Hej everyone! I am Victoria — a software engineer based in London. This year, for the first time in my life, I had a chance to visit the United States and attend re:Invent in person and completely for free!

It all became possible thanks to the All Builders Grant from Amazon Web Services (AWS). In this article, I will share more about the application process, the conference itself and my experience there as an ABW Grant recipient.

Once upon in September, I’ve got a magical email:

Congratulations! Thank you for applying for the All Builders Welcome Grant. We are excited to offer you a grant to attend AWS re:Invent 2024 in Las Vegas, NV.

Shock, t̶e̶a̶r̶s̶, sharing the news with my family and friends. Me, in Las Vegas, for free? No way!

What is All Builders Grant

The AWS All Builders Welcome Grant is an initiative by Amazon Web Services to support individuals from underrepresented communities in technology.

It covers:

• Ticket for re:Invent (usually costs more than $2000)

• Roundtrip to Las Vegas

• Hotel accommodation

• Reserved seats for keynotes (absolutely priceless)

• Certification voucher

• $75 Uber e-gift card

• Access to All Builders Grant Lounge

• Unique swag and so much more!

Even more exciting: as a grant recipient, you gain access to unique experiences, networking opportunities and curated activities designed for learning, career growth, and community building!

Sounds awesome! Am I eligible?

To apply for the grant, you must:

• Be at least 18 years old

• Be within the first 5 years of your technology career

• Identify as part of historically underrepresented groups in tech

You can only get the grant once. The requirements may differ next year, so don’t forget to check the eligibility criteria on the official website before applying.

The Application: Putting My Story Forward

I found the application process to be quite straightforward. As I filled out the application, I took the opportunity to reflect on my journey and share my aspirations for a career in cloud. Here are some of the topics I covered:

• Cloud technology-related education (both formal and informal)

• Work experience, activities and accomplishments

• Cloud-related career plans and professional goals

• My experience using AWS products and services

Overall, it took about a week to write my answers and review the application. Looking back, I think it all can be done much faster, but one extra revision never hurts, right? 😅

Las Vegas is Calling!

My journey from London to Las Vegas was very smooth. Upon arrival, I used the Uber voucher provided by AWS to book a taxi to Treasure Island — the hotel where all grant recipients stayed. Since everything was covered by AWS, I could fully relax and embrace the opportunity to learn and meet new people!

Beyond the benefits I already shared, All Builders Grant recipients have access to very supportive Slack community, fireside chats and engaging speed mentoring sessions. All participants are being split into groups and assigned a mentor — a program alumni, who kindly share more about their experiences and give advice on everything from effective sessions planning to best after-conference activities to attend.

Fireside Chat with Ian Wilson — Vice President of Human Resources for Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Advice for the Future Applicants

1. As you work on your application, take a moment to reflect on how attending re:Invent could positively impact your personal and professional growth. Are there any topics that resonate with you? Are there any technologists you are excited to meet the most?

2. Some questions require longer, thoughtful responses. When reviewing your application, ensure your answers are structured and easy to follow.

3. Last but not least — don’t hesitate, just apply! I would encourage you to share the information about the grant with others — nothing can be better than experiencing unforgettable re:Invent moments with your friends and colleagues!

Final Thoughts

Receiving All Builders Welcome Grant and attending AWS re:Invent has been a truly unforgettable experience! I really appreciate the opportunity to experience the event in-person and connect with so many great technologists from different countries.

If you are considering applying— I’d really encourage you to do so, as it will be an absolutely life-changing opportunity!

Thank you, AWS and All Builders Welcome team, for making this incredible opportunity a reality! A special thank you to Sheen Brisals and Monique Grinstein for your support and encouragement throughout the journey!

Hej everyone! I am Victoria — a software engineer based in London. If you are reading this article, you are probably curious about re:Invent 2024— and this is the right place to learn more about it!

Excited? Let’s go!

What is re:Invent?

re:Invent is Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) annual conference, designed for cloud enthusiasts, developers, architects, and IT professionals. It’s one of the biggest tech events in the world, packed with sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities.

It’s been around 3 years since I started following re:Invent online. This year, for the first time, I attended re:Invent in person. I was lucky to receive All Builders Welcome grant from Amazon Web Services, which covered a ticket to the conference and all travel expenses.

Top Serverless Announcements

Aurora DSQL

Source: Introducing Amazon Aurora DSQL | Amazon Web Services

Screenshot from Dr. Werner Vogels’ keynote

Amazon Aurora DSQL is a serverless distributed SQL database with virtually unlimited scale, the highest availability, and zero infrastructure management. Sounds exciting, right?

Aurora DSQL offers the fastest distributed SQL reads and writes and makes it effortless for you to scale to meet any workload demand without database sharding or instance upgrades. With its active-active distributed architecture, Aurora DSQL ensures strong data consistency designed for 99.99% single-Region and 99.999% multi-Region availability.

The best part — it’s serverless, and this fact eliminates the operational burden of patching, upgrades, and maintenance downtime.

These are very serious promises, so I would encourage you to watch Dr. Werner Vogels' Keynote or see this article to learn how it works under the hood.

Amazon DynamoDB global tables support multi-region strong consistency

Source: Amazon DynamoDB global tables previews multi-Region strong consistency — AWS

Screenshot from Dr. Werner Vogels’ keynote

Similar to Aurora DSQL, Amazon DynamoDB global tables now support multi-region strong consistency. This feature ensures that your application can always access the latest version of data from any region within a global table, eliminating the challenges of managing consistency across multiple regions. This update is particularly beneficial for developers creating global applications with strict consistency requirements, such as financial transaction processing and inventory management.

