My Experience at AWS re:Invent 2024

Summary

• What: AWS re:Invent
• When: 2nd - 6th December 2024
• Where: Las Vegas
• Why: Investing in my skills as a developer

Five days, up to 60,000 people, over 3000 speakers, 5 hotels dedicated for content. One life changing event.

I had the immense privilege of attending one of the biggest conferences in the technology industry, AWS re:Invent 2024.

I left inspired, overloaded, feeling completely out of my depth, and amazed at what can be achieved with AWS services.

However, I do wish I had some tips on what to expect from this event. And that is what I will try and achieve with this post - advice to my former self.

Who is my former self?

• First time at AWS re:Invent
• First time to a technology conference
• Little AWS experience

What is AWS?

Simply put, Amazon Web Services or AWS is a cloud service. They offer hundreds of services around compute, storage, databases, machine learning, and the list goes on.

For example, Amazon S3 is one of their first services launched back in 2006. S3 offers object storage.

My AWS Experience and Focus for the Conference

For my job, we use AWS, but I’m not working our infrastructure day-to-day. I am a developer and I mainly contribute to writing code.

My only experience with AWS is playing around with the console, creating random S3 buckets and spawning an EC2 instance, only to focus on ssh’ing into the server to practice system admin and linux skills.

You can say I have very little exposure to AWS coming into this event. You could even call me a complete beginner.

Despite this, I expect to be pushed outside my comfort zone with this conference.

I’m going to feel out of my depth. There will be people working for large companies, on very complex and important problems. On top of this, there will be very smart individuals, much smarter than I am. And that’s okay, I’m there to learn.

Great advice given by a previous mentor is to be a generalist. It’s time to take the blinkers off. Instead of focusing on code, I’ll be diving into the world of devops. In doing so, I hope to become more of a complete developer.

On top of this, re:Invent is a good oppourtunity for me to meet people in the technology sector. This is probably the only oppourtunity where I am going to see so many people who are in the technology realm.

The rules:

• It I’m waiting in line, I’ll introduce myself to anyone in queues.
• If I’m going to have a meal, I’ll try and sit with a stranger and get to know them.
• If I’m on the shuttle bus, I’ll talk to the person I’m sitting next to.
• If I’m sitting down watching a talk or taking a lab, I’ll say hello to whomever is sitting next to me.

Planning

I was overwhelmed with not on the conference but with Las Vegas itself. I had no guidance going in and it’s always going to feel like you’re “missing” oppourtunities.

For that, I wouldn’t fret. Forgive yourself and do the best you can. There is always next time.

That being said, I’m hoping this post will provide some head start to anyone who reads this.

An aside, Las Vegas is very dry. Take a water bottle, moisteriser for you skin and carry around some lip balm.

On top of this, buying things on the strip is expensive and everyone costs - even water. So, just be prepared.

Booking the Conference

You can book the conference through the AWS Events portal dedicated to the re:Invent conference.

Through this portal, you can also book accommodation on the Las Vegas Strip at a bonus rate.

Where to Stay?

There are plenty of hotels to stay on the Las Vegas Strip. I opted to stay at the Mandalay Bay, which is at the south end of the strip and also one of the five hotels hosting content. This is the reason I chose to stay here as well as charging a reasonable rate.

At the time, I arrived I thought it would have been better to stay at the Venetian, since this is where the keynotes took place as well as the Expo hall. But now when writing this, I think it was fine to book the Mandalay Bay. There is frequent transport between hotel venues (via the free and continuous shuttle).

Events App

About a month before the actual conference, there is the ability to book events using their own AWS Events app.

There are thousands of talks to choose from. The app offers comprehensive filters to search by experience level, topics, location, content type.

Content types can range from talks, to workshops, chalk talks, and builder sessions.

You might see that most of the events are fully reserved. This doesn’t mean that the event is completely full.

This isn’t official information, but theories circulating around mention that only a portion of totals seats are reserved. Some seats are for ‘walk-ins’. If some of the reserved members don’t turn up within 10 minutes of the event starting, then their seats are released to those in the walk-in category.

The only downside is that you will to need queue early for an event depending its popularity. If you are near the end of the queue, then there is chance that they will run out of seats. This did happen to me on a few occasions.

