Eventful Days in Seattle

Sitting here in Starbucks Reserve (one of the best places to visit if you area coffee lover), I am going over the last two days spent with elite AWS experts. I am talking about AWS APN Ambassadors programme. For some of you who do not know about APN Ambassadors, AWS describe us as.

• AWS Accredited Members of our AWS Consulting Partner Network
• Technical experts who are passionate about contributing their technical knowledge to the community
• Contributing through public speaking engagements, blogposts and white papers

I was expecting around 200 strong contingent for this event but was happily surprised to find out there were only 50 of us invited. Summit was spanned over two days and both of them were fully packed with sessions from BDMs (Business Development managers), PSAs (Principal Solutions Architects) and AWS Leaders. Highlight of the day one for me was meeting Jeff Barr. For some of you who do not know about Jeff Barr, he is AWS's Chief Evangelist and wrote very first blogs about EC2 and S3 services.

For me Q &A Sessions with BDMs and PSAs were very educational. It is not often that you get to be among a group of battle hardened experts who have worked with hundreds and thousands of clients and have come across pretty much any scenario you can think off. We had the opportunity to have candid conversations with AWS teams who are responsible for deciding service roadmaps. I am expecting these will result in influencing some of their decisions going forward.

Second best part of this event was a chance to hang out with all the experts from around the world, bounce ideas, share problems and possible solutions in a relaxed environment without any other distractions. AWS put together some great activities for us including a boat cruise of beautiful Seattle, visit to Amazon Spheres and Amazon Go (Where you can legally shoplift :) ).

I think AWS is on to something here. Being an APN Consulting Partner, we are thrown into the thick of it on daily basis. Amount of shared experience we bring to the room is invaluable to AWS and we get to have direct access to staff who are actually building AWS services. I can't wait to be invited for next year's event. Now back to my Cornetti Nocciola :)