The Goforeans visited the Stockholm AWS Summit event in May. The event got first-timer’s head spinning, and offered a lot of interesting topics to think about. Learn more!
Wide range of presentations
The AWS Summit in Stockholm in May was exciting and super inspiring for a first timer, to say the least. Thousands of cloud enthusiasts in the same hall listening to presentations on how AWS takes climate issues into account in its operations and how everyone can concretely monitor their own consumption and make choices for a better tomorrow. There was a wide range of presentations, from very technical ones, for example on architecture or networks, to introductory ones on monitoring and general principles.
From enormous enthusiasm to despair
As a first timer, the first thoughts before the whole event were of enormous enthusiasm, which was very quickly followed by despair when it became clear that it would of course not be possible to attend even most of the 94 sessions at the event. The event used the handy AWS events app, which allowed you to browse through the topics and presentations by topic and time, or alternatively to browse through them all and try to build up as comprehensive and unnecessarily concise a reading list as possible before the event.
The talks and presentations were divided into levels; 100 introduction, 200 intermediate and 300 advanced. My original idea was to hit the intermediate and advanced level presentations, after which the plan was to go back to refresh the basics with an introduction level talk, but unfortunately there was not enough time to attend more than the 200 and 300 level sets this time. From the presentations, it was a pleasure to see how knowledgeable the speakers were, and how much the experience and skill of the speaker contributes to the experience of the event and the presentations. Always as nice to listen to people who know what they are talking about and are clearly also full-on passionate about the subject themselves.
Way too many interesting topics
Speeches and presentations that took place in the event area, rather than in a separate enclosed space, were somewhat disappointing. With a rumoured 7000 people at the event, the noise in the high hall became so loud that it was almost impossible to follow the presentations unless you were within touching distance of the speakers. The relatively short time available and the somewhat hectic schedule did not allow for participation in everything, especially as there would have been at least a week’s worth of things to listen and learn if it had been possible to listen to and discuss anything that aroused the slightest interest. Of the presentations, I attended
- the observability strategy presentation, and
- the multi-region architecture presentation,
which got my head spinning and thoughts racing just before lunch. Lunch was followed by a sustainability session, after which we jumped into a very detailed and in-depth set of rigorous topics on Dynamo DB.
In general, the main thing to remember from the first summits is to take your time and be at the airport on time (it almost went wrong, heh), plan and look carefully at the presentations, as well as possible replacement sets if and when unexpected changes and interesting encounters occur. However, don’t expect that everything will go according to plan, but enjoy the day and a great event. You’ll be a veteran at the next one, and you’ll get even more out of the event.
Thank you to the whole cloud crew that was there to guide me on how to take over a big professional event.
Cloud people out there: we are also recruiting. Whether you are an expert in AWS, apply now as a Cloud Specialist and join in our Cloud Crew!
