It’s that time of year, friends. And no, we’re not talking about Christmas markets, mulled wine and dubiously cooked festive sausages, that’s next week! Today we’re talking AWS re:Invent.

As this is my second year, I’m no longer a total newbie. So in this newsletter, I wanted to share with you my list of must see talks, events, and outside the conference things to do!

Bookmark this issue as I’m going to break down tips per day, starting with pre-conference events like Midday Madness, before getting into things like Re:Play and other bits!

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Before you leave & packing list

Whilst it looks a bit warmer for next week right now, it is typically between 56°F / 13°C in the day and down to 35°F / 2°C at night, definitely jacket weather.

• Solid walking shoes. I'm literally taking my hiking boots. You’ll walk a lot.
• Snacks. Food is provided, but they’re 102% corn syrup (you’ve been warned).
• A solid portable battery pack + a large water bottle.
• Pack fewer t-shirts than you need if you plan to get swag. 
• Go through social media and DM those you want to hangout with, because when things get going, you’ll have zero time.
• Pre-register for side events by looking at conferenceparties.com (don’t forget to sign up to the now legendary House of Kube on Monday night at Area15!)

Sunday & Monday: The conference kick-off

• If you land early, take a walk at Red Rock Canyon which is only a 20-30 minutes drive. You’ll need to rent a car though, as Uber’s are not possible without phone signal.
• When jet lag has you up at 5am and you’re not in the main hotels, head over to the Venetian with your badge on, you’ll be surprised how many people are around. There’s many morning sessions like yoga, breakfasts and even a 5K run on the agenda.
• Do a reconnaissance walk, because the conference is huge. Key things to find are areas like the expo hall, certified lounge, food courts and any hotel bridge connections, the venue is a total labyrinth. I’ll also be on Ona booth #632 in the expo, so come say hi!
• Midday Madness at Caesars Forum is ‘the unofficial kick-off to re:Invent’. It runs both Sunday (12pm-8pm) and Monday (8am-6pm). On Sunday there’s the Road to re:Invent hackathon where 50 developers compete for $100K. Free food, drinks, and swag.

Tuesday & Wednesday: Main conference

• At 8am-10:30am Tuesday everyone will head to Matt Garman's keynote as this is where all the big service announcements come. Expect queues of ~2hrs for the main keynote room, or 1hrs for the overflow ones. My suggestion instead is to catch the stream and instead make use of the ‘hallway track’, sessions or expo. Consider also the EKS and Kubernetes sessions like at AWS containers Kiosk and Developers Pavilion.
• At 5pm-8pm Tuesday, Sam Barlien & the Platform Engineering community are hosting a roundtable discussion. 40 platform engineers together for group platform therapy.
• At 5:30pm-8:30pm, there is a Platform Engineering community workshop, “You have Terraform. How do you orchestrate it?”

Thursday & Friday: Conference wrap up

Weezer playing re:Play 2024

• The re:Play party is on Thursday night @ 7:30pm in the Las Vegas Festival Grounds. Last year Weezer were playing and it was the absolute highlight of the week for me. The acts for this year will be announced during re:Invent.
• The iconic Werner Vogels Keynote is at 3:30pm-4:30pm. This is always more of a developer-focussed, not so service-announcing session to close out the week. It’s typically one of the more entertaining, casual keynotes. 
• If you’ve got some time to kill on your last day, Fremont Street downtown is always popular. Last year I also hit up The Neon Museum which was very ‘Vegas’ and an enjoyably calm trip away from the busy strip.

Come say hi, and see agents update 1000 repos at once

I’ll be at the Ona booth. Swing by to see a demo of Automations updating 1000’s of Backstage configurations simultaneously using an orchestrated fleet of AI software engineers. 

To help you find the booth I used Nano Banana to create a hyper-realistic mockup. Failing that, here’s a conventional map (booth #632). Or just look for the Hawaiian shirts!

It’s been a fun year of guest writing for Platform Weekly. My favorite episodes this year were why we left Kubernetes and why you should mandate tooling if you want to go back and check those out. Final reminder to bookmark the newsletter to come back to it in the week.

See you in Vegas !