AWS meetup #18: The 3rd annual re:invent special!

A note, and confirmation of line-up!

Important note:

1) You must RSVP if you intend to come, names will be checked off at security. Please note that as this is a business property there will be occasional bag checks at random at security - we'll keep these unobtrusive.

2) There are people on the waiting list and spaces are limited - if you can't attend or you change your mind on the day, please update your RSVP and ensure someone can go in your place, thanks!

Line-up confirmed!:

I am delighted to confirm the final line-up for this amazing meetup.

19:00 - Starting at 7pm on the dot (we have a lot to get through!) we will have the usual welcomes and introductions, and then for the main event:

19:10 - Part 1: re:invent triple pack! Featuring:

Session 1: re:Invent re:Cap - Ian Massingham, AWS Evangelist, will bring you up to speed with the latest new service announcements from the keynotes at AWS re:Invent.

Session 2: Internet of Things demo - Carlos Conde, AWS Chief Evangelist for EMEA, will be giving a hands-on demo of the AWS IoT Button and the AWS Internet of Things framework.

Session 3: The AWS well-architected framework - Philip Fitzsimons, AWS Head of Solutions Architecture, will be presenting an overview of the Well-Architected Framework and how you can use it to review an architecture. The framework enables you to assess and improve your cloud architectures and better understand the business impact of design decisions.

20:00 (approx) - break for refreshments.

20:15 - Part 2: Businesses building on AWS, featuring:

Session 4: Cloud Adoption at Investec; Benefits, Progress and Challenges - Chris Porter, Systems Support Engineer at Investec, will cover why financial institutes such as Investec are interested in the Cloud, what have Investec done so far using AWS and discussing some of the things they have had to overcome in order to start a wider adoption.

Session 5: Is the future of cloud architecture entirely serverless? - A Cloud Guru founder, Ant Stanley, will take us through the journey of building a collaborative online social learning platform on AWS without running a single server. He'll show how they did it using a variety of AWS services (Lambda, API Gateway, CloudSearch, S3, CloudFront and more) and 3rd party services such as Firebase, Auth0, Stripe, Intercom, Sentry and more.

After the talks: Refreshments and networking until close.

Can't wait to see you on Wednesday!

Norm & Ijaz

Original announcement:

Howdy,

I'm sat here in the Sands conference centre in Las Vegas having recently emerged from Amazon CTO Werner Vogels' keynote presentation on day two of re:invent 2015.

Yesterday and today AWS launched so many new services it's hard to know where to begin! There's a real buzz in the air!

Yesterday saw Andy Jassy announce QuickSight, Snowball, Kinesis Firehose, Config Rules, Inspector, Database Migration Service, and Schema Conversion Tool. If that wasn't enough, today Werner has just announced Kinesis Analytics, the monstrous X1 and minuscule t2.nano instance types, EC2 Container Registry, loads of new Lambda functionality, Mobile Hub, and the game-changing AWS Internet of Things suite.

We've teamed up with new sponsors for November, Investec Bank and training provider A Cloud Guru to bring as much re:invent as we can fit in our bags back to London. So here we go:

1 - Four great talks featuring genuine re:invent content including event sponsor A Cloud Guru showing how their online training business is built on AWS Lambda, and AWS Technical Evangelist and group favourite Ian Massingham on the new announcements.

2 - Every single meetup attendee will receive a completely free AWS training course from A Cloud Guru (yes, that's every single person who attends).

3 - We will have three amazing Star Wars Millennium Falcon drones and five adorable Star Wars "The Force Awakens" BB-8 droids to give away in the raffle.

4 - We have as many t-shirts from exhibitors here as we can fit in our bags to give you.

5 - We even have a few rare AWS Lego Ninja toys to give away!

6 - A fantastic high-capacity venue and top quality refreshments courtesy of sponsors Investec.

Sign-ups are open now - we've worked really hard to bring you something you'll like this time - we're super-excited about it and can't wait to see you all in November,

Cheers, Norm (http://www.twitter.com/n0rm) & Ijaz

@AWSUserGroup UK (http://www.twitter.com/awsusergroupuk)

A massive thank you to this month's sponsors:

Investec: Investec is an international specialist bank and asset manager that provides a diverse range of financial products and services to a niche client base in three principal markets, the UK and Europe, South Africa and Asia/Australia as well as certain other countries. The group was established in 1974 and currently has approximately 8,200 employees. Investec’s entrepreneurial spirit is a key component of an agile and exploratory approach to new technology which includes being actively engaged with cloud computing for a number of years. As the cloud matures a wider remit is being strategized including, amongst others: Current and future digital ecosystems; Advanced analytics including machine learning; Infrastructure and platform automation, monitoring and self-healing.

A Cloud Guru: Get AWS Certified! A Cloud Guru is a social learning platform focused on providing the skills required by IT professionals to operate in the cloud. They currently provide AWS Certification training for over 16,000 IT professionals enabling them for the future of work.

Say hello, and "thank you!" to our sponsors in November.