AWSome Day Denver

Robert Koch, Big Data & Cloud Architect

AWSome… that’s not a misspell. It is a play on combining the word awesome and AWS (Amazon Web Service), and while I cannot tell you that AWS is awesome. You know it is!

AWSome Day is a local all-day conference that everyone attends in one giant room. No fire hazards to be seen as you would see at re:Invent in Las Vegas, but a great place for some quiet rumination, absorbing what the facilitator is saying. It was held at the Colorado Convention Center (yes, the one with the Big Blue Bear looking in!). It was held the day after tax day, a good day for it, since everyone is now breathing and hopefully anticipating their tax refunds.

the room -- only half-shown, it's big!

The day started off with registration and breakfast. The breakfast is the kind you see in most conferences: coffee, tea, bagels, and danishes. As soon it was nearly 8:30, we were all ushered into a gigantic room; hundreds of us streamed into the room and found a seat. I was led to a “reserved” seat as I needed to be in the right spot to see sign language interpreters and the speaker – they were provided by AWSome Day event organizers.

Factiliator John Tuffin

The emcee, an AWS Solution Architect (sorry, forgot your name!), introduced John Tuffin who spoke the rest of the day about AWS and explained what we needed to know to understand the cloud. He was very good at explaining what we need to know in order to make proper financial and performance decisions for our applications and infrastructure. Granted, it’s all high-level, however I’m sure the audience appreciates him explaining what most of us needs to know and be reminded. Big hint for you readers- if you haven’t taken the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam; John went through EVERYTHING that you would need to pass the exam. I had passed the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam the day before so I would know! For me, it’d be nice if the exam was the day after the talk, but since had I passed, I’m all good. If you’re going for your AWS Cloud Practitioner exam soon, strongly I suggest you find an AWSome Day in your neighborhood – it’ll be helpful in case you need to fill in gaps in your knowledge.

AWSome Day goals

The day also had the “Ask the Experts” booth which is staffed by AWS pros for if you have any questions about how AWS works or need more details on a service that they provide. I had asked them two questions and they answered some questions, one after a momentary research and another after a back-and-forth discussion. One, does Lambdas support .NET third-party libraries, such as Aspose? Yes after some research time. And another, how does RDS compare with SQL Server financially – that one required some discussion since the “expert” needed to find out why I was asking and then tailored his answer to my question.

the gang for a group picture -- unfortunately I'm not included

I went there representing S&P Global, the company I work for currently and bumped into several co-workers and one S&P alumni. It was great seeing colleagues sharing the same passion as I with AWS.

All in all, it was a worthwhile day however only those new to AWS or with little experience should attend since the information presented is high-level. Granted, some pros may benefit from it as they may have some areas within AWS they haven’t touched. I had an AWSome day!