re:Invent

When I first saw it the first time it seemed like a name out of place re:invent.Little did I know that I had to go all the way to las Vegas to find what that really meant.

This year I have been to AWS re:Invent for the first time. I am normally quite skeptical of symposiums where a company continuously bombards your brain for 6 hours, then you end up going out to find yourself boring the hell out between the people you don’t know or in a party with a drink in hand like in Kate Perry’s Last Friday.

Well, none of these happened in re:Invent. Actually, I’m happy to say just the opposite happened. The first day with a coffee in hand walking by the Fashion Show I have first met the great Jeff Barr that I believe is doing one of the most difficult jobs in AWS. Although it may seem very easy to most of us explaining all that complex services in a language so simple even a non-technical C-level executive can understand requires a great understanding. Which I believe that something that Jeff does great. So after a brief exchange of good mornings, I went on walking and met the most helpful folks that are indicating you the way you need to follow to get to Venetian where the registration and all other great talks would take place.

I have registered and immediately given a bottle of water which would save me from going up and down trying to find bottled water during all the talks. (Yes that's an ugly pic too, was a bad hair day)

Then was the time to start the first talks. I have been to so many I believe it would be a total loss of time to write the details on each of them except one which is more than worth mentioning. It is not worth mentioning because it was better or worse than the rest of the sessions but it is worth talking about because it took place in a place which most of you (at least I didn’t) do not know.

During re: Invent there are two tracks. One is the regular track where we get our hands dirty with hands-on labs, sessions, chalk talks, hackathons, and the other track is for the executives. This year sponsored by Accenture, Executive Summit provides another level of flow of information to director and executives. This is where directors, managers we all get together to discuss on the business side of things which again to my surprise was way different than a regular executive meeting would be. We met with so many people from all over the world, we have been to networking sessions where we had the chance to create business cases and talked about all kinds of subjects from the migration to cloud to the machine learning in retail.

One of these talks were especially important for me. The talk I have been to was a fireside chat with VP of Security Stephen Schmidt and CFO Sean Boyle. Being able to meet these talented people in person was great but the thing that really impacting was the honesty and openness they had while they were explaining their stories and the difficult times they had passed during their journey in AWS.

Was I jet-lagged during all re:Invent waking up 4 am every day and going to be at 20.00h? Yes!. Did it cost me to come back to Girona and have the biggest jet-lag of my life? Yes! Would I ever go back to re : Invent Hell Yes!

Jokes aside. There are too many things to learn, too many nice people to meet and too many experiences to gain which when watched through the computer screen loses most of its magic. So when you are thinking of joining re:Invent of next year (2–5 Dec 2019 in Las Vegas) do click that button and register yourself.

You will come back re: Invented!

See you all there next year!