Introduction
I had the privilege of attending AWS re:Invent 2023 in Las Vegas as an AWS Ambassador and employee of AWS Partner, CyberCX. This was an invaluable experience over the 4.5 days that the convention took place and I would like to share my journey through this fantastic event including key takeaways and tips for future events.
Day 1 — Monday 27th November 2023
First day in started off with badge collection which is required to get past security checkpoints and to enter any of the venues. Being unfamiliar with the area and re:Invent in general (first time attending re:Invent), it took me a while to get started but once I was able to enter the Venetian Expo (where the keynotes and many events are held) it was easy. The clear signage and many helpful guides that were easily identifiable in uniform made the whole experience a lot easier to navigate than one would expect from a packed city like Las Vegas.
After a quick breakfast at the meal hall, I went off to my first session which was Building cost-optimized multi-tenant SaaS architectures. Luckily I was able to reserve this session beforehand to get a seat which can be quite difficult as they tend to fill up quick. This was an informative session that would set the scene for follow up activities around the topic of SaaS and application modernization techniques in AWS. Key takeaways from this talk for me were optimizing EKS compute costs with Karpenter and to implement tiering for tenants to match their revenue and utilization. These techniques are now already being used for one of our clients that has a SaaS solution. Another session I attended that day was a walkthrough on AWS Hub and Spoke Architecture with an Inspection VPC — Terraform which was very similar to something I’ve blogged about in the past — Multi-pipeline solution for VPCs with AWS transit gateway. The major difference being that my solution is written in CDK as opposed to Terraform so it was cool to see it being done in another IaC tool. Other sessions were difficult to get in without reservations beforehand so I went to one of the ‘content hubs’ which are located in each major venue to livestream many of the sessions.
Later on I got the chance to meet and mingle with many of the other AWS ambassadors which is featured in the first photo (above) in this post.
In the evening, I attended an event put up by another AWS partner we work with, nOps. This is a tool we use for conducting well architected reviews which speeds up the process and we have also started to use the FinOps capabilities of the tool with a few of our clients to optimize their AWS cloud costs. I would recommend attending these so called ‘after-parties’ at future re:Invents as they are a great chance to network and expand on all sorts of opportunities in all things AWS.
Day 2 — Tuesday
I started off this day attending the CEO Keynote with Adam Selipsky. Unfortunately due to the popularity of the keynote, I wasn’t able to get into the live venue but there were many overflow venues of which I was easily able to get into one. I found that the theme of this keynote and going forward from here in general to be very heavily based around Generative AI. The key takeaways for me that I will be able to look into utilizing in my day-to-day work were the announcement of Amazon Q, S3 Express One Zone and more insight into Amazon CodeWhisperer. I’ve already started to use CodeWhisperer and have found it quite useful in generating suggestions in VSCode for CDK code and have reduced the need to manually check the CDK API as frequently. I haven’t found Amazon Q to be quite to the level of utility of CodeWhisperer but it is still in preview mode so I’m hopeful that it can only improve.
I spent much of the rest of the day walking through the Expo where many AWS partners/vendors are showcasing their products as well as AWS showcasing native solutions. The key takeaway I got from this (apart from the free swag) was to form contacts with a number of vendors that could provide our clients with improved solutions to fit their needs.
Later in the day, I helped out at the AWS APN booth (in the expo) to answer any questions the general public might have on all things AWS followed by an AWS Ambassador meetup event later in the evening at Beer Park. I was very appreciative of the effort put into hosting these amazing activities by the Ambassador committee and I hope to attend more of such events in the future.
Day 3 — Wednesday
I started this day off very early to take part in the 5km run at around 6am which I completed in my recently obtained Golden Jacket. This was a fantastic event and was a good opportunity to burn the excess calories gained in the meal halls!
Later on I attended another keynote, this time with Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian which I was able to get into without having to go to the overflow area! With my experience in GenAI being limited, the key takeaway I got from this was the demonstration of Bedrock, in particular the announcement of PartyRock which is powered by Bedrock. PartyRock is an app building tool which showcases the utility of Amazon Bedrock. After having a go at this myself, I generated an app which suggests holiday locations based on destination and interests due to being quite new to the USA. After entering in some details it promptly generated a number of great suggestions on national parks based on an input of ‘natural attractions’ which I found quite impressive!
Later on for lunch, we (myself and my CyberCX colleagues who are also AWS ambassadors) met with an AWS SaaS Factory team member to discuss our increased involvement in SaaS based solutions going forward. In particular we are planning to obtain the SaaS Competency soon which will allow us to increase our SaaS capability.
In the afternoon, I attended the Partner Keynote with Dr. Ruba Borno. This was an informative keynote featuring several AWS Partner success stories which I found quite inspirational. The announcement of SaaS Quick Launch for AWS Marketplace was also a key takeaway for me which will make it easy to implement several marketplace solutions which we are using for our clients.
Day 4 — Thursday
Starting to wind down now on the last (full) day of re:Invent, I spent much of the day again at the expo to find any solutions which could be of use to our clients.
For lunch, we met with someone from the AWS Cross Specialization team who has been running workshops with us and other partners on migration and modernisation techniques. This was a good chance to ask any questions we had on any of these techniques as well as talk more on the journey to SaaS competency.
This was the last chance to check out the rec center so we headed down to Mandalay Bay where this was held and had fun with play areas for American football, soccer, table tennis, basketball and Lego.
In the evening, I attended the re:play event which is the final after party for all re:Invent attendees which was a very well organized event with many activities and musical performances.
Day 5 — Friday 1st December 2023
Being the last actual day of re:Invent (half-day) I had time to attend two sessions. The first was SaaS architecture pitfalls: Lessons from the field which was a great talk on important things to consider when implementing a SaaS architecture. One key takeaway I got from this session is to utilize feature flagging more in the testing of SaaS solutions as this can be used to efficiently and effectively test features which vary between different tiers in the solution.
The other session I attended was a workshop on AWS Amplify. Having not used this before for any customer solutions, this was a good chance for me to familiarize myself with the service. I was impressed by how easy and quick it was to write some backend code to then issue CRUD statements to DynamoDB for a full-fledged dynamic website.
Conclusion
AWS re:Invent 2023 was a fantastic event that was very well organized and I believe I got a lot out of it and made use of my time quite well. If I were to attend again I would try to focus more on networking opportunities in particular ‘PeerTalk’ which is an area where you can schedule 1:1 sessions with other re:Invent attendees. I would be keen to go in person again in 2024 but if I’m not able to then I am still looking forward to all the sessions and announcements which can be live streamed or viewed later on demand.
Tips for next time
- Ask any of the guides for help whenever you are stuck for directions etc… they are all quite friendly :)
- Try to reserve any of the sessions/talks which you are really interested in attending in person as the seats can fill up quick
- If you are unable to get a seat in person to a session then check the content hub in the closest venue as this provides overflow to livestream many of the popular sessions
- Network with your fellow AWS professionals whenever you get the chance to at the meal halls/waiting in line for sessions etc… as this is a great chance for interesting conversations and opportunities
- Attend any after parties you are invited to or RSVP for the ones open to all attendees as again, this can open many doors
- Arrive early to keynotes if you want to get a seat in person or otherwise don’t worry too much as there are plenty of overflow areas
- Many sessions are recorded and available to view on-demand so if you have a clash with a good networking opportunity for example, this should take precedence
- Fully explore the expo to look for solutions that can help your stakeholders
- This event is a good chance to meet any of your international contacts that are also attending who you might otherwise not get a chance to meet
