PGDay Lowlands2026

OptimaData is a full-service, multi-platform database consultancy in Naarden, the Netherlands, with 30+ professionals. We are celebrating our tenth year in 2026, and since the start in 2016 we have specialised in open source databases, with PostgreSQL at the core: management, 24/7 support, consultancy, migrations, training and staffing.

Our values map almost one-to-one onto the Postgres community. We work in the open, we share what we know, and we believe knowledge grows when you give it away. No vendor lock-in, no black boxes, no hype. We say what we do and we do what we say.

That is why we do not just sell PostgreSQL services. We organise the Dutch user group, run a mentoring programme and show up at the events. Contributing and giving back is not marketing for us, it is how the ecosystem we depend on stays healthy.

OptimaData started in 2016, but our roots in database services go back to 2000. We began closer to staffing and classic DBA work across many platforms, including Oracle and SQL Server. Over time we saw where our customers were heading: away from expensive licences and lock-in, towards open source.

PostgreSQL was the obvious anchor. It is technically excellent, genuinely free, governed by a community rather than a vendor, and extensible in ways no other database matches. The more Oracle and SQL Server migrations we did, the clearer it became that this was not a side bet.

So we leaned in. We put PostgreSQL in the center of our practice and built our community work around it. Today we see ourselves less as a supplier and more as a Postgres expertise hub in the Netherlands.

Our biggest contributions are about people and knowledge, because people build code, that’s where it all starts. We are the organiser of PostgreSQL Usergroup NL. Over our ten years its membership has doubled, and with three to four meetups a year we have helped build something real: a strong, connected Dutch PostgreSQL community.

We created the Blue Elephant Pack, a not-for-profit mentoring and masterclass programme that helps experienced DBAs grow into PostgreSQL. We are now on our fourth group, and every graduate strengthens the talent pool the whole ecosystem draws from.

We also back the wider events: seven times silver sponsor of PGConf.EU and three time sponsor of PGDay Lowlands and we hosted the warmup meetup for its first two editions. When we first sponsored PGConf.EU in Warsaw in 2017, there was one Dutch talk. Today there are many strong Dutch speakers. We like to think that we have helped build that growth.

Keep Postgres at the centre, not bolted on. The winning approach is to let PostgreSQL be the place where AI and operational data already live together. With pgvector you can run similarity search and RAG workloads right next to your transactional data, with one backup and one security model instead of a separate vector store.

But the real bottleneck is rarely the model. It is the data underneath it. Most AI projects stall on messy schemas, slow queries and data nobody trusts. So the approach we push with customers is unglamorous: get your Postgres foundation healthy first. Good data modelling, sane indexing, clean pipelines.

Postgres thrives in AI by being boring in the best sense: reliable, open and extensible enough to absorb whatever comes next, instead of being replaced by it.

We have supported PGDay Lowlands since it launched, this year for the third time. Our co-founder Gerard served on the programme committee, and we hosted the warmup meetup for its first two editions. For a Postgres community in the Lowlands, having a serious conference close to home matters. Not everyone can travel across Europe, and Lowlands lowers the barrier to learning and meeting peers.

What makes it special is the mix. Strong technical talks, but also room for the people. The best moments often happen in the hallway track, over coffee, where a casual chat turns into a new collaboration, a Blue Elephant Pack member or a future colleague.

In 2026 it comes to Utrecht, and the event keeps growing in attendees and sponsors. That growth says something: the Dutch and Benelux Postgres scene is maturing, and we are proud to keep backing the day that brings it together.

The technology is in good shape. The bigger risk is everything around it. PostgreSQL keeps its lead by protecting what made it strong: community governance, a steady release cadence, and a refusal to be captured by any single vendor. The moment the roadmap starts serving one company's agenda, the trust erodes.

Second, lower the barrier to entry. Postgres is powerful but not always easy. Better defaults, clearer upgrade paths and good tooling for Kubernetes and Day 2 operations keep newcomers from drifting to managed alternatives that hide the complexity.

Third, grow the people, not just the code. Every database needs experts who can run it well in production. That is exactly why we invest in the user group and the Blue Elephant Pack. Great software with too few skilled hands behind it does not stay in the lead for long.

Open, generous, pragmatic. Open because everything is in the open: the code, the roadmap, the mailing lists, even the arguments. Nothing is hidden behind a vendor.

Generous because people give their time and knowledge freely, from core hackers to the person patiently answering a beginner's question at a meetup. We built our company on that generosity and try to pay it back.

Pragmatic because Postgres people care about what actually works in production, not hype. That show-me-it-runs attitude is exactly why we feel at home here.