2025 Annual Report of the PostgreSQL Europe Diversity Committee

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Presented to the PostgreSQL Europe Board on 19 February 2026

Executive Summary

This annual report provides an overview of the activities and achievements of the PostgreSQL Europe Diversity Committee ("The Committee") over the past 12 months. Over the past year, The Committee has made significant progress toward its defined goals, particularly in expanding community outreach and offering resources to event organizers.

Major accomplishments include the successful rollout of the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Scheme, the introduction of a Quiet Room and a Community Celebration Board at PGConf.EU 2025, and a highly successful Postgres Women Breakfast. We also made strides in our data collection efforts by successfully implementing pronoun fields during event registration to gather our first aggregated demographic metrics. We are currently working on expanding this data collection to include automated tracking of speaker vs. attendee metrics and detailed financial reporting for our scholarship programs.

Despite these achievements, The Committee faced challenges regarding membership capacity in 2025, with three members stepping down. However, we are happy to report that our ongoing recruitment efforts succeeded in early 2026, welcoming three new members in February. Looking ahead, we plan to focus on integrating our new members, standardizing our scholarship program tracking, and expanding our accessibility data initiatives across more events. As always, we appreciate the board's support and look forward to collaborating productively for another year.

1. Introduction

The PostgreSQL Europe Diversity Committee is pleased to present this annual report summarizing our activities, achievements, and challenges over the past year. The Committee remains committed to fulfilling its mandate and contributing to the overall success of PGEU by improving diversity and inclusion.

2. Committee Overview

  • Chairperson: Karen Jex
  • Members:
    • Stacey Haysler (Advisor)
    • Jimmy Angelakos
    • Stefanie Janine Stölting
    • Floor Drees
  • New Members (Joined February 2026):
    • Celeste Horgan
    • Cornelia Biacsics
    • José Antonio Morcillo Valenciano
  • Former Members (Stepped down in 2025):
    • Gülçin Yıldırım Jelínek (left the committee in April 2025)
    • Valeria Kaplan (left the committee in November 2025)
    • Flavio Henrique Araque Gurgel (left the committee in November 2025)
  • Meetings Held:
    The Committee held regular online meetings mostly on the first and third Thursday of each month. We have also maintained frequent communication via Telegram in between meetings.

3. Key Activities and Achievements

Over the past year, The Committee has undertaken the following initiatives:

  • Initiatives at PGConf EU 2025:
    • The event was the first to be labelled Sunflower Friendly through our HD Sunflower membership. Prior to the event, organizers and volunteers watched training videos, and during the event, informational posters were displayed and Sunflower lanyards were made available.
    • A Quiet Room was provided for attendees, equipped with adjustable lighting, comfortable furniture, fidget/sensory toys, and earplugs.
    • A Community Celebration Board was provided and staffed by volunteers, allowing attendees to leave messages expressing what they love about the community. Social media posts with the contents of the board were shared afterwards.
    • A Postgres Women Breakfast was organized on our behalf by Teresa Lopes and Priyanka Chatterjee, achieving 40 registrations.
    • Attendees were given the option to share their pronouns during registration, which were printed on their badges.
    • The conference featured 25% women speakers and a female keynote speaker.
  • Expanding Community Outreach
    • We expanded our presentations, with Karen Jex delivering a full-length talk and displaying a poster at PGConf.dev 2025. Floor Drees delivered a lightning talk at PGDay Napoli 2025, and Karen Jex and Floor Drees delivered a joint talk during the PGConf.EU community day. Additionally, Floor Drees, Jimmy Angelakos, and Karen Jex participated in a panel discussion hosted by Boriss Mejias focusing on neurodiversity and how to work with other Postgres people. Celeste Horgan also gave a lightning talk at PGConf.EU about the importance of volunteering for CoC committees.
    • Social media engagement increased; we created a Buffer account to maintain post frequency, growing our following to:
      • 138 on LinkedIn
      • 40 on Mastodon
      • 35 on Bluesky
      • The PGEU Diversity Chat group on Telegram grew to 22 members.
      • A diversity page was added to the PostgreSQL wiki.
      • The Diversity section of the PostgreSQL Europe website was updated to include information about committee roles, responsibilities, and how to get involved.
    • Resources and Guidelines for Event Organizers
      • Created a collaborative draft document containing resources for Accessibility Guidelines for Presentations.
      • Created a draft document detailing the benefits of live captioning at events, including example costs for event budgets.
    • Scholarship Scheme & Financial Tracking
      • Merged our existing ticket giveaway process into a generalized scholarship process and drafted the necessary documentation.
      • Distributed 5 conference tickets earlier in the year and provided two full scholarships for PGConf.EU 2025 to assist with travel and accommodation costs.
      • We have initiated a process to gather and consolidate financial information regarding amounts spent and scholarships provided to improve our budget utilization reporting. Please refer to the attached 2025 Budget Report for a detailed breakdown of our 2025 expenditures.
  • Metrics to Track Progress
    Gathered our first set of aggregated diversity metrics via attendee pronouns at PGConf.EU 2025, revealing the following distribution:
    Pronoun Percentage
    he/him 74.91%
    she/her 10.24%
    they/them 0.17%
    other/none 14.68%

4. Challenges and Lessons Learned

Despite our successes, we encountered the following challenges:

  • Reduced Committee Membership:
    Gülçin Yıldırım Jelínek, Flavio Gurgel, and Valeria Kaplan stepped down from The Committee in 2025 due to other commitments. While a call for new members did not yield volunteers by the end of 2025, we are pleased to note that this challenge was resolved in February 2026 with the onboarding of three new members.
  • Workload Management:
    With a reduced number of committee members through much of the year, there was a risk of needing to review and reduce ongoing initiatives to accommodate the remaining members' workloads. The recent expansion of the team should help alleviate this strain.
  • Data Collection System:
    While capturing pronoun data is a great milestone, implementing the broader changes to the PGEU conference system required to gather voluntary, anonymous diversity metrics from all attendees and speakers is still an ongoing work in progress.

5. Future Goals and Recommendations

Looking ahead, The Committee plans to focus on:

  • Enhanced Demographic Reporting:
    Work on the required UI updates to automate and expand our pronoun data extraction. Our goal is to report on:
    • Percentage of attendees and speakers by pronoun for individual events (e.g., PGConf EU 2025).
    • Opt-in/response rates for providing demographic data.
    • Year-over-year trends for specific event series and all events combined.
  • Financial and Scholarship Tracking:
    Standardize our reporting on the "scholarship funnel" (applications received vs. awarded), geographic distribution of applicants, and overall budget utilization to accurately reflect amounts spent.
  • Committee Onboarding:
    Actively integrate our three new members (José Antonio, Celeste, and Cornelia) to distribute the workload and expand the scope of our initiatives.
  • Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Scheme:
    Continue engaging with PGEU conference organizers to help them implement "Sunflower Friendly" events on a voluntary, opt-in basis.
  • Physical Event Inclusivity:
    Continue advocating for our prioritized accessibility improvements at physical events, which include accommodations for neurodivergence and physical disabilities, child care, prayer rooms, live captions, and livestreaming options.

6. Conclusion

The PostgreSQL Europe Diversity Committee remains committed to its mission and continues to make good progress toward its goals. With our ranks recently replenished, we are entering the new year in a strong position. We appreciate the board's support and welcome any feedback or guidance.

Submitted by:

Jimmy Angelakos
Member, PostgreSQL Europe Diversity Committee
26 February 2026

Next report: anticipated on or before 31 March 2026.