AWS re:Invent 2024 Reflection

I attended AWS re:Invent 2024 in Las Vegas, and what a fantastic week it was! So amazing that it felt appropriate to share my experience so that others who wish to attend in future may learn what happens at this conference to help plan their own re:Invent itinerary. 2024 was my first ‘proper’ re:Invent experience. I attended with a sponsor back in 2018 and spent most of my time on the sponsor booth pitching their services. I also attended the free online conference in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, so I have had three very different re: Invent experiences. However, attending in person in 2024 was by far the best!

Being an AWS Community Builder and AWS user Group Leader gave much more structure to the event, so I would strongly urge readers to get involved with the AWS Community in some way to get much more out of the re:Invent Experience. Let’s start with the journey to re:Invent – Las Vegas is a long way from Brighton!

Friday

I left home on Friday, November 30th, to stay overnight at Heathrow T5 so I could wake up fresh for our 10 a.m. flight to Las Vegas via Los Angeles. By the time we committed to attending, all direct flight options were sold out. I met my colleague Jon Goodall at Farringdon station in London, and we took the Elizabeth line to Heathrow, where we had a quick dinner and an early night in the Sofitel at T5.

Step Count – 10,159

Saturday

An early start on Saturday – the flight departed on time, and we had a 90-minute layover in LA, eventually arriving in Las Vegas around 5 pm local time. We checked into our rooms in Paris, Las Vegas, and in a vain attempt to beat jet lag (more on this later), we met up with my friend Demi, who lives in Vegas, and she took us to Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart. If you’ve never been, I strongly recommend it – it is an interactive art installation that you need to explore and figure out the back story by interacting with the exhibits – weird, whacky and a bit trippy, especially after being awake for 24 hours! Safely tucked up in bed by 11 pm, I was ready for my first conference activities on Sunday. Check out this short video of my 36-hour journey to re:Invent!

Step Count – 5,355 (mostly sitting in a plane!)

Sunday

Sunday started super early. Do you remember the jet lag I mentioned? I woke at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., and 4 a.m., eventually got up at 5 a.m. The hotel gym did not open until 7 a.m., so I had to do something to relieve the boredom. By 6 a.m., I was out running on the Las Vegas strip, where I ran a leisurely 5K.

After the run, I met with Jon for breakfast in Denny’s – first day in the US, of course, called for T-Bone steak & eggs breakfast to set me up for the day ahead – and we benefitted from free pancakes as the waiter thought Jon looked like Prince Harry!

The main activity for Sunday was the AWS Community Builder’s hike. A bus picked up 42 AWS Community Builders & Heroes and took us away from the madness of Las Vegas, out to Red Rock Canyon, where we separated into groups – short, medium and long routes. Jon and I opted for long, which we were told would be 10Km but ended up being 12.8Km, with some severe elevation! The weather was great – t-shirts and shorts, and it was an excellent opportunity to network with our AWS Community peers, most of whom we had only ever met online. One of the nice things about the AWS Community Builder hike is that everyone brings a snack from their home country to share with others. I brought a tin of Manx Knobs, which went down very well! Jon got some Kendal Mint Cake, which Ran Isenberg seemed to adore! We also had German gingerbread, alfajores from Argentina, Finnish chocolate and much more that I can’t remember! This was a great way to kick off the week in Vegas, beat the jet lag and meet our peers – thanks to all of the organisers, including Johannes Koch, Jenn Bergstrom, Maria Christide Noble, Niklas Westerstråhle, Richard Fan and anyone else I failed to mention.

Check out this short video I created of the hike.

After the hike, we picked up our re:Invent passes and our first bit of swag—a re:Invent hoodie and water bottle. This year the hoodie could be customised with a selection of transfers, if you were happy to wait in another line for that!

Then it was time for dinner in Virgil’s BBQ at The Linq Promenade, where all the hikers reconvened and were joined by Jason Dunn, head of the AWS Community Builder program. It was great to finally meet Jason after having read so many of his Slack messages to the community and successfully guessing how many DVDs he has in his collection to win myself some AWS Community Builder swag!

