What comes to mind when you hear “Amazon”?
Is it a huge forest in South America?
Or, is it a huge e-commerce site that sells everything, such as soda and lawnmowers?
However, for I and many IT developers what comes to mind is “AWS”.
This is another side of the massive e-commerce site.
What’s AWS?
AWS is a cloud platform that is the most commonly used in the world.
The cloud platform is an outsourcing system that accumulates, stores, and communicates data.
It might be hard to imagine if you have never developed any software, but the texts, images even videos, and audio you deal with every day on PCs and smartphones are actually all numerical values.
They’re all numerical values, so you could add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
As a matter of fact, everything that you could do with computers consists of numeric values accumulated, stored, sent, and received.
It’s a long story, so if I have the opportunity, I’ll describe it later.
Anyway, as of the 21st century, a stupendous amount of numerical values in the form of data are riding on optical fibers and radio waves, flying all over the world.
AWS saves and accumulates fractions of these data.
What’s “AWS re:Invent”?
“AWS re:Invent” is an AWS conference that is held once every year.
The most recent one was held online at the end of 2020.
However, until 2019, it has been held offline.
From here on, I’m guessing holding it online will become the standard.
I’ve had the opportunity to participate in the “AWS re:Invent 2019” which may have been the last offline one.
It’s been a while, but I’ll record this as a pre-covid-19 memory.
In re:Invent 2019, about 65,000 IT developers who use AWS came from the whole world, as I did.
It is held in Las Vegas every year, and in 2019, it was between Dec 2 to Dec 6 in 2019.
It’s a mind-blowing sight to see the Las Vegas conference halls occupied by re:Invent and colored purple in their theme color.
Main Entrance Hall
Of course, the conference programs are all related to AWS, and 3,000 of these were held during this period.
The seminars that announce of describe new or updated releases of AWS services were popular.
The opportunity where you can listen to developers themselves describe AWS’s new features from anywhere between half an hour to an hour is something you can only enjoy at re:Invent.
These announcements excite IT developers.
However, those of you who are consumers of IT services and not developers might wonder what the big deal is.
It’s a little hard to describe but if you like cars, it’s similar to a 5MT car changing to a 6MT when a new model comes out.
Or, if you play instruments, it’s equivalent to a model change that gives one more octave.
Not only does AWS announce these new services, but they provide many workshops where you can find out these things.
A Typical Workshop The Product Handed Out
I feel this is a well thought out program.
In these workshops the AWS developers will give an explanation from anywhere between half an hour to two hours, similar to the seminars.
Moreover, participants get an opportunity to develop and build applications that use AWS’s new features using their own PC.
I had participated in these workshops every day during the period.
These seminars are usually uploaded on YouTube as video archives.
These hands-on experiences are precious and you could only experience it during this time.
Moreover, AWS not only announces what’s new, but they also provide basic seminars, workshops, and e-learning sessions for first time AWS users.
An E-learning Room
The e-learning sessions are the same as the ones normally provided by third-parties, but if you attend this at re:Invent, you could ask questions to supporting members.
Additionally, you could relax and enjoy yourselves during breakfast, lunch, and music sessions.
I took some photos.
Breakfast Area
In the future, when the coronavirus is gone, I hope we can get together in one place again and re:Invent will show us their new appearance.