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| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +title: "Contributor Spotlight: Floor Drees" |
| 3 | +date: 2025-06-26T13:51:43+02:00 |
| 4 | +draft: false |
| 5 | +image: |
| 6 | + url: floor.jpg |
| 7 | + attribution: |
| 8 | +author: jgonzalez |
| 9 | +tags: |
| 10 | + - ruby |
| 11 | + - community |
| 12 | + - kubernetes |
| 13 | + - postgresql |
| 14 | + - open-source |
| 15 | + - spotlight |
| 16 | +summary: "In a mini-series on this blog we highlight the work of the community. |
| 17 | + Today we meet Floor Drees, EDB Principal Program Manager, open source advocate, |
| 18 | + and newly minted CloudNativePG component owner." |
| 19 | +--- |
| 20 | + |
| 21 | +Building and maintaining an open source project takes a village. In a |
| 22 | +mini-series on this blog we would like to highlight the work of our |
| 23 | +maintainers, component owners, and members of the larger community. |
| 24 | + |
| 25 | +Floor Drees ([floord](https://github.com/floord) on GitHub) is a Principal Program Manager at EDB. |
| 26 | +She joined the company earlier this year, but has been active in the PostgreSQL |
| 27 | +community for several years. Day to day she works with, and in the open source |
| 28 | +community. |
| 29 | + |
| 30 | +"I must have first heard of CloudNativePG when I was still working at an EDB |
| 31 | +competitor, when they did a research of the different Kubernetes operators |
| 32 | +available." Since, she's met several of the project's maintainers at events - |
| 33 | +certainly at KubeCon Europe this April there was a high concentration of them |
| 34 | +in host city London! These days, Floor gets to work with the project's |
| 35 | +maintainers directly. |
| 36 | + |
| 37 | +My contributions to the project are mostly in communication and community. |
| 38 | +I talk to end-users and write about their use case, I find events for us to |
| 39 | +speak at, and I interview people for this series! |
| 40 | + |
| 41 | +One question we like to ask is: if you had all the time/skills/money in the |
| 42 | +world, what would you most like to change about CloudNativePG? Floor's answer |
| 43 | +is this: "I'd like to onboard more contributors to the project and make sure |
| 44 | +they feel enabled to take on more impactful roles. And also just for everyone |
| 45 | +to get a chance to meet the other members. I'm trying with the idea of |
| 46 | +organizing a contributor summit around PGDay Napoli in September, since so |
| 47 | +many of our maintainers are based in Italy anyway. |
| 48 | + |
| 49 | +What first got Floor into technology was her blog. To bend the WordPress beast |
| 50 | +to her will, she had to learn just enough PHP to copy and paste code snippets |
| 51 | +onto her ftp server. She got really into open source when she started learning |
| 52 | +Rails and Ruby. "I found a mistake in a Rails Girls guide, and when I found a |
| 53 | +solution a colleague suggested I could fix the guide so that the next person |
| 54 | +wouldn't get stuck like I did. I could help people that easily? I was hooked!" |
| 55 | + |
| 56 | +Floor has been active in the Rails (Girls) community, in DevOps, as a |
| 57 | +DevOpsDays Amsterdam organizer and DevOpsDays Core member and Co-chair, |
| 58 | +and in various open source communities. Most recently, and perhaps notably, |
| 59 | +in PostgreSQL. Floor is a PostgreSQL Code of Conduct Committee member, |
| 60 | +Diversity Committee member, and [PGDay Lowlands](https://2025.pgday.nl) organizer. |
| 61 | +Floor isn't new to the Kubernetes ecosystem either. In 2019 she helped organize |
| 62 | +the first Kubernetes Community Days, in Amsterdam. |
| 63 | + |
| 64 | +Thinking about what she wants to be or do when she grows up, Floor answers: |
| 65 | +"either I'll run a retreat for tech people in Norway, with lots of animals, |
| 66 | +or I'll head up an Open Source Program Office somewhere interesting." Or perhaps |
| 67 | +both? |
| 68 | + |
| 69 | +If you wanted to get in touch with Floor, you can find her in the |
| 70 | +CloudNativePG channels on the CNCF Slack workspace, or on [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/floord.bsky.social), |
| 71 | +[Mastodon](https://hachyderm.io/@floord), or [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/floordrees/). You can follow the CloudNativePG project on [Bluesky](https://cloudnativepg.bsky.social) and [Mastodon](https://mastodon.social/@CloudNativePG) too! |
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