Serverless Deep Dive: AWS Lambda Durable Functions & Conversational AI Agents

We are back with a new AWS User Group Athens meetup, and this time we are going deep into serverless, long-running workflows and the new possibilities unlocked by AWS Lambda Durable Functions.

Modern applications often need to coordinate retries, state, delays, callbacks, human-in-the-loop steps, and distributed business logic. Traditionally, that usually meant external orchestration, explicit state machines, or custom persistence logic.

In this meetup, we will explore how AWS Lambda Durable Functions can simplify that model by letting developers express reliable, long-running workflows directly in familiar programming languages.

We will have two technical sessions: first, a deep dive into the core concepts of AWS Lambda Durable Functions and how they compare with AWS Step Functions; then, a practical session on building resilient conversational AI workflows with Amazon Bedrock agents and the Sinch Conversation API.

A big thank you to Epignosis for hosting us at their HQ for this meetup.

Important venue information

This meetup will take place at Epignosis HQ. Please check the map and venue instructions carefully before arriving.

The venue’s security team will be checking IDs at the entrance. For this reason:

• You must provide your full name when RSVPing.
• You must bring a valid ID for entry.
• RSVP will close 2 days before the event so that the attendee list can be shared with the venue.

Please make sure the name on your RSVP matches your ID.

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Agenda

18:00 – 18:30: Entry & networking
18:30 – 19:20: Deep Dive on AWS Lambda Durable Functions
Speaker: Lefteris Karageorgiou
19:30 – 20:20: Building Conversational Agents in Code with AWS Lambda Durable Functions
Speaker: Gunnar Grosch
20:30 – open end: Networking, 🍕🍻

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Session 1: Deep Dive on AWS Lambda Durable Functions

AWS Lambda Durable Functions makes it easier to build reliable, fault-tolerant applications using familiar programming languages like JavaScript, Python, and Java.
In this session, we will explore how durable functions simplify retries, state management, and human-in-the-loop workflows for long-running processes, and how they compare with AWS Step Functions for orchestrating distributed applications.
Through a live demo, you will learn how to use features like “steps” and “waits” directly in your IDE to handle failures, track progress, and orchestrate business logic with less complexity.

About the speaker
Lefteris is a Senior Solutions Architect at AWS with 20 years of experience in software engineering, specializing in serverless architectures.
He is the author of the book “Mastering Event-Driven Microservices in AWS” and runs a weekly newsletter, “The Cloud Engineers,” where he shares insightful articles on cloud computing.
Passionate about sharing his knowledge, Lefteris is a public speaker and frequently speaks at technical conferences such as AWS re:Invent, AWS Summits, and Devoxx.

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Session 2: Building Conversational Agents in Code with AWS Lambda Durable Functions

Building multi-agent AI workflows usually requires complex state machines to handle unpredictable human delays.
Building on the core concepts of AWS Lambda Durable Functions, this session dives into applied agent orchestration. We will coordinate Amazon Bedrock conversational agents using the Sinch Conversation API to handle inbound interactions.
You will learn how to dispatch specialized AI agents, use callbacks to handle asynchronous human input natively, and build resilient, long-running chat architectures entirely in code.

About the speaker
Gunnar Grosch is a Developer Advocate at Sinch and an engineer with over 25 years of experience building software, scaling developer communities, and making complex technology accessible.
He started as a community member, became an AWS User Group Leader, was named an AWS Serverless Hero, and spent more than five years as a Developer Advocate at AWS, rising to Principal.
Gunnar sits between the people who build the tools and the people who use them, making both sides better by bringing community feedback back to product teams.

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Whether you are building serverless applications, distributed workflows, AI agents, event-driven systems, or just want to understand where Lambda Durable Functions fit in the AWS ecosystem, this meetup is for you.
Join us for deep technical content, practical demos, great speakers, and the usual AWS community networking.