The re:Invent is an anual show-off hosted by AWS in Las Vegas which gathers all cloud consumers into a mammoth like event. If you're working in the IT industry and have business in the cloud, you should check it out, it's worth a visit and it's addictive.

For me it was my 3rd re:Invent (thank youHaufe.Group) and I started preparations together with my colleagues since this summer. Working as a cloud architect and managing AWS resources on a daily basis, makes attending this event very natural and marks the end of the year in style.

2023 was also a period of commitment for organising the localUser Group in Timisoara and becoming a Community Builder. All of this gave me the opportunity to meet awesome people, access to private parties and special swag 😁

If you're planning your first re:Invent for next year, keep in mind that session booking starts mid October and it's a must if you want to take part in the good stuff.

This year I decided to only attend level 300-400 sessions, to be part of at least one workshop and at least of one chalk talk daily. The level 100-200 talks are usually general service presentations and they are recommended for newcomers.

The trip to Vegas from Romania is not short and takes a bit of commitment. We arrived on Saturday evening and visited the Grand Canyon on Sunday.

Vegas is exactly as you expect it: decadent, huge, impressive.

AWS does an excellent job in putting all pieces together to blow your mind. I remember my first event back in 2019 and the fascination on my face when I saw it all. The venues are an adventure themselves, they are breathtaking, massive and luxurious.

Besides the lessons that you take with you, attending re:Invent gives you a "let's do this" boost for back home. This happens to me every time, I start December with big plans for the next year and an energy that keeps me going for months to come.

Returning to the people I met: it was a pleasure to finally see the real smile of Maria Encinar, her colleague Marcela and to shake hands with Jason Dunn. The User Group and Community Builders had a restaurant reserved in the Venetian for the entire week, the already famous Buddy V's (which is not easy to find). Here there were daily private events for the AWS community, I only got the chance to go to one of them and met Heros like Johannes Koch and Madhu Kumar who took care of me the entire evening 🍻 At re:Play I hung out with Andra Somesan and Wojtek Gawroński, we planned User Group meetings and workshops together so the calendar ofAWS User Group Timisoara is almost full for 2024 🚀

The bonus were the Peer Talks: I got the chance to meet in person Alexandra Huides after I started to follow her online (business❗) activity - she's an excellent networking specialist with a top positive attitude. I also had a 1:1 chat with Jeff Barr for 10 minutes but I don't want to brag about it 😬 I just want to say that I appreciate his wisdom and the patience he has for taking tens of selfies per day.

Watching the keynotes, especially Werner's one, I had the impression that AWS feels there's a possible "revenge of the on prem" in the near future and decided to be more mature, to try to keep the "cloud momentum" and be the bigger person in the tech industry. This translates to advices related to cost reduction, simple architecture decisions and better visibility for existing resources.

Being in Vegas for a week felt like living for one month back home and the way back to Romania took us almost 2 extra days than planned because it snowed in Munich ⛄

We already scheduleda recap of everything on the 18th of January during the first meetup of 2024

I wrote this post after waking up at 02:30 in the morning because...

How was your re:Invent this year?