube channel, but until then find out what resources and stories were shared by our speakers on Twitter.

Aiven shared an exciting update during the event too: we were proud to announce that a Beta version of our Aiven for ClickHouse® service is now available for anyone to try. Olena Kutsenko, Developer Advocate at Aiven, and ClickHouse CTO Alexey Milovidov both led in-depth sessions on ClickHouse during Uptime.

We’d like to thank all of the speakers and workshop facilitators for bringing excellent content, and our keynote speakers for taking a chance on a first-time event.

Keynote speakers: Dirk-Willem van Gulik, Jason Yee, Rob Barnes, and Amanda Brock

Dirk-Willem van Gulik, the Apache Software Foundation’s co-founder and first president, talked about how transparency was key in the Dutch Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 response.

OpenUK CEO Amanda Brock celebrated open technology and global collaboration, but also shared a caution about the ramifications of the Open Source Definition.

Staff Technical Evangelist at Datadog, Jason Yee, compared the open source community to the largest organism in the world (Pando), except that we’re much better suited to cope with challenges thanks to our diversity.

And Rob Barnes, Senior Developer Advocate at HashiCorp, taught us how to fend off cyber attacks with open source technology.

It’s all about the community

We were delighted at the support from our sponsors, workshop-, media-, and community partners. In no particular order:

• Postman
• Exoscale
• Axual
• UpCloud
• OpenSearch
• Conduktor
• LightDash
• Berlin Buzzwords
• The Open Source Initiative
• HashiCorp User Group Amsterdam
• DataTalks Club
• The ClickHouse Meetup
• IT Daily

Bringing Accessibility sponsors on board allowed us to get both tracks, and all talks, live captioned. These captions are enabled for the talk recordings as well. Thank you!

Our Diversity Scholarship provided support to those from traditionally underrepresented groups in the technical open source community, including but not limited to persons identifying as LGBTQIA+, women, persons of color, and/or persons with disabilities. We were able to bring 13 individuals to Uptime.

Giving back to open source

All proceeds from registration fees were donated to open source foundations:

• The Apache Software Foundation
• The Open Source Initiative
• The Linux Foundation

As a commercial organization built on the shoulders of open source projects, Aiven considers itself an important part of a healthy ecosystem and the open source community. We are proud to play our part in this and to be a positive force in many other ways.

Uptime participants networking during the breaks

Judging by the hallway discussions, we can look forward to a number of interesting collaborations following the connections that were made at the event. Hettie Dombrovskaya, Database Architect at DRW, after years of advocating for an ORM alternative, launched the NORM (No-ORM) project on the first day of the conference, sparking both interest and discussion.

What’s next?

Follow our Uptime Twitter feed to stay informed about upcoming activities, next year's event (spoiler: there will be an Uptime 2023), the Call for Speakers, and more. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and get notified once we upload the talk recordings.

--

If you have any other feedback or questions, drop in on Aiven at Twitter or LinkedIn. Make sure to follow our blog RSS feeds, and if you want the latest news about Aiven and our services - plus a bit extra on all things open source - subscribe to our monthly newsletter!