Amazon S3 Metadata

Source: Announcing Amazon S3 Metadata (Preview) — Easiest and fastest way to manage your metadata — AWS

Amazon S3 Metadata is the easiest and fastest way to instantly discover and understand your S3 data with automated, easily queried metadata that updates in near real-time.

Object metadata can include:

• system-defined details (size and the source of the object)

• custom metadata (your tags for annotating object information, for example — transaction ID, content rating and so on)

Amazon S3 Tables

Source: Announcing Amazon S3 Tables — Fully managed Apache Iceberg tables optimized for analytics workloads — AWS

Oh, this one is super exciting too! Amazon S3 Tables are fully managed Apache Iceberg tables optimised for analytics workloads. So far, it seems the easiest way to store tabular data (e.g. Parquet files) at scale.

S3 Tables are specifically optimised for analytics workloads, resulting in up to 3x faster query throughput and up to 10x higher transactions per second compared to self-managed tables.

If you use Amazon Data Firehose, Athena, Redshift, EMR, or QuickSight to query tabular data in S3, there’s an opportunity to move your data to S3 Tables to increase performance.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed the serverless highlights that I found the most exciting! Of course, there is so much more to explore — check out the What’s New With AWS? page to dive deeper.

There is something absolutely magical in being present in a room where a top cloud giant releases its new features. Stay tuned for Part 2, where I will share more about my personal re:Invent experience, the grant I received and of course more photos from Vegas!

Screenshot from Dr. Werner Vogels’ keynote

To conclude, I will quote Amazon CTO Dr. Werner Vogels — now go build! 🚀

Long story short, I fell in love with this program but learned about it too late to apply this year. To make lemonade out of lemons, I have decided to research criteria for the AWS Community Builders program, create a plan for this year to build a portfolio for myself and share it with others!

What is AWS Community Builders program?

If you have ever searched for AWS-related topics online, chances are you have already come across some content created by AWS Community Builders.

The AWS Community Builders program offers technical resources, education, and networking opportunities to AWS technical enthusiasts and emerging thought leaders passionate about sharing knowledge and connecting with the technical community.

Source: https://aws.amazon.com/developer/community/community-builders/

Here are some benefits of the program:

• Getting insights from AWS product teams and exciting updates on the latest services and features.

• Weekly webinars to learn from subject matter experts on a variety of AWS topics.

• AWS Promotional Credits and other helpful resources to supercharge your content creation process.

• Amazing community of like-minded developers!

There is swag involved too! 😉

For the application, you will need to submit at least two pieces of publicly available content that you have created. Your area of interest should broadly align with the content you submit for review, so choose it wisely!

Here are the categories represented in the program:

• Cloud Operations

• Containers

• Data

• Dev Tools

• Front-End Web and Mobile Development

• Machine Learning and GenAI

• Networking and Content Delivery

• Security and Identity

• Serverless

The program runs for one-year intervals, and it is absolutely free! The intake for 2024 closed on the 28th of January, and the next one presumably will take place in January 2025.

So let’s get prepared.

Excited? Let’s plan the plan!

Becoming an AWS Community Builder is quite a unique journey for each individual, and that's what makes it great. No solution fits all, and you can find your voice by doing a huge range of exciting activities.

I have come across some incredible creators who write technical articles, create videos on TikTok and YouTube, organise meet-ups, speak at public events, contribute to open-source projects, and so much more.

To create a plan for myself, I considered two important criteria:

1. Personality. I used to be a teacher, and I enjoy breaking down complex ideas into easily understandable chunks. My goal is to democratise AWS knowledge and bring it to everyone happy to listen. During this year, I hope to find more opportunities to practice public speaking and bring people along to my AWS journey.

2. Ability to stay consistent. I’m a huge advocate of consistency as a way to build a new skill. For me, it is going to be authoring technical blogs. As a career changer, I know the struggle of starting something new, and I hope my blog will become a source of ideas for brave individuals who are keen to learn more about AWS cloud.

My recent discovery

Every content creator needs inspiration. In this section, I gathered some resources I found to keep myself motivated and stay up to date with the industry news. Some of that is UK-specific, but I hope you will be able to find alternatives around the world!

• AWS User Groups — over 400 AWS-focused groups across different locations and topics of interest. It is a great way to meet like-minded people to share ideas, ask questions and learn about AWS services. I am definitely joining AWS User Group UK!

• Serverless London Meetup —my absolute recommendation! Check my recent post on Linkedin where I share my excitement about Gregor Hohpe’s talk about Application Architecture as Code!

• AWS Cloud Women UK — a community for women passionate about AWS cloud. Great selection of events.

• AWS Cloud Clubs — if you are a student, you can join AWS Cloud Clubs or even become a Cloud Capitan and lead a club in your region!

Final thoughts

While I did some research about the AWS Community Builders program, I found so many AWS enthusiasts around the world who create amazing AWS content and share their experiences.

Becoming an AWS Community Builder should not be the ultimate goal, but rather a recognition and an amazing opportunity to join a community of bright technologists who are passionate about the AWS cloud.

Let’s keep in touch to support each other on this journey, stay accountable and create so much needed sense of community!