The Good, the Bad and the Funded

This week I was fortunate enough to be flown over to Sydney for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Funding Roadshow.

AWS has a wide range of funding programs available for partners to tap into to assist their customers. Whether you’re migrating from on-prem to the cloud, building a POC, modernising your applications or to help you accelerate your cloud journey. They also support their partner network by providing access to funding to things like marketing funds which have enabled us to undertake some unique campaigns

Thank you to the AWSome presenters Joshua Te Hira, Samuel Taylor, Erick Levitre, George Stamatis, Belle W., Andrew Diamond, Dylan Morison, Devan Maria Freebairn, Christian Rota, Amanda Lowe, Ori Stern, Sharon Rode and Shankar Moorthy

The Good

Firstly, the majority of events like this give a brief overview but never provide any real substance and you get told to look at the supporting documentation afterwards. Thankfully this was not the case here as each presenter had in-depth knowledge of their topic and was able to talk about real scenarios of when a particular program may or may not apply.

Next, the attendee numbers were kept low which meant you weren’t struggling to see the content properly and the sessions that had time for Q&A seemed to work well with a smaller crowd.

Finally, and most importantly, the presenters focused on the key information that you needed to know so you could really get the most out of their content. Little time was spent fluffing around, it was focused on what you needed to know to get the most out of it.

The Bad

Some sessions felt rushed and left little or no time for Q&A. While not the end of the world, the presenters were often swarmed during breaks with people wanting to follow up.

Admittedly this next one’s on me but I really should have planned a longer trip.

Yes, it would have been more expensive (sorry boss) however the value in networking cannot be underestimated and sadly I had to dash to the airport at the end of the final session meaning my opportunities to speak to the presenters and other connections was limited to the brief breaks. Having attended AWS Summit back in April this was a great opportunity to reconnect with some AWSome (see what I did there) people, establish new connections in the funding space and engage with people in similar roles as me, sadly it will have to be over conference call (must remember to turn the rabbit ear filter off).

The Funded

Knowing what programs are available to help both Mechanical Rock and their customers, how we access them and importantly, the lead times if doing so is vital in my role. Staying on top of these programs and any changes to requirements can be challenging at times but having this roadshow dedicated to “what you need to know” and cramming in as much content as possible was incredibly helpful and was much more enjoyable than pouring through endless documentation to check for updates. With lots of “it depends” scenarios, my next steps are to distil my learnings down into a bit of a cheat sheet for our team so they know what’s available when they are having conversations with our customers. And for those programs we don’t yet qualify for I can work with our team to build a plan to get there.

In summary, this was a highly valuable experience and I’d love to see the roadshow actually hit the road and visit us in sunny Perth.

If you’d like to know more about how we can help you take advantage of the AWS funding programs to accelerate your cloud journey, please get in touch.

And finally… for those playing along at home here’s a GenAI mention for your buzzword bingo card.

About Sarah:

Sarah has been the Partner Exec at Mechanical Rock since 2019. She has a talent for getting the most out of our partnerships, accessing available partner funding and training enablement for the team.

She is also one of the organisers of Latency Conference, the only local conference dedicated to building secure, high performing cloud native applications.

She is also a Guinness World Record holder.