Arriving in Las Vegas and the First Weekend

Not only is this my first technology conference, this is also my first time in Las Vegas. I made the effort to travel the weekend before to do some exploring and tourist things.

I landed Friday afternoon, 29th November. I met with some other conference-goers at Harry Reid Airport and took to the taxi to my accommodation, Mandalay Bay.

As soon as I checked in, I walked down the Las Vegas strip. It was bustling to say the least.

Also, in the weekend I made the effort to visit the Grand Canyon, and Hoover Dam.

I finished Satuday evening with Michael Jackson ONE, which was the show for the Manadalay Bay. A spectacular watch.

My colleague arrived Satuday night, but we caught up on Sunday, where we spent time with resident colleagues of Las Vegas (we work with people who a resident to Las Vegas but aren’t involved in this conference).

We also headed to the Venetian to pick up our badges and some free merchandise. We also got a taste of what’s to come!

The Conference

Monday 2nd December

Remember, how I am a complete AWS noob? I took the oppourtunity of take the “Tech Essentials” bootcamp.

A day long event, the goal was to take you from zero knowlegdge to having some bearing of AWS.

I found it extremely useful. A speaker would give a short talk (for example, explaining AWS Identity and Access Management), followed by a self-directed lab exercise.

Other friendly AWS staff were available to provide help and answer questions while working through the labs. They were also happy to provide tips for the conference. One individual mentioned the idea to head to the Expo hall, where they have AWS solution architects (experts in the area of AWS) and whiteboards so you can talk over specific problems.

We also covered other topics like EC2, databases, storage.

A highlight was when the speaker sat with me through a problem (apparently, there was part of the lab that wasn’t very clear - it involved deploying an application). We eventually got the deployment working and celebrating seeing out start up going live for the first time.

Tuesday 3rd December

In the morning was the keynote speech given by the AWS CEO, Matt Garmen. This is where most of the announcements on new technologies would be made discussing the objective and direction of the company. Since I am new to AWS, I didn’t find this talk as useful as compared to someone else who is on the bleeding edge of AWS technologes.

But I did like what Garmen had to say in the end: “We invent so you can re-invent”.

I didn’t go to the Venetian to watch this live, instead I watched this from the Content Hub at Mandalay Bay. More on the Content Hub.

After the talk, I metup with someone from the AWS team. Because the company I work uses AWS, we are known as AWS customers. AWS customers are assigned an account manager and this person I was meeting is the leader to our account manager.

Admittedly, we haven’t been keeping good touch with the AWS team. And I had no idea what an account manager was before meeting up with this individuals. However, after this meeting, I had a good grasp of how the AWS account manager can help us.

For example, if you have a questions about setting up your AWS services, the account manager has access to a solutions architect (experts in AWS) to walk your through the process. The bonus is that this does not incur any extra charge.

Afte this, went to some talks about. One related to S3 and another related to setting up infrastructure in China, which has its own challenges.

At the end of this day, there are many “after-party” like events thrown. Usually, emails are sent requiring RVSP to an invitation. There is also an community-created events page to keep track of these parties (I don’t know this link, but a search on the web might help?).

One after-party that my colleague and I attended was Topgolf with others from the Australia and New Zealand region.

I met an individual from Wellington, who was wearing golden jacket. If you complete all the AWS certifications, you receive a golden jacket. On questioning, it took this individual 7 years to complete.

Wednesday 4th December

At the Content Hub, I took part in an interesting event in the morning. It involved simulating a C-suite “war room” for a business. You are in a group of random inviduals and you make decisions for a company like a C-suite would. Based on these decisions, you would get a score on how well the business is doing.

The example we were given was navigating technical debt. Choices we had to make where hiring an external team to help build features while the development team focuses on reducing debt; do we create policies around handling technical debt; do we communicate this throughout the company; should we integrate continuous improvement into our workflow, so we can reduce technical debt as we work?

This was quite different to how I do my job, where I’m focusing on code. In this exercise, I’m thinking at a more strategic level. On top of this, I was communicating with strangers at the conference, further getting outside my comfort zone.

