Tibs

Product Advocate, Aiven

Based in Cambridge, UK

Tibs has spent most of their career as a software developer, working in digital mapping, embedded Linux, and backend cloud services. At the start of 2022, they moved to Aiven and Developer Relations. They've been working with data transfer technologies since the days of magnetic tape, contributed to data transfer standards in the 1990s, and now get paid to play with technologies like Apache Kafka®. They have attended PyCon UK since its inception, and served as a long time organiser for the Cambridge Python User Group. Pronouns are they/them or he/him.

Superpowers

  • Python
  • C
  • Ruby
  • Text markup
  • Vale
  • Sphinx
  • PostgreSQL
  • OpenSearch
  • Kafka
  • Terraform
  • Backup
  • FLOSS licensing

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Speaking activities

Past

  • PyCon UK 2025

    Type text, find pictures: an app using CLIP, PostgreSQL® and pgvector

    What would once have been magical is now becoming common place.

    In this talk, I'll show how to write a Python app that takes a text snippet (like "cat" or "man jumping") and finds images that match.


    Sep 19, 2025 - Sep 22, 2025

  • EuroPython 2025

    Explaining the 5 types of database and how to choose between them

    What database should you choose? Worse, what kind of database should you choose?

    My aim is to give you enough information to make that choice, or at least be aware of what the alternatives are.

    • Link to the video of the talk coming soon
    • Find the slides on Aiven Labs

    Jul 14, 2025 - Jul 20, 2025

  • EuroPython 2024

    How I used pgvector and PostgreSQL® to find pictures of me at a party

    Join Tibs at EuroPython in Prague for their session "How I used pgvector and PostgreSQL® to find pictures of me at a party" and have some fun!

    - Watch the video of the talk

    - Find the slides and source code on Aiven Labs

    Jul 8, 2024 - Jul 14, 2024

  • Techsylvania

    Preparing and Using Data for AI with LangChain and OpenSearch®

    A version of this workshop, specifically created for Techsylvania, which took place in Romania, June 2024.

    - Watch the video

    - Find the workshop materials on Aiven Labs

    Jun 26, 2024 - Jun 27, 2024

  • NDC Oslo 2024

    Building a movie recommendation system with TensorFlow and pgvector

    Come build a movie recommendation system from start to finish, utilizing NodeJS, TensorFlow, and PostgreSQL’s extension pgvector.

    - Find the workshop materials on Aiven Labs

    Jun 10, 2024 - Jun 14, 2024

  • NDC London 2024

    Building a movie recommendation system with Tensorflow and PGVector

    Come build a movie recommendation system from start to finish, utilizing NodeJS, TensorFlow, and PostgreSQL’s extension PGVector.

    - Find the workshop materials on Aiven Labs

    Jan 29, 2024 - Feb 2, 2024

  • PyCon UK 2023

    How I used PostgreSQL® to find pictures of me at a party

    At an event, a photographer can take many photos. Which ones do you appear in? Find out how to search for faces using Python, OpenCV, OpenAI and, yes, PostgreSQL®.

    Python ties it all together, and PostgreSQL's pgvector extension allows making SQL queries to find photos with my face.

    - Find the slides and source code on Aiven Labs

    - Watch the video of the talk

    Sep 22, 2023 - Sep 25, 2023

  • EuroPython 2023

    Fish and Chips and Apache Kafka®

    Apache Kafka® is the de facto standard in the data streaming world for sending messages from multiple producers to multiple consumers, in a fast, reliable and scalable manner.

    Learn the basic concepts and how to use it, by modelling a traditional British fish and chips shop!

    - Find the slides and demo code on Aiven Labs

    - Watch the video (please note the corrections in the text below the video)


    Jul 17, 2023 - Jul 23, 2023

  • Write the Docs Prague 2022

    Beyond spellchecking - what else can we check automatically?

    Writing documentation is hard, and spotting errors in that documentation is harder. Learn some of the techniques we can use in a docs-as-code approach to "lint" text automatically.

    - Watch the recording

    - Slides & notes

    Sep 11, 2022 - Sep 13, 2022

Blogs by Tibs