Speaker photo for Magali Milbergue

Interview with Magali Milbergue

Talks

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Could you briefly introduce yourself?

My name is Magali, I am a 35 year old French woman that used to be a social worker and now is a tech worker. I am a dev, freelancing these days, and I also teach code, mostly in bootcamps to people that want to switch careers.

Have you enjoyed previous PostgreSQL Europe conferences, either as an attendee or as a speaker?

This will be my first PostgreSQL event, both as a speaker and as an attendee but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it !

What will your talk be about, exactly? Why this topic?

As a social worker I was educated on many subjects like sociology, psychology, history and I kept learning about it because it interested me. I’ve been a feminist since I was a kid and I believe in social justice and try to be a good ally to other people with other oppression axes. Being a woman, LGBTQIA+, neurodivergent, disabled and fat, I feel like our industry could be better in how we include people that don’t have the typical profile/background. That is why I’ve decided to try to change our industry by talking about diversity and inclusion at tech events. I’ve been super surprised by how much people want to hear about it and I’ve been very lucky to be selected to many great event this past year.

Basically, I’m going this is what I’m going to talk about in my session. I’ll argue that non-technical talks are vital to our tech events and to our industry in general. I’m going to try to advocate for more education on sociology, psychology, history for us tech workers. Because I believe it is a mistake to think that our work is neutral and totally removed from any sociological, psychological, historical context.

What is the audience for your talk?

Anyone working in tech.

What existing knowledge should the attendee have?

There is no existing knowledge to be had to understand my talk. We’ll work together on understanding the notions I want us to talk about. Also, this talk is about the need to educate our industry on those subjects, it is not a sociology, psychology, history course. We will see examples and have a kind of introduction to those fields but it will be done in a way anyone can understand.

Which other talk at this year’s conference would you like to see?

As a kind of outsider of the PostgreSQL community I’m very interested by the talk “The PostgreSQL Appeal: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Communications” by Eliza Bennett. I’m also very interested in Sara Haïm-Lubczanski’s talk “Documentation : Let’s make it better, now, together!”

I’m honestly very interested in all the talks in this conference. I’m really excited to be there. This will be the first time I’ll attend an event where there is more women speaking than men. The main track presenting only women was a huge surprise to me. I can’t wait.