In the afternoon, I ventured to Venetian and wondered around the Expo hall. The Expo hall is a giagantic space with plenty of activity. Companies had booths set up to promite their business - and give a way a lot free socks.

AWS staff were also around. Remember on day one when I was given advice to talk to the people with the whiteboards. That’s what I did.

At the center of the Expo hall, there were experts for every topic in AWS. Whiteboards set up for databases, one for storage, one for compute and so on. We would diagram the application at work and they would offer improvements and “how-to-dos”.

At the end of the evening, I missed out on the after-party events because most were too full. So, I took some time for myself and went to local dance studio and did a lesson in Salsa.

Content Hub

Each hotel that was hosted content had a Content Hub. This acted as a centralised area where you can watch different talks (there were headsets for a particular talk). On top of this, there was Peer talks (where you can have group chats or one-on-ones with other people). Finally, there were computers present for self-directed learning.

One discovery I made was AWS Skill Builder, where during week of the conference, attendees had free access. AWS Skill Builder offers a collection of hands-on courses, where you can learn particular AWS technology. I thought this would be useful if you want to play around with a particular technology without having to commit to entire course programme.

Thursday 5th December

Everyday at re:Invent there is a keynote. On Tuesday, the CEO gave their keynote as you recall. Most of the keynotes, though presented well, they are presenting to the press (that’s my opinion, anyway). However, the keynote for this morning would be different.

This talk was given by the Amazon.com, Chief Technology Officer, Dr Werner Vogels.

This was a highly anticipated talk for me. I made the attempt to leave my accommodation early, at about 6:30am, again travelling to the Venetian, where all keynotes took place.

After a quick breakfast, at about 7:15am, with about 6,000 people I queued outside the venue hall. 8:00am doors open.

As I was walking in, my hair raises and eyes water. It’s now I realise: I’m can’t believe I’m here; I am so grateful to be here.

A four string quartet are playing live as we are directed to our seats, and they continue to play while we all eagerly wait for the distinguished CTO to make his appearance.

The lights go dark, then a theatrical trailer begins to play.

Aside from this dramatic appreciation, I found this talk highly motivational.

Vogels discussed stragegies for reducing complexity in systems, which is a topic my old mentor and I had had in the past.

Announcements like distributed relational databases and how the technology behind this works was also discussed.

After being wow’d by this talk, I met up with my colleague and we explored the Expo hall even further.

At the end of the night, there was a fun activity planned for all attendees of the conference. This was AWS re:Play. They had an open bar, a skating rink, a low sensory zone; however, the major highlight for myself and my colleague was the concert. They had two artists: Weezer and Zedd.

Friday 6th December

The re:Play party finished late so that warranted a slight sleep in. There were some good talks and tutorials in the morning. This included: a tutorial on distributed SQL databases, and using terraform for deploys. Sadly, these were fully booked and I even missed out on the walk in.

This is no problem as I can always look into these topics later on.

So I spent the rest of Friday morning play around with the AWS Skill builder as discussed before, while also talking to other conference goers.

The conference was officially over at lunchtime and since this was my last night in Las Vegas, my colleague and I made our way to Freemont Street (and officially being in Las Vegas).

The next morning was my exit out of Las Vegas. I checked out and fly out to Los Angeles, where I’d make my trip back home to New Zealand.

Fun fact: when I was flying from Auckland to Palmerston North, I was sitting next to a lady who is a scrum master, she was well versed in AWS and I was able to talk about my conference to her.

Reflections

The level of gratitude to have my company sponsor my trip to AWS re:Invent in inmeasurable. I feel loved, because instead of viewing software development as a cost, it’s viewed as something worth investing in - like this conference.

I’m hoping to bring back some value into the business for going. The biggest thing is being inspired to learn AWS so I can use it better in the company that I work for.

I really hope that my AWS skills will improve and I will be able to take more in the next time I go.

My lead asked me about how the conference was and I mentioned that I left inspired. He told me to never underestimate inspiration. So, we can say this conference was a great success! A significant highlight of 2024 and probably in my life.

Finally, I want to end by saying how hard the AWS events staff worked. They were friendly despite working very long hours.

I hope you found this useful and you can always get in touch with me if you had any questions.