
[ BCC to hackers.]

I just returned from a twelve day trip to Germany and Armenia.  LinuxTag
in Germany was a big success.  We had our own booth and lot of people
came to talk to us.  The things users asked about (nested transactions,
replication, PITR, Win32) are already being working on so I feel we are
doing a good job targeting our user base.  Peter organized the event and
he did a great job.

Armenia was also very interesting.  Unlike other events I attend, this
was not a technical conference, but rather explored how Armenia and
Easter European countries can adopt open source software in business,
government, health care, and education.  There was also great interest
in how these countries can develop businesses based on open source with
the possibility of generating export revenue.  Many of these countries
have excellent programmers, and the Internet and open source can allow
their talents to be marketed internationally.

Another interesting aspect was that this wasn't a group of open source
users.  They were new to open source but realize that open source will
be a significant force in the future.  In fact, I can't think of one
proprietary software company that isn't being affected by open source.

Armenia is considering growing the technology sector of their country
based on the use and commercial support of open source software:

	http://www.opensourcearmenia.com/

I was on the national Armenian television news twice during my trip. 
Here are a few pictures:

	http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/Armenian_TV/

The fourth image shows the name PostgreSQL at the bottom, with my name
in Armenia letters above it.  This might be the first mention of
PostgreSQL on a national television news program.

Though I was born in the USA, I am Armenian (as is my wife) so the trip
for me was also personally exciting.  It was strange to travel nine time
zones to a country where people were so similar to me.  And they were
asking about open source, which was strange because it was mixing my
heritage with my profession.  Imagine landing on an island far away
where everyone looked like you, you understood their language, and they
were asking you about open source.  Very strange indeed.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Sun, 4 Jul 2004 23:31:22 -0400 (EDT)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
My trip to Germany and Armenia