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Into Day 3 of the conference which is when more of the announcements start rolling in!

Andy Jassy Keynote

As I’ve settled into Vegas time zone, this felt like an early wake up to make it in time to the keynote as there was going to be a queue. It would be far more sensible to stay in a hotel or other venue and watch remotely but feeling the reactions in the room for the announcements seems more interesting.

The keynote was streamed to some big spaces in the other conference venues and a good change this year was also streaming it to many more of the breakout sessions rooms all across the venues so you had more chance of seeing the keynote without queuing like crazy.

AWS has made so many announcements in the build-up to re:Invent one wonders whether they’re trying to hit a particular release number to flash onto the big screen! A quick way to see the list of announcements is to look at AWS What’s New 2018:

CEO Andy Jassy as usual was master of disclosure.

I had no intention of live blogging the keynote, far too much information and others who are quicker typists!

There was a DELUGE of announcements, some recaps from the few weeks and many new…I needed to take stock a few times, pause and try to make sense of it all.

I blogged about separately: AWS re:Invent 2018: Andy Jassey Keynote Thoughts

Lunch

Pretty good at The Mirage today, I haven’t actually had many conference venue lunch options yet so can’t compare.

Enterprise Governance: Build Your AWS Landing Zone – ENT351

Lon Miller, Wallace Printz, Brandon Bouier, all from AWS

Back into workshop mode, this time for what I think is an interesting one, not just from the tech perspective but broader IT and business use. AWS has an offering called AWS Landing Zone which is within an AWS Organisations Account. This helps you more quickly set up a secure, multi-account AWS environment based on AWS best practices.

I blogged about why you want to have many AWS accounts and more details of the workshop: AWS re:Invent 2018: Enterprise Governance: Build Your AWS Landing Zone – ENT351

I had to run off a little early to head to another hotel to be in time for the next interesting workshop (yes…too much to do)

Build a Photo-Sharing App with AI-Powered Face and Object Detection

Dustin Noyes & Gabriel Hollombe from AWS

This workshop was another one I didn’t have any previous knowledge of and seemed interesting to learn something new like my previous session I wrote about: AWS re:Invent2018: Get Started with Deep Learning and Computer Vision Using AWS DeepLens – AIM316

We had to build a data-driven web app that lets users upload to shared, secure photo galleries with some AI thrown in.

See my write up: AWS re:Invent 2018: Build a Photo-Sharing App with AI-Powered Face and Object Detection – MOB306https://wp.me/p1dUla-2bK

Inside AWS: Technology Choices for Modern Applications

Tim Bray from AWS

It’s not often AWS tells you how it does things behind the scenes, this was a session going through how and why AWS chooses to use particular AWS services for its own services. TIm was an excellent presenter, worth seeing the notes and watching the session if its recorded.

See my notes: AWS re:Invent 2018: Inside AWS: Technology Choices for Modern Applications – SRV305

DeepRacer Workshop

De Clercq Wentzel from AWS

Well, we were super lucky. I was excited before as you can’t get more hackathon than a Robocar Rally which this was in the session list as. During the Andy Jassy keynote this morning, DeepRacer was announced which is a machine learning car available next year to be able to play with Machine Learning.

I’m the first to admit I haven’t done much machine learning so this appealed to me as it was for developers with no prior ML or robotic experience.

Read all about it in: AWS re:Invent 2018: Robocar Rally 2018 – AIM206

DellEMC function

I then headed to a DellEMC evening function where fellow VMware community transplants had agreed to meet up. So great to catch up with so many people I’ve met at VMworlds and VMUGs and compare notes and clouds.

That’s Day 3 finished, FitBit says 21354 steps today, slowing down a bit when sessions are in the same venue.!