Add Contributor Spotlight: Niccolo (#349)

Signed-off-by: Floor Drees <[email protected]>

Author: FloorD

content/blog/contributor-highlight-niccolo-fei/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+---
+title: "Contributor Spotlight: Niccolò Fei"
+date: 2025-08-11
+draft: false
+image:
+    url: niccolo.jpg
+    attribution:
+author: fdrees
+tags:
+ - extensions
+ - kubernetes
+ - postgresql
+ - open-source
+ - spotlight
+summary: "In a mini-series on this blog we highlight the work of the community.
+  Today we meet Niccolò Fei, Kubernetes Administrator and Automation Engineer at EDB." 
+---
+
+Building and maintaining an open source project takes a village. In a 
+mini-series on this blog we would like to highlight the work of our
+maintainers, component owners, and members of the larger community.
+
+Niccolò Fei ([niccolofei](https://github.com/niccolofei) on GitHub) is a Kubernetes Administrator and Automation Engineer 
+at EDB. Like some of the other CloudNativePG maintainers and contributors, 
+Niccolò was part of the team at 2ndQuadrant (acquired by EDB in 2020) when 
+the initial project (CNP / Cloud Native PostgreSQL) started.
+
+Niccolò made his first contribution to the CloudNativePG project in December 
+2020, when he developed a set of end-to-end (E2E) tests to verify core 
+functionalities such as configuration changes, rolling updates, switchover, 
+and synchronous replication. This initial contribution not only served as a 
+practical introduction to the project’s E2E testing suite but also offered 
+valuable insight into the fundamental principles behind CloudNativePG. To this 
+day, Niccolò considers it a great starting point for anyone looking to begin 
+contributing to the project.
+
+If he had unlimited time and skills to dedicate, Niccolò says he would focus 
+on improving support for dynamically loading PostgreSQL extensions in running 
+clusters—a feature he has recently been working on. In fact, the first 
+implementation of this capability has just been included in the [1.27.0 release 
+candidate](https://cloudnative-pg.io/releases/cloudnative-pg-1-27.0-rc1-released/)!
+
+"Looking ahead, I expect to see many additional features and refinements in 
+this area, such as support for extensions in ImageCatalogs." PostgreSQL’s 
+extensibility and adaptability are some of its greatest strengths, and this 
+new approach to managing extensions introduces meaningful improvements in 
+security, maintainability, and overall flexibility.
+
+Active in the Postgres and Kubernetes communities, Niccolò has a strong 
+interest in automation and DevOps tooling. His passion for technology began 
+early: “I’ve been fascinated by computers since childhood—mostly because of 
+video games and my love for sci-fi movies and books. Growing up, I started 
+buying and selling hardware, building PCs for myself and friends, and 
+experimenting with different Linux distributions. I always knew I wanted to 
+work in this field, so when the opportunity to work with PostgreSQL and
+ databases came along, I jumped at the chance!”
+
+Niccolò's future is almost certainly intertwined with OSS: "I will continue 
+to contribute to open source—it's a fantastic way to keep learning while 
+building things that can help others."
+
+If you wanted to get in touch with Niccolò, you can find him in the 
+CloudNativePG channels on the CNCF Slack workspace, or on [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/niccolofei.bsky.social), or [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/niccolofei/). You can follow the CloudNativePG project on [Bluesky](https://cloudnativepg.bsky.social) and [Mastodon](https://mastodon.social/@CloudNativePG) too!