After the t-bone breakfast, 5 km run, 12.8 km hike and BBQ feast, I slept really well, believing I had cracked the jet lag and got onto the timezone, ready for the conference to begin properly on Monday.

• Step Count – 37,615

Monday

After a great rest, it was time to head to The Venetian for breakfast in the AWS Community Hub in Buddy V’s restaurant. The Community Hub is open to AWS Community Builders, Heroes, and User Group Leaders, and it is a great place to get away from the crowds at the conference, get a good meal, and network with peers. It was one of the highlights of re:Invent for me – having access to this space once I eventually found it! I think I had to do a full lap of Venetian and Sands expo center before realising that Buddy V’s is right near the entrance to The Venetian…

After breakfast, I headed straight to my first session on Building the Future of Cloud Operations at any Scale. Well, I say straight – I got lost again, but I still made it on time for the session, which was packed out, with standing room only.

Next up was a session on Best Practices for Serverless Developers delivered by AWS Hero Ran Isenberg and AWS Serverless Developer Advocate Julian Wood. Another packed session – we waited in line for an hour for this one to bag front-row seats with Johannes Koch and Jeroen Reijn, who told me he listens to the LogiCast AWS News Podcast on his morning commute – the first of several LogiCast fans that we would meet at re:Invent! I was also recognised in the line by fellow AWS Community Builder Thomas Taylor, who I recruited as a future podcast guest using the Linktree QR code on the back of my iPhone!

After the sessions, I headed back to the Community Hub for lunch and to catch up on some work, where I met more AWS Heroes and former LogiCast guests, including Stephen Sennett (who is much taller than I expected!), Danielle Heberling and Brian Tarbox.

I was also approached by more LogiCast fans – Rejoice Mucheri and Harsh Shah, who wanted photos with Jon and me! This was the most unexpected thing at re:Invent. Of course, we measure podcast downloads, but it was nice to meet some of the faces behind the statistics and get feedback on how the podcast is landing. I particularly enjoyed hearing Rejoice’s story of her 3-year career transition from sales & marketing into tech and how LogiCast has been an integral part of her learning journey.

After lunch, we checked out the AWS Certified Lounge—another cool place for AWS Certified folks to hang out and, of course, to collect some more AWS Certified Swag!

We then went to check out some of the other activities available. Jon tried the Datadog slide and the ‘Fill it Forward’ water-carrying activity, which supports the installation of water filtration systems in Cambodia.

On Monday evening, we arranged dinner with the Chemist 4U team – CTO Martyn Kilbryde, John Hatton, Hannah Parry-Bruce and Martin Meredith. We checked out China Poblano in Cosmopolitan, a Chinese/Mexican fusion restaurant – it sounds weird, but it’s excellent! After dinner, we located one of Cosmo’s speakeasy bars – Ghost Donkey, which mainly serves tequila and mezcal cocktails. But given our jet lag and our busy schedules, we retired pretty early, for another terrible night of sleep in my case, with the early morning wake-ups again!

• Step Count – 16887

Tuesday

Tuesday started with breakfast in Sands Convention Center before heading to line up for the Matt Garman keynote at 7 am! A DJ played rousing house music to wake us up and warm us up for the torrent of announcements about to be made – I counted 31, which I summarised in this Logicata blog post.

After the keynote, I headed to the Expo Hall to check out the Community Village, where I volunteered for an hour in the afternoon to spread the word about the various AWS Community programs. Once I had located the community booth, I visited some expo booths and collected swag. We also checked out the AWS Merch Store, which used Amazon’s ‘walk out’ technology, where you could purchase clothing, bags and even dog bandanas!

My slot on the Community Booth was at 3 pm, so I headed back there to be issued with my coveted and exclusive rhinestone AWS t-shirt! The first thing I did was check the AWS User Group interactive map to see if the AWS Brighton User Group was on there – it was! Then, I spent an hour talking to conference delegates who were interested in becoming user group members, leaders, and AWS Community Builders! Leaders from all over the world brought their User Group stickers to swap with other leaders and share with delegates – the Brighton stickers seemed really popular!

