Leaving Las Vegas…With a mind buzzing and popping like popcorn with enough ideas to fill a roadmap for years to come. That’s the result of going to one of the largest tech conferences in the world organised by cloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Las Vegas. But what is it like travelling with techies in one of the largest delegate groups from Europe? Here are 4 lessons learned, my top 5 announced services and some practical tips.
The stats
The event is massive with over 41,000 attendees, 70 new services announced, over 2,000 sessions, 6 massive locations, 3 keynotes, media briefings, analyst summit, breakfasts, lunches, dinners, networking drinks, etc. So come prepared and well rested.
Lessons learned
Ohpen has had delegations go to AWS re:Invent for years but this was my first time and these are my 4 key lessons learned.
Lesson learned 1: Prep like a Pro
The program is huge with over 2,000 sessions scattered across 6 locations. So take your time before travelling to Las Vegas to check all the sessions and their locations and register for the sessions of your choice. Just figuring out which sessions to attend takes time. Invest it!
Lesson learned 2: Divide and conquer
Going with multiple people? Divide and conquer. The venue locations are massive and travelling takes time, especially with the shuttle bus. From one location to another can take up to 50 minutes and that excludes the 10-15 minute walk from the bus to the room. A better option is to stay at one location and have your colleagues cover the other locations (oh, and don’t take the shuttle bus, just get a taxi).
Lesson learned 3: Roadmap reservation (from a business perspective)
As the innovation pace of AWS is accelerating, and you want to stay up to speed with their innovation; we already block time on our development roadmap for technical and functional innovation (approximately 15 – 20%). But I would recommend to block additional time for investigating and implementing the newly announced services from a business perspective (see my top 5 favourite services below).
Lesson learned 4: Not just Tech
Though you have to have a tech heart beating in you somewhere, re:Invent is not just for developers. I can recommend C-Level and (senior) business managers joining in as the importance of technology increases in every industry. Representing your company from a business perspective is important and useful and stimulates getting more tech-focus in the boardroom and on the board agenda.
Diversity
Ok. This is the tricky part of the event. On Day 1 I learned during a diversity session that AWS re:Invent was also being referred to as the “Sausage fest”… and sadly that is still the case. [n.b. Although we have a good representation of women and men at the company, I was also the only woman attending on our behalf]. But there is hope as AWS has dedicated sessions and workstreams to support diversity. The keynote of Werner Vogels actually had more female speakers than male speakers. Creating a more diverse industry is a global challenge for the #tech industry as well as #FinTech and the Financial Services industry in general. It takes a more balanced pipeline in our educational system, more focus of recruiters and senior managers in building their teams. But Rome was not built in a day, so AWS is most definitely putting in the effort as this is what the future should look like. I would love to see some statistics from AWS re:Invent on the development of female versus male attendees over time.
Image (top from left to right: Abby Fuller, Nora Jones and Clare Liguori. Bottom: Werner Vogels).
My top 5 announced services
Amazon Web Services announced over 70 new services during the 2017 event and I selected my top 5 from a business perspective:
- Sagemaker – fully-managed service that enables developers and data scientists to quickly and easily build, train and deploy machine learning models at any scale. This can open up many possibilities for the Financial Services and #FinTech industries as it makes machine learning more accessible so that we can use data more efficiently to the advantage of customers. Check out this article on “6 Things all non-technical people should know about Machine Learning”.
- Transcribe and comprehend – automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language processing (NLP). The combination would enable developers to add speech to text capability to their applications to analyse audio files and convert it to text files (ASR) and use machine learning to find insights and relationships such as key phrases and topics in text (NLP). Can you imagine what this could do for your client meetings, calls, contact centres, workshops? And AWS takes it a step further as they also offer Translate which is a neural machine translation service that delivers fast and affordable language translation.
- Privatelink – private access to Virtual Private Cloud without using public IPs and without requiring the traffic to traverse across the internet. This results in an increase in security and as a result the need for creating traffic plans disappears.
- Alexa for Business – Alexa is moving out of the house and into the office! Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels states that “Voice unlocks digital systems for everyone” and Alexa for business enables this. Alexa will simplify conference room booking, calendar synchronisation, control the equipment in your office, notifying facility management and IT about defects, placing order supplies, etc.
- Deeplens – a physical device that lets you run deep learning models locally on the camera of the device and take action on what it sees. This was actually one of my first in-depth programming experiences as AWS organised workshops where you could start coding. Our mission: “to hotdog or not” based on the TV show Silicon Valley and the actual viral spoof app Not Hotdog.
Fun (for those that didn’t get the memo that grown-ups don’t play)
As re:Invent requires a relentless pace to keep up with the programme, it’s also about fun. Keep in mind; you are in Vegas, “the worlds largest adult playground”. AWS has incorporated a good number of fun-factors in their program such as the Harley ride, Fitness Bootcamps, Broomball, Tatonka challenge, Lego activities, Pub crawls, DJs and not to forget the final party Re:Play which is a paradise for tech loving people. Or as AWS describes it, an “EDM concert, interactive extravaganza and ultimate playground for those of us who didn’t get the memo that grown-ups don’t play”. Really: I loved it! A massive video game area with old school game machines, a massive ball pit/ inflatable amusement park and slide (mental note: don’t wear leather pants – does not slide well and makes you tumble head first).
Although AWS ensures a full agenda, check the shows in Vegas as well. I can really recommend Ka from Cirque du Soleil and during my visit I went to a Lionel Richie concert. This is a great site to check what’s on: vegas.com
Leaving Las Vegas with a suitcase full of experiences & inspiration
So when Monday morning arrived and it was time to leave Las Vegas, I was buzzing to investigate more, share it with the team and I am already excited about next year. To all Executives and Senior Managers: think about what technology can do for you and consider going to a tech event like AWS re:Invent.
