AWS re:Invent 2017 Day 1: Build AWS Skills Through Community

re:Invent Day 1: A Community Perspective

For me, AWS re:Invent day 1 was about community. Mark Nunnikhoven, Vice President, Cloud Research at TrendMicro, tweeted “Connecting & reconnecting is what this week is all about!” I couldn’t agree more.
Community is essential at Cloud Academy. We hear from customers across multiple channels, and user groups are especially important for understanding how developers and teams are using the cloud and for insight on the challenges they’re facing.

Following the amazing Midnight Madness kick-off on Sunday, my first re:Invent 2017 sessions were part of the Developer Community Day. This included six sessions from the AWS User Group community who shared technical insight and best practices from their first-hand experiences building community in the world of AWS.

Here are some highlights—including some enterprise takeaways—from the sessions I attended:

Build AWS Skills Through Community-Led User Groups: Ian Massingham, AWS Technical Evangelism Leader, coordinated this panel discussion of AWS User Group organizers from Buenos Aires, Dublin, San Francisco, and Thailand:

• Sebastian Montini, Engineering Manager, Medallia and AWS User Group organizer in Buenos Aires – Argentina – AWS en Espanol Online Meetup
• Kittaya Kanchanobhas, Assistant to Managing Director, DailiTech and AWS User Group organizer in Thailand
• Jason Ó Conaill, International Director, AWS User Group and AWS User Group organizer in Dublin
• John Varghese, Cloud Steward, Intuit and AWS User Group organizer in San Francisco

A great takeaway here was the value that companies can bring to the larger user group community. User groups are a great way for companies to showcase what they do, and they can also be a forum for sharing challenges and getting support from AWS and a larger network of experts. At user groups, companies can share different approaches for the projects they’re working on with a diverse audience, and it’s a great way to road-test ideas.

The Open Guide to AWS: A GitHub-Based Resource for Practitioners: This was a very informative session about the creation and management of one of the most popular, extensive, and non-Amazon resources available for AWS. The panelists included:

• Joshua Levy, Entrepreneur, Open Guide to AWS
• Thanos Baskous, Chief Architect, Blackstone
• Corey Quinn, Editor, Last Week in AWS
• Manish Pandit, Director of Engineering, Marqeta

The Open Guide to Amazon Web Services is community at its best. It is a living reference of practical information, tips, and how-tos for AWS services in the form of a written guide on GitHub (with over 100 contributors) and a large Slack group. It was a great opportunity to hear from some of the project’s leaders and experts about their strategies for building and maintaining a healthy and helpful community of more than 200,000 readers. Their insight on creating a shared resource—from how to foster community, down to their editorial process—is a great blueprint for enterprises who want to create a similar knowledge sharing hub for their tech and project teams.



That’s all for now. Watch this space for more updates from re:Invent 2017!