Gwen Shapira

Gwen Shapira, founder of Nile and a database expert with a background at Confluent, dives into the complexities of multi-tenant databases. She discusses the challenges of implementing Distributed DDL at scale and the transition from big tech to startup life. Gwen touches on AI's role in project management and the balance between human intuition and automation. The conversation highlights the advantages of Postgres over NoSQL, the importance of data isolation in AI applications, and the synergy between LLMs and traditional machine learning techniques.

Gwen Shapira, co-founder and CPO of Nile, is a notable force in the PostgreSQL world after leading Kafka development at Confluent. She shares her journey from cloud-native technologies to the PostgreSQL community, highlighting its vibrant evolution. Interesting discussions include PostgreSQL 17's new features, the integration of vector embeddings for AI applications, and the importance of SSL for secure connections. Gwen also explores how PostgreSQL supports diverse SaaS applications, emphasizing its flexibility and scalability.

Gwen Shapira discusses transitioning open-source projects to SaaS offerings with Kubernetes. She shares insights on managing databases for major organizations and the challenges of running stateful services on Kubernetes. The conversation covers her software journey, platform engineering expertise, early experiences with Kubernetes at Confluent, managing stateful workloads, and the future impact of Kubernetes in the tech industry.