After my stint on the Community Booth, it was time to head back to Buddy V’s and wait in line for the evening’s AWS Community Builder Mixer Party. Also in the line was former LogiCast guest Ryan Pothecary and AWS Brighton User Group speaker Ryan Cormack – great to catch up with these guys and while away the time in the queue. There’s a joke there somewhere about The Two Ryans, but most reading this will probably be too young to get it…

We also planned to round up as many former LogiCast guests as we could for a guest alumni photo – this was easier said than done – there were many more guests at re:Invent that didn’t make the photo, but we’re really grateful to those that did – from left to right Amelia Hough-Ross, Jon Goodall, Stephen Sennett, Karl Robinson, Martyn Kilbryde, Andres Moreno, Darya Petrashka, Maria Christidi Noble & Ryan Pothecary.

I also made a bit of a nuisance of myself by roving around the party and interviewing other Community Builders and Heroes about their experience at AWS re:Invent. You can check out those interviews on our YouTube channel here.

Swag tokens were issued to be redeemed at the Swag booth, where we were presented with an Alpaka sling bag containing a dapper AWS Community Builder long-sleeved t-shirt, an insulated water bottle and a flight organiser – great swag!

The highlight of the evening was meeting AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr, having a selfie with him, and getting his exclusive AWS Builder Card – this was my first Builder Card, and I had no idea what to do with it, but I would soon find out…

• Step Count – 15,412

Wednesday

Wednesday was a bumper day for swag. Anyone with an AWS Community Profile could line up at the Swag booth and obtain a slick AWS bomber jacket with custom flight tags – I got 3 – one with my AWS Community Profile ‘handle’ (@karlrobinson), an AWS Certified tag and a re:Invent 2024 tag. Awesome swag – way to go, AWS!

We had also heard on the grapevine (well on the User Group Lead Slack) that the AWS Builder Cards creator David Heidt would be giving away as many sets of AWS Builder Cards as User Group leaders could carry to take back to play with their user group members. So I headed over to Ceasers Forum (a long walk from the Expo!) and picked up ten base game sets with ten resilience expansion packs for the AWS Brighton User Group. And David’s exclusive card for my now-growing collection! Conveniently, a FedEx kiosk was opposite the Builder Cards booth, so I headed there to ship them back to Brighton. After getting a $450 sticker shock, I decided to take them as excess luggage – it was cheaper to buy a suitcase and check it in on our return flight!

I carried all 20 sets of cards (7KG!) back to the Expo hall, where I met Jon finishing his stint at the AWS Community Booth. We thought it would be a great idea to learn how to play, so I carried them all the way back to Caesar’s Forum, where we sat down with one of the Builder Cards team and played a round. Jon picked the concept up rapidly. I was a little slower but got the gist, then Jon pipped me to the win – I’d have had him on my next strong hand – next time!

After handing Jon half of the Builder Cards, I headed for the AWS Partner Keynote with Ruba Borno. While the room was filling up, we were treated to a string quartet playing 80s, 90s, & 00s pop covers – they were great!

After the partner keynote, I returned to the expo hall to listen Martyn Kilbryde of Chemist 4U deliver his talk ‘Zero to Production Serverless in 8 weeks’, sporting his well-earned AWS gold jacket! If you don’t know about the gold jacket – this is awarded to anyone holding all 13 AWS Certifications simultaneously. It’s an exclusive club with only around 200 gold jacket owners globally! This was a great bite-sized talk about delivering a brand new solution in a very tight timeframe – the technologies used and the project management process to make this happen – certainly a few key takeaways for me.

After Martyn’s talk, it was time to head back to the Community Hub in Buddy Vs for the AWS User Group Mixer, where we had the chance to network with User Group leaders from all over the world. The highlight of this event for me was Brian Tarbox, AWS Boston User Group leader and AWS Hero, wearing his unique AWS Hero cape! And why not? We were also presented with some excellent UHG leader swag – a really cool hooded softshell jacket with AWS User Group Leader embroidered on it, a desk pad and a mug (which I managed to smash carrying it home).

