AWS User Group UK Meetup #76
Details
Welcome to our March event.
We're delighted to welcome Matt Johnson, CEO, Rayo, and Dan Keely, Principal Data Engineer, Rebura.
Matt talks about hard-won AWS lessons on keeping cloud costs under control - plus a real “oops” story of how one small mistake can blow up your bill (and how to stop it happening again).
Dan talks shares how hardware-style production thinking makes your data platforms more reliable, maintainable, and cheaper to run
A big thank you to our sponsors The Scale Factory and Cloudscaler!
Programme:
18:00: Arrival, registration
18:15: Talks start
20:00: Networking with food and a drink provided by the generosity of our sponsors.
Talk 1:
When things go wrong: Managing cost in the cloud with Matt Johnson.
There are lots of sessions that talk about the theory of cost management and tooling available on AWS, but far less look at the real world challenges of using them in production, as well as the rough edges they have - not to mention what happens when things go wrong!
In this session Matt will cover some of the hard lessons learned from working with AWS over the last 14 years, with a real-world example of how a simple mistake can cause problems, and how to avoid them in future.
The presentation is aimed at both those new to AWS and to veterans of the platform, and also includes practical guidance on how to improve your cost management on AWS.
Matt has been using AWS since 2011, including 8.5 years at AWS in the public sector tech org. He has presented at 6 separate re:Invents and dozens of other events, covering a wide range of topics. Now as CEO of Rayo, Matt continues to help customers deliver mission outcomes using cloud technology.
Talk 2:
Predictable Designs in Data Engineering on AWS with Dan Keeley.
What if we treated data engineering systems the way world-class hardware teams treat products headed for mass production?
John Teel (Texas Instruments) has spent years taking complex hardware from prototype to dependable, high-quality production at scale. In this talk, Dan borrows those “production-grade” principles - predictability, repeatability, and ruthless attention to failure modes, and translates them into practical patterns for building data platforms on AWS.
This is less about any single AWS service and more about building data systems that behave consistently, even as requirements, volumes, and teams change.
What you’ll learn:
Attendees will leave with practical, reusable approaches they can apply immediately:
- How to make systems maintainable
- How to keep costs efficient without heroics
- How to borrow best practices across engineering disciplines
Dan is a community driven data engineer and now c-level team builder working with a wide range of Data technologies in the cloud. He is on the steering group for the biggest tech conference in London - BigDataLDN. He has won a number of awards, including being named in the top 50 data leaders and influencers in the UK.
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If you are interested in speaking at one of our events please check out our call for papers here.
We are advocates for greater inclusion & diversity in UK Tech and are especially keen to receive talk submissions from people in underrepresented groups. If you are interested in speaking at a future meetup but would like to discuss what to expect or need assistance please contact our Inclusion & Diversity Lead Natalie Gray - graynataliej@gmail.com or DM her @natjgray
Check out our website for more information about our community. Remember to follow us @AWSUserGroupUK and on LinkedIn for the latest updates and you can find videos of our past meetups on YouTube. If you want to chat with other members, join our Community Discord Server.
