{"id":28928,"date":"2018-11-12T13:17:31","date_gmt":"2018-11-12T11:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/?p=28928"},"modified":"2019-02-01T15:00:35","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T13:00:35","slug":"awsome-day-athens-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2018\/11\/12\/awsome-day-athens-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"AWSome Day Athens 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Last week I’ve attended the AWSome Day Athens 2018<\/a> (huge thanks to Qobo<\/a> for the opportunity).  There aren’t that many technology events in Cyprus, so I’m constantly on the lookout for events in Europe.<\/p>\n

AWSome Day Athens is part of the Amazon’s AWSome Day Global Series<\/a>, which are one day events organized all throughout the world.  The events are usually for a single day, featuring the speakers from both Amazon AWS team and some of their prominent clients from the area.  AWSome Day Athens 2018 was done in partnership with Beat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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A few words on the organization of the event.  I think it was excellent!  The venue is a concert hall, which provided plenty of space, both for the talks and networking.  The registration process was smooth.  There was plenty of coffee and snacks for the attendees, and a decent lunch.  WiFi seemed to be working fine, even though I personally haven’t used it (thanks to no extra roaming charges on the 4G throughout Europe).  If there was one thing I was missing – that’d be beer.  But again, not a big problem, as there’s a really nice Irish Pub almost across the road.<\/p>\n

Now on to the talks …<\/p>\n

“The Real-World Approach to Enterprise Transformation” by Jonathan Allen, AWS Enterprise Strategist, EMEA.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This talk wasn’t very technical.  It was more on how to transform the technology, processes, and people for the cloud computing – something that many companies, big or small, are still struggling with now.  Before joining Amazon AWS, Jonathan Allen<\/a> spent 15+ years in Capital One<\/a>, one of the largest American banks<\/a>, so it was very interesting to hear his approaches and lessons learned.<\/p>\n

Given the level of bureaucracy in most large organizations, and particularly in banks, it was quite surprising to hear Jonathan say that companies should “just start”.  Instead of making long plans and big decisions, it’s easier and faster to simply provide at least some access to Amazon AWS to developers and sysadmins to start playing around.  This approach will help get going.  I strongly agree with this point, and one more that he made as well – an organization needs a single person, rather than a committee, that is responsible for the transformation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A couple of interesting quotes from the talk:<\/p>\n