AWS re:Invent 2020, Week Two

6 minute read | Last updated 2-Aug-2022 |  AWS AWS re:Invent Cloud 

Week two of three for AWS re:Invent 2020 kicks off and this post will be my “live blog” for the week. It will be neither “live” not probably completed this week. Check back often for reactions, news, and tips on how to get the most out of the week.

The latest entries will be at the top and unlike the conference, the times here are listed in eastern. Scroll to the bottom, if you want to start from the start of the week.

Remember, I have a separate post with just my take on the latest announcements.

Index

• Friday, 11-Dec
• Thursday, 10-Dec
• Wednesday, 09-Dec
• Tuesday, 08-Dec
• Monday, 07-Dec

Friday, 11-Dec

• 09:00 I managed to sneak in another session! This time it was, “Data lakes: Easily build, secure, and share with AWS Lake Formation”. Check out my reactions in my tweet- :

  up next for me, EMB039, Data lakes: Easily build, secure, and share with AWS Lake Formation, at @awscloud #reinvent

  this 200-level session is presented by Mehul A. Shah, @Mashah08, GM of AWS Glue & Lake Formation pic.twitter.com/AbyqpJb2k0

  — Mark Nunnikhoven (@marknca) December 11, 2020

• 08:55 I finally finished the write up of my talk, “Mistakes Were Made. Lessons Were Learned”, and posted it

• 08:00 Next, I watched PNU203, Fighting wildfire with artificial intelligence. This is a session in the “power & utilities” track. I’m very curious to see the positioning and how far they go into different topics.

  Tweet- :

  next up for me at #reinvent is PNU203, Fighting wildfire with artificial intelligence

  btw, PNU is the code for “Power & Utilities” pic.twitter.com/3eVA7rUFkk

  — Mark Nunnikhoven (@marknca) December 11, 2020

• 07:30 I’m super excited to watch EMB037, Understand ML model predictions and biases with Amazon SageMaker Clarify, my tweet- for the session:

  first up for me today at #reinvent is, “Understand ML model predictions and biases with Amazon SageMaker Clarify”, EMB037#ml pic.twitter.com/xkF1k1WpZa

  — Mark Nunnikhoven (@marknca) December 11, 2020

Thursday, 10-Dec

• 10:31 I’ll be live tweeting the infrastructure keynote. You can check out my tweet-⛈ at:

  up shortly, the @awscloud #reinvent infrastructure keynote with Peter DeSantis

  this is an evolution of the Monday/Tuesday Night Live session from previous years and they’ve always been great! pic.twitter.com/mHr1agwTgy

  — Mark Nunnikhoven (@marknca) December 10, 2020

• 10:30 The stream for the infrastructure keynote hosted by Peter DeSantis kicks off with a performance by The White Buffalo

• 09:00 Next up: EMB034, “Accelerate data preparation with Amazon SageMaker Data Wrangler”

  My Twitter :

  next up for me is Ajai Sharma from @awscloud delivering EMB034, “Accelerate data preparation with Amazon SageMaker Data Wrangler”

  I’m very curious to see the differences compared to AWS Glue DataBrew…and you can too #reinvent https://t.co/LKVfctXr2p

  — Mark Nunnikhoven (@marknca) December 10, 2020

• 08:15 Started my day by watching EMB033, “Zero-code data preparation with AWS Glue DataBrew” by Surbhi Dangi.

  This session was really well structured and Surbhi is a great speaker. The energy was high throughout and the examples really hammered home the utility of the service.

  More in my tweet- :

  starting my #reinvent day with EMB033 – Zero-code data preparation with AWS Glue DataBrew pic.twitter.com/yN4PEHVIFe

  — Mark Nunnikhoven (@marknca) December 10, 2020

Wednesday, 09-Dec

• 18:30 I got to take in AIM211, “Deliver viewing experiences for super fans with Amazon Personalize”

  My twitter thread :

  I’m currently checking out “Deliver viewing experiences for super fans with Amazon Personalize”, AIM211, at #reinvent#ml pic.twitter.com/PymLrCgeqh

  — Mark Nunnikhoven (@marknca) December 9, 2020

• 18:15 My sessions gets rebroadcast for what I now realize is SGT with GMT being the sessions I catch super early in ET. Aren’t time zones fun?

• 14:45 I watched EMB031, “Improve application availability with ML-powered insights using Amazon DevOps Guru”. This session was presented by Jacob Sullivan, a Sr. Manager with AWS ML Services. It covered the 101 of the new Amazon DevOps Guru service and then went on to examine the expected use cases and integrations of the services.

  My tweet storm ⛈:

  currently watching EMB031, Improve application availability with ML-powered insights using Amazon DevOps Guru#reinvent pic.twitter.com/H7xhHKTK3N

  — Mark Nunnikhoven (@marknca) December 9, 2020

• 10:15 My session, “Mistakes Were Made. Lessons Were Learned”, aired for the first time. It’s been available on-demand via the Trend Micro sponsor page but showing up in the session catalog as “live” will hopefully drive more people to see this talk and learn about the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

  Full talk breakdown post coming soon!

• 09:00 I started by day by trying to fix a silly logic bug in my script that builds my “Hot Takes” post. It took way too long and was entirely my fault. Thankfully, I fixed it and simplified how I can review announcements made during the show

Tuesday, 08-Dec

• 20:45 I watched an excellent talk called, “Incident management in a distributed organization” (BLD208) by Oren Nachman. Being a security person, I just assume this was a security talk when I read “incident management” but I was pleasantly surprised to quickly find out this was about dealing with any incident.

  The good news is that normal vs security incident is 95% the same. I even did a talk on that very idea for AWS re:Invent 2016. This was an excellent talk and I really enjoy Oren’s style and the content.

  watching BLD208, Incident management in a distributed organization, by @OrenNachman#dfir #reinvent pic.twitter.com/un4lJ4QsL5

  — Mark Nunnikhoven (@marknca) December 9, 2020

• 17:00 I spent the afternoon digesting the machine learning keynote content and the security leadership session. A lot to think about…

• 13:15 Stephen Schmidt, AWS CISO, presented the leadership session on security (SEC219-L). This hour long session took a look at what security features AWS shipped over the last, their view of security, and what you can be doing right now to improve your security posture in the AWS Cloud.

  My twitter mega- :

  next up for me at #reinvent is, SEC219-L, the #security leadership session with @awscloud CISO, Steve Schmidt

  check it out at https://t.co/heBbgOMtxQ pic.twitter.com/iah5K1kHMm

  — Mark Nunnikhoven (@marknca) December 8, 2020

• 11:00 The machine learning keynote with Swami Sivasubramanian airs. Lots of great information about the state of machine learning in the AWS Cloud and some new services. Of particular note was the announcement of Amazon SageMaker Clarify, a tool to help identity and reduce bias in machine learning models. More on that soon.

  ⛈ Here’s my tweet storm of the keynote…

  the #reinvent keynote for Machine Learning, featuring @SwamiSivasubram kicks off in ~14m. join me!

  #ml pic.twitter.com/oQUdmfDvRV

  — Mark Nunnikhoven (@marknca) December 8, 2020

Monday, 07-Dec

• 23:00 Brandi Carlile and the band absolutely crush a fantastic set during AWS Late Night Week 2 that’ll be active at the end of the week.

  Brandi and Andy had a nice chat to start the session off. It was open and friendly. You could tell they both enjoyed the discussion about Brandi’s career and view on music.