During the UG lead mixer, I was tipped off that some senior AWS personnel I was hoping to meet were at the EMEA mixer party in XS nightclub at Encore. So I said my goodbyes, hot-footed it from Venetian to Encore and checked in to the EMEA mixer. I was greeted with a sea of 2-3,000 partygoers in a massive indoor and outdoor club, and I thought I had no chance of finding the guys I was looking for. But within 5 minutes, I had located Will Tomlins and had a great chat with him about how Logicata is helping AWS customers like Chemist 4U, with whom Will had just met, with their AWS Infrastructure management. While talking to Will, head of SMB for UK Norm Driskell came over – the other person I was hoping to meet! We had a great chat about user groups and the power of community and exchanged contact details to continue our conversation back in the UK. Sadly, I was too late to enjoy Natasha Beddingfield’s live performance!

• Step Count – 15,662

Thursday

Due to my late night at the EMEA mixer, I slept too long to make it to Werner Vogels’ keynote, so I streamed it live in my hotel room. After the keynote, I headed over to the Venetian. En route, I bumped into AWS Developer Advocate Matheus Guimaraes, who was rushing in the opposite direction to MGM to deliver a talk. Matheus delivered last year’s re:Invent re:Cap to the AWS Brighton User Group, and we’re looking forward to having him back again on 12th February to deliver this year’s re:Cap in his own inimitable style!

Back at the Venetian, it was time to trawl the expo hall for more swag – mostly socks and t-shirts, and I won a $50 Amazon gift card in an HPE raffle! Then, it was time to hear Cory Quinn’s talk about Best Practices and New Tools for Cost Reporting and Estimation.

Rounding off the conference for me was the re:Play party. We picked up the Vegas Monorail from The Linq station. We headed out to the Las Vegas Festival Grounds to be treated to sets from the re:Invent All Stars, Weezer and Zedd! Some of today‘s step count definitely happened on the dancefloor with Principal AWS Solutions Architect Vlad Nedosekin and his clients. On leaving the party, I got separated from everyone, so I headed back to Paris – probably for the best, skipping any after-parties as we were flying home the next day!

Step Count – 27,795

Friday

As we were flying home on Friday evening, we checked out of our hotel and went souvenir shopping for our families – while some re:Invent sessions were running on Friday, we were conferenced out by this point! As we started the week with my Vegas friend Demi, we finished it with her and a visit to the Las Vegas Underground Mansion – a Cold War-era nuclear bunker home! Another suitably weird Vegas experience to round off our week! After the mansion, we headed to purchase a suitcase to carry home all of the swag collected during the week – the laundry bags I purchased for this were not up to the job!

I slept most of the flight home from Vegas to Heathrow and for 12 hours straight on Saturday night at home!

• Step Count – 17,281
• Total re:Invent Step Count – 131,192, an average of 16,400 per day!

Summary and 5 Top re:Invent Tips!

re:Invent was an intense but highly valuable experience! When asked what the main benefit was, it was tough to narrow it down. But for me I would say networking – with AWS staff, Logicata clients and fellow AWS Community members. In our world of remote work and virtual businesses, it’s great to get out and meet people face to face, build real relationships and learn from one another. I’ve already passed a business opportunity to someone I met for the first time at re:Invent.

So, what are my top tips for re:Invent?

• Tip 1 – book early to secure direct flights if you can
• Tip 2 – wear comfortable shoes – check out my daily step count to understand why! I wore running shoes and hiking shoes – alternating between them to give my feet some relief!
• Tip 3 – take a suitcase for swag – if you like collecting swag, you can easily fill one!
• Tip 4 – stay hydrated – Vegas is in the desert. Drink lots of water and carry lip balm! Some vendors even have lip balm as swag!
• Tip 5 – engage with the AWS Community before you go – being an AWS Community Builder or User Group leader gives you access to private areas, great food, great swag and great networking!

So there you have it – my re:Invent 2024 experience. See you there in 2025? I hope so!