Interviews

Bradford D. Boyle

Operations Committee

Bradford joined Pivotal in October 2016 as a member of the GemFire--Greenplum Connector (GGC) team. In addition to working on GGC, Bradford was involved in the development of the first Greenplum--Spark Connector. Prior to joining Pivotal, he worked at Sift Security helping to build a next generation security operations platform for accelerated security incident response. Before moving to the Bay Area, Bradford completed his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Drexel University where he did research in the areas of wireless communication, networking, and information theory.

1. Tell us how you became involved with PostgreSQL.

   I became involved with PostgreSQL when I joined Pivotal in 2016. I work on Pivotal Greenplum which is massively parallel (MPP) database based on PostgreSQL. At Pivotal, I have worked on high-speed data connectors from Greenplum to Pivotal GemFire (in-memory data grid) and Apache Spark. I am currently working on packaging and distribution of Pivotal Greenplum and Pivotal Postgres.

2. What is your favorite thing about PostgreSQL?

   My favorite thing about PostgreSQL is the community. In the three plus years that I have been involved with PostgreSQL, I have had several opportunities to interact with various members of the community. Whether it is in person, on mailing lists, or at conferences, everyone has been friendly and helpful. At conferences, I've always been excited, energized, and inspired by what people are doing with PostgreSQL.

3. What made you decide to become involved with PgDay San Francisco?

   I have benefited enormously from the larger open-source community throughout my education and professional career. I saw this as an opportunity to contribute back to that community. There is a network effect with conferences, with attendees benefiting long after the actual conference has concluded.

4. What else would you like the world to know about you?

   I was an extra in a music video for Major Lazer. Find me at the conference if you want to hear the story behind that.