This year, four ITC employees set out to Las Vegas to attend AWS re:Invent – an opportunity for tech workers of all stripes to meet and be inspired by cloud technology, new applications, and the experiences of our peers. We were lucky enough to spend time in Vegas learning, networking, and enjoying ourselves – all while building up ITC’s AWS expertise and deepening our understanding of these key technologies. While it’s normally true that “What happens in Vegas… stays in Vegas,” we have exciting details to share from ITC’s experience at AWS re:Invent 2022!
Learning
Re:Invent offers an opportunity to learn about AWS in a concentrated, focused way. The week is full of exciting announcements about new partnerships and web applications available on AWS, and ITC took full advantage of these opportunities to build up our knowledge.
This year, there were announcements about new data loaders and marketplaces, forecasting engines, product integrations, and much, much more. Analytics, compute power, and machine learning were among the top three categories AWS invested in for their future offerings.
- AWS will offer OpenSearch, completely serverless, allowing users to search and run analytics against the without having worry about managing the server.
- For compute power, we now have SimWeaver, adding the ability to run real-time spatial simulations without the limitations an organization’s physical hardware.
- SageMaker gets an upgrade across the board, adding the ability to shadow test against production models, next generation notebooks, and more integrations using geospatial data.
Among the many sessions offered, there are hands-on trainings in those very same AWS applications and gamified learning experiences such as AWS Jams where teams can compete for prizes all while learning how to use various aspects of AWS. Attendees can use the conference as an opportunity to certify their AWS credentials.
ITC’s employees participated in the Jam sessions (racking up a few hundred points in the competition) and attended sessions on how companies utilize AWS services from an architect perspective and popular tools like Sagemaker, intelligent document processing, and much more.
Networking
Re:Invent creates spaces to network. Whether it’s starting up a casual chat over lunch, signing up for formal peer-to-peer networking, or joining the public sector lounge, we got to meet new people, gain new insights on technology and business opportunities, and form new connections. Networking is a great way to stay up-to-speed on the latest and greatest in the tech industry, and AWS brings together over 50,000 tech professionals at re:Invent for that purpose.
The vendor expo creates a space for attendees to learn more about technology offerings on the AWS platform. In our case, we were on the hunt for technology that could benefit our government clients and our own internal R&D efforts. We sought out FedRAMP certified technologies, and learned everything we could about the most promising technologies.
As remote employees, we enjoyed getting to spend time together – grabbing drinks and dinner and discussing our findings from the day.
Enjoying
We appreciated re:Invent for the overall experience aka the fun! From striking a pose with Darth Vader to meeting some real-life sumo wrestlers, ITC enjoyed ourselves at re:Invent. We collected swag from vendor booths – socks, t-shirts, toys, books, and more – all while learning about exciting new technology on the AWS platform. We competed in games (like virtual skiing) and competitions (like the Jam sessions), and, we danced at re:Invent’s big party – re:Play.
