re:Invent Yourself: Five Reasons Not to Miss This Year’s AWS Blockbuster

If you are reading this blog, you probably already understand how a migration of your workloads to the cloud can have a transformative impact on your business. Indeed, it’s hard to believe that it’s only been 10 years since Jeff Bezos gave the directive that birthed Amazon Web Services.

With so much happening, so quickly, in the world of the AWS Cloud, it can be said that the cloud itself changes, morphs and transforms on an almost daily basis.

Though blogs, news articles – and your trusted cloud partner, such as Blue Sentry – are great sources of info about the evolution of the AWS Cloud universe, no Cloud chronicle is as immersive or energizing as AWS re:Invent. This titanic annual gathering of the global AWS community – like the cloud service that it represents – has quickly gained folkore-level status among developers, engineers, CIOs and others.

In fact, the event is big enough to be considered a legitimate “happening” in Las Vegas, its perpetual host city. No longer can the Sands Convention Center alone contain its largess; in fact, the more than 30,000 ticketholders (who forked over $1,500 a pop to join the movement) will spill into multiple venues to engage in bootcamps, breakouts, summits, expos and technical deep dives.

This year’s re:Invent runs from Nov. 28-Dec. 2 – barely enough time to digest your Thanksgiving turkey! Whether you have locked down your ticket – or are still trying to convince your corporate bean counters to approve your trip to re:Invent – we’d like to share with you the top five reasons that this should be a “can’t miss” for any enterprise that is in, or is considering a move to, the cloud:

1. Good to great. There are so many trainings, breakouts and bootcamps schedule for re:Invent that you’d have to try really hard to NOT learn something new at the conference. Far from being a two-dimensional showcase, re:Invent offers tons of labs, workshops and training opportunities that will expand your functional knowledge of the cloud. Chief among these is the re:SOURCE Mini Con, a full-day affair featuring technical deep dives on topics such as IoT, Serverless Computing, Databases, and Containers.

2. A “CENTRAL” focus. Whether you go shopping for the latest in tchotchkes (and you know who you are), or are looking for actual third-party AWS solutions, you’ll want to make your way to the expo hall for re:Invent CENTRAL. It’s a great way to glean insights about the array of options available to you for hardware (yes, even in the cloud, we sometimes need hardware), cloud security solutions, and app and software vendors who have cloud based versions of their popular productivity, organizational and customer relationship management suites. Oh, and there are charging stations (to keep your phone, laptop and tablet juiced), Connected Cafes where you can network with like-minded “cloud-heads,” and opportunities to mine cloud expertise directly from the experts who have created, and maintained, AWS.

3. Big secrets, revealed. If it’s gonna happen in the AWS Cloud, it will most likely be announced for the first time at re:Invent. Though the attire isn’t quite Steve Jobs black-on-denim, the AWS powers that be have copied a page from Apple’s playbook by announcing the “next big thing(s)” during the keynote session, and throughout the week. In 2015, QuickSight, Kinesis Firehose, Snowball, the Database Migration Service, the Schema Conversion Tool, the Maria DB database engine, Kinesis Analytics, x1, t2.nano, Python for Lambda, EC2 Container Registry, Mobile Hub, and Amazon IoT were all christened for their maiden voyage during re:Invent. With the hockey-stick-style growth curve that is AWS Cloud, one can expect a similar array of big announcements this year in Vegas. If you want to know before anyone else – you’ll want to be in the crowd.

4. Be a part of something special. If ever you hoped your tech skills could be put to use to make a real difference in the world, now’s your chance. For the fourth year, AWS will host a Hackathon – a full day of purpose-driven programming with the goal of developing a deployable solution for a non-profit organization. Though winning this competition may not be financially rewarding, it will make you a rock star in the eyes of the non-profits that benefit from your efforts.

5. What happens in Vegas…. Techies tend to be a fun bunch – able to keep the party rolling forward in ways that would make any motley crew – or Motley Crue – blush. re:Invent abets this lifestyle by offering a host of ways for attendees to let their hair down, bust a gut, and sample all that Vegas has to offer. If you can survive the Pub Crawl, a wing-eating contest called the Tatonka Challenge, and a half-day Harley Ride out to the Hoover Dam, then maybe you can answer the bell for the re:Invent 5K, a first-ever footrace with a track that winds around the Las Vegas Strip (with a portion along, where else? Frank Sinatra Drive!).

So, will you be joining the fun at re:Invent 2016?

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