What members take home depends on what they run. Here it is, role by role, followed by plain answers to the questions people ask first.
What members take home
A bench on your engine
Peers who run your engine at your scale, reachable within 48 hours. Post-mortems to learn from before you need them. Runbooks and reference designs written by practitioners, not vendors. A name the leaders in your sector recognise.
Designs three years on
Honest accounts of how other estates chose between engines, managed and self-managed, warehouse and lakehouse, and what it really cost. Peers who will review your design before production does.
The numbers left in
A room of peers who share what decisions cost. The benchmark that answers “is that normal?”. The evidence other centers used to win platform ownership. A view of the engineers who will run your estate next.
Before you reply: the questions people ask first
Is this a sales funnel with better manners?
No, and the charter is written so that you can prove it. Rule 1 forbids any approach that references the club, by fsyncDATA, MinervaDB or ChistaDATA. A breach is published to every member by a council we do not sit on, and the council may dissolve the club.
I am a DBA, not a CDO. Is this for me?
Yes. The Guilds exist for the people who run production. You are admitted for what you run, not for your title.
My engine is not listed.
Tell the secretariat. A new guild opens when twenty members ask for it and two agree to steward it.
We run everything on RDS, Azure SQL or BigQuery.
Managed services sit with the guild of the engine underneath them, and the Cloud Warehouse and Lakehouse Guild covers Redshift, BigQuery, Snowflake and Databricks.
I cannot share our numbers.
Then bring the problem without them and listen. Under Chatham House, what is said may be used and who said it may not; the one-strike rule protects the people who do share.
Will my employer object?
Membership is personal and nothing that identifies you or your company leaves the club. Nothing said inside is presented outside it.
How much time does it take?
About fifteen hours a year for a guild member and thirty for a Circle member. The contribution rule asks for one session, post-mortem, benchmark response or considered answer a year.
What does it cost, now and later?
Nothing, and there is no premium tier coming. fsyncDATA funds the secretariat, venues and hospitality, and the charter forbids sponsors.
I work for a database vendor or a consultancy.
You are welcome to speak at the open conferences, but not to join. The club is for the people who own and run estates.
Can I see it before I commit?
Yes. Founding Circle invitees may attend the November 2026 session as guests. Guild applicants admitted before then attend their guild’s first session.
What if someone belongs here more than I do?
Nominate them. The council treats a nomination from a person who could have taken the seat as the strongest recommendation there is.
Every message to the secretariat is answered by a person within two working days.
Apply, ask, or nominate someone better
Practitioners apply to a Guild. Leaders request a Circle invitation. Anyone may nominate a peer. Every message to the secretariat is answered by a person within two working days.