Coinbase at AWS re:Invent 2018
The AWS re:Invent conference is coming to Las Vegas the week of November 26–30, and Coinbase is representing! Our incredible Product and Engineering team members will be speaking about site reliability, scaling our blockchain infrastructure, teaching about cryptocurrencies, and co-hosting a Happy Hour with our AWS friends. Come and join us!
AWS re:Invent is the annual Amazon Web Services (AWS) learning conference in Las Vegas that attracts developers, system administrators, architects, and technical decision makers from all over the cloud computing world. Last year, they had an estimated attendance of 43,000 and succeeded in taking over most of the famous Las Vegas Strip. This year, re:Invent is anticipated to set new records, and the Coinbase team is proud to be contributing to the learning aspect of the conference, as well as facilitating some after-hours mingling time with our fellow attendees.
Coinbase has a special relationship with Amazon on a few levels. First, AWS powers almost all of Coinbase’s infrastructure, from storage, databases, analytics, you name it. Second, our VP of Engineering, Tim Wagner, recently came to us from Amazon, where he was the General Manager of AWS Lambda and a pioneer of serverless computing. We are incredibly lucky to have him lead and grow our world-class Engineering team. Third, we are on a mission to build an open financial system for the world and with that, bring the utility of blockchain and digital currencies to the masses.
Back when Web 1.0 was just taking off, there were folks who were still unsure about the promise of telecommuting workers or even buying stuff over a network, and Amazon was there to pave the way. I was consulting at a hot young start-up called AltaVista, developing new, innovative consumer-focused features: integrating product search into web search results and building streaming music samples into product pages. This was before people were sure that buying things over a distributed network wasn’t just a passing fad. A marketing exec walked to my desk, slapped some papers down, and said, “I want you to make it look exactly like this!” He had printed out several pages from a site called Amazon.com, Earth’s Biggest Bookstore. Wow. It was forward-thinking and visionary for its time. Amazon really believed in that promise. The art of up-selling and cross-selling on the web, reproducing what customers might experience in a brick and mortar shop, and “ease of use” came from companies like Amazon. They were dead serious about this “buying stuff over a network” thing! Later on, Amazon took it to whole new level with AWS, by commoditizing compute power and enabling companies to focus on their core businesses. There are but a few companies from Web 1.0 that weathered the booms and busts and have gone on to reinforce the foundations on which Web 1.0 and 2.0 are built.
Coinbase will be the one that weathers the booms and busts of Web 3.0. We believe, just like Amazon believed. As a company that has grown from 250 employees to over 600 this past year, we are in it for the long haul. Our engineers and product managers are excited about sharing stories from the trenches, our lessons learned, and talking shop about blockchain, crypto, and decentralized applications with fellow technologists who want to come along for the ride.
Conference Events
If you are attending the conference, or watching from the comfort of your home or office over Twitch, please tune in for the following sessions by our talented colleagues:
- Niall O’Higgins, Engineering Manager of the Coinbase Site Reliability Engineering team, will be co-presenting with Datadog on building processes and adopting practices that helped scale our SRE group during hyper growth. Tuesday 11/27, 11:30 am — 12:30 pm, Aria West, Level 3, Juniper 1
- Graham Jensen, Technical Lead on the Coinbase Infrastructure team, will be recording a video with the AWS Step Functions team on how Coinbase uses Step Functions to coordinate serverless workflows. Tuesday 11/27, 1:45 pm — 2:45 pm, Expo, Scamall Theater
- Kristen Stone, Product Manager of the Coinbase Cryptocurrency Payments team, and Jake Craige, the team’s Technical Lead, will be holding a Cryptocurrency 101 & 201 breakout session to discuss the evolution of blockchain, its impact on our day-to-day lives, a deep dive into the inner workings of the tech, and what’s on the horizon. Wednesday 11/28, 4–5 pm, Startup Central @ The Aria
- Coinbase Crypto Happy Hour will be hosted at The Aria, right after our Crypto 101 & 201 session and is sponsored by AWS, Coinbase Engineering, and Coinbase Recruiting. Please come join us for hor d’oeuvres and a fully hosted bar! Wednesday 11/28, 5–6 pm at Startup Central @ The Aria
- Jack Kearney, Senior Software Engineer from the Coinbase Custody team, will be sharing how Coinbase builds out its blockchain infrastructure in a way that allows other teams to use blockchain nodes as a service. Thursday 11/29, 11 — noon, Startup Central @ The Aria
We look forward to seeing you at re:Invent! For the latest news and updates, follow us on Twitter @Coinbase, or like us on Facebook. Interested in learning more about opportunities at Coinbase? Check out our careers page. We saved a seat for you!
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