Welcome to the first 2026 AWS Sydney Well-Architected User Group Meetup!

Hi Architects,

Welcome to the first 2026 AWS Sydney Well-Architected User Group Meetup!

Each month we cover off AWS best-practices across all pillars and give away drones, of course. DJI drones! Last month we gave away 9! 🥳

The speakers for this month!

• Adiel Horesh, Chief Business Officer, Scytale

Automating Compliance in Well-Architected Cloud Environments

Security is a cornerstone of the AWS Well-Architected Framework and as cloud environments grow more complex, ensuring continuous compliance has become critical. In this session, we'll explore how engineering and security teams can embed compliance automation directly into their AWS architecture, aligning with frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, Essential 8 and Australia's evolving regulatory landscape.

• **Josh Mehlman, CEO, mehlman.info**

A well architected case study – what Die Hard and Star Wars can teach you about telling compelling tech stories.

Josh will be talking about common storytelling structures such as the three-act structure for movie scripts and the hero's journey and explaining how tech case studies have their own structure and journey (and hero!), plus adding some advice on what makes case studies more interesting,

• Mystery Speaker

Can Cost Optimisation Improve your other pillars?

In this talk, we'll go through whether Cost Optimisation can improve your security, operational excellence, reliability, etc. and more importantly, how (spoiler alert - it can but it will be an interesting exploration).

This month's menu will include:

• Pizzas
• Beer: Nastro Azzurro
• Wine: Big and red 🤤

So come join us at 5:30 for a 6pm SHARP start, followed by beer, wine, pizza and friendly networking after our talks :-)