Thoughts on AWS reInvent 2022

It's been over a month since re:Invent ended, and between the holidays and work, it took me awhile to get my thoughts down on paper. If you attended, let me know what you think.

re:Invent Impressions

AWS re:Invent was an incredibly big event... even if it was too big of an event if I am being honest. It lasted 5 days at 6 hotels spread over 4 miles - From Encore to Mandalay Bay Convention Center - with over 2,000 sessions and 50,000 attendees. Martin Garrix Played at re:Play, and they had a room dedicated to lounging, games, and streaming the World Cup. There was food, games, drinks, parties, afterparties, secret parties, music, and resembled a festival more than an business conference. But, personally, that wasn't one of the reasons I wanted to go.

One of the reasons I wanted to go in-person was to network, but I found it largely unsuccessful and required more work than I anticipated through the app. However, it wasn't a total loss because one of my coworkers and I were able to chat with some people over dinner about the differences in operation between a corporate environment and a startup. One of the reasons I found it absolutely worth the flight was to see tech demos and get an overall orientation of where the industry is currently at. For example, I received a demo on feature flags from LaunchDarkly that really demonstrated their usefulness, flexibility, and added value. Some of the other perks were some cool swag and free food and drinks.

re:Invent Sessions

I had some unexpectedly meaningful sessions that really impressed me. Security incident monitoring, mitigation & metrics using feature flags (PRT326) was one that absolutely blew my mind. I didn't know that feature-flags were that capable and It's definitely something you should watch even if you aren't in a security role. When security, safety, and urgency all matter: Handling Log4Shell (BOA204) also was one that I found interesting and insightful, and something anyone can take lessons from, even if you are not in a security role. The funniest session was # Take these open-source tools on your AWS adventure (BOA202) while also introducing me to tools I didn't know existed.

There were also sessions that I hoped would be educational and paid off. Prepare and Protect your Applications from Disruption with AWS Resilience Hub(ARC 208) ( Similar Tech Talk Link: HERE ), was particularly educational and an extremely useful workshop that demonstrated how you can automate resiliency checks. There was also a session about how to use Fleet Manager, and the .Net to Microservices tools AWS offers. Also, I rather liked the self-paced learning sessions - It was a chance to slow down and do hands-on in a quiet environment.

But, As re:Invent was so large, and there was a lot of physical distance to cover, I was unable to attend all the sessions I wanted - not even a quarter of them. The silver lining is that the Breakout sessions, Leadership sessions, and Keynotes are on the AWS events YouTube channel, so I can catchup on what I missed.

re:Invent Summary

AWS, like It's event, is big... even too big. AWS creates services for everyone: from single-person educational or development environments, tools for startups and specialized industries, large corporations and enterprises and everyone in between. I read a blog once(I don't remember who wrote it, I'm sorry) talking about "Good Enough Services", specifically from a SAAS standpoint, where cloud providers are building services that are 80% complete, but may not ever mature to being 90-100% complete. That observations seems to apply to AWS(For example, look at MongoDB vs DocumentDB), although a good proportion of the product announcements during the keynotes were additional functionality to several services - Which is a good and absolutely necessary thing.

But regardless of what you think about that observation, it is vital to understand what your needs are for your organization. Once you have those answers to requirements, capabilities, and limitations, you may find that AWS has some of the best services for you, not only from a cost-saving standpoint to an efficiency one as well. On the flip-side, you may also find that a certain AWS service fall outside of your needs and you need to look elsewhere. AWS is not a tool, it's a toolbox. There are absolutely useful and reliable tools you can use everyday, and some you really can't find anywhere else. Sometimes you need to supplement your toolbox to fill specific needs, or sometimes you need to replace certain tools.

My one piece of advice for you:

Because AWS is such a large platform, regular training is absolutely necessary to utilize it to it's full potential - thus the need for events like re:Invent. But please don't wait once a year to learn - do it daily, weekly, or monthly to stay ahead of the learning curve. Here is a list of resources to help you on your way

Resources

Training