7 ms·

AWS Re:Invent Presentations

61 points by jeffbarr 7y ago

fnord77 7y ago
Can anyone point out some of the good ones? Just about every presentation I went to this year at re:invent was not particularly good. They lacked depth and just seemed to be saying "just use this aws product" and you'll be all set.
- Koshkin 7y ago
  > just use this aws product Can confirm, it looked like this was the whole point of a SageMaker presentation, for instance. (On the other hand, no one has been fired for buying from IBM... err, Amazon!)
- manigandham 7y ago
  Almost all presentations at big tech events are like that. I usually watch the technical backgrounds and deep dives to get information that isn't already on the marketing website.
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  This is one of my main problems with the AWS everything advocates. I'm ok with using AWS mostly for a few key things like infrastructure, but I want my tooling to be independent and able to adapt to other situations. For example,why should I ever use CloudFormation over Ansible or Terraform when it lacks many features and can't be applied to other providers?
  - zippie 7y ago
    I’ve been slowly coming around to this. Also there is no reason why something like salt cannot be adopted into the k8s world, it would bring better base image management capabilities by forcing larger organizations into a common image. A common base image would be easier to patch, upgrade, and maintain. Larger k8s deployments tend to not be so great at image management, which is a cost paid in operations dollars that were supposed to be saved by k8s. What it comes down to is tooling which separates the application enough from the platform where I can move between metal, virtual, and containers without much effort. If this goal is achieved, moving between providers is achieved in tandem.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Well, then you get the worse of both worlds. Why use AWS at all if you’re not using their managed services? You’re spending more on raw resources and just as much on maintenance. As far as Terraform, there is nothing portable about it. Each of its provisioners are cloud specific.
    - arminiusreturns 7y ago
      > Why use AWS at all if you’re not using their managed services? Is this a serious question? I can value the infrastructure the AWS provides, such as regions and availability zones, while not wanting to get tied into their other services including the managed services for reasons such as business requirements for cloud agnosticism, which is for example one reason I tend to use HAproxy instead of ELB even on stuff on AWS. With CI/CD pipelines applied to infrastructure and a move towards no-ops, the maintenance costs of self-managed infra is reducing more and more. I understand for some shops with a lack of personnel or knowledge to accomplish that self management may want to buy into a holisitic solution, but I think it's awfully intellectually disingenuous to not recognize the potential value of not buying into a holistic solution in certain situations. Also, common, 'cloud specific'? So if I want to spin up my stack on Google or some other platform, I just have to rewrite a few lines of some .tf files. If I want to do that and I'm tied to CloudFormation.... I'm sol...
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Really? You would go as far as managing your own load balancers instead of using a managed, highly available ELB from AWS? Have you tried using Terraform across providers? It’s far more than just “a few lines of codes”. If you just want cross region availability and still manage things yourself, there are much cheaper ways than AWS.
        arminiusreturns 7y ago
        Yes I would, there are some cases where the featureset is better. Also, it really is just a few lines of code. If you separate out IAC-code and configuration code even if you are running through say a jenkins pipeline it's not much trouble to change a few .tf files around to get the same result on a different provider... You act like writing terraform is hard or convoluted and I don't understand where you are coming from on that. https://github.com/terraform-providers https://github.com/terraform-providers
- zwily 7y ago
  You’ll have better luck if you limit yourself to 400-level presentations. Still not perfect, but you’re less likely to get 20 minutes of beginner-level introduction before you get to the good stuff. But yeah, it’s frustrating. If you’re only going to breakout sessions at re:Invent you’re not getting your money’s worth. You need to have lots of discussions with AWS engineers in the AWS portion of the expo hall, and if your spend is high enough, get private meetings with the service teams you’re using or are interested in.
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    This is definitely true. The highlight of the week was the serverless summit on Monday. It’s a shame this left the rest of the week a little bleak by comparison.
    - ignoramous 7y ago
      > The highlight of the week was the serverless summit on Monday. List of Serverless talks at reinvent 2019: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/serverless-at-aws-reinvent-2019/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/serverless-at-aws-...
- spondyl 7y ago
  I enjoyed the talk about scaling Pokemon GO + migrating from DBshards to Aurora PostgreSQL which went into what they tried, what failed and what succeeded rather than just saying "We used X service and it was great" I couldn't find it in that catalogue but you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eEKuK5eOC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eEKuK5eOC4
  - jamiesonbecker 7y ago
    There are no security talks listed either.
    - ldoughty 7y ago
      Might be saving good stuff for their security focused conference: re:enforce.
      - jamiesonbecker 7y ago
        Good thought! It looks like they updated the site and there are a lot of security talks listed now! whew
gamegoblin 7y ago
I found a lot of videos of the actual presentations on the AWS Events youtube channel here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdoadna9HFHsxXWhafhNvKw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdoadna9HFHsxXWhafhNvKw/vid... . Would've been nice if they were linked on OP's page.
deleted 7y ago
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RocketSyntax 7y ago
reinvent was a total waste of time. i didn't know that you had to reserve a seat in every single session you wanted to attend. didn't get into any.

61 points by jeffbarr 7y ago

Can anyone point out some of the good ones? Just about every presentation I went to this year at re:invent was not particularly good. They lacked depth and just seemed to be saying "just use this aws product" and you'll be all set.

Koshkin 7y ago
> just use this aws product Can confirm, it looked like this was the whole point of a SageMaker presentation, for instance. (On the other hand, no one has been fired for buying from IBM... err, Amazon!)
manigandham 7y ago
Almost all presentations at big tech events are like that. I usually watch the technical backgrounds and deep dives to get information that isn't already on the marketing website.
arminiusreturns 7y ago
This is one of my main problems with the AWS everything advocates. I'm ok with using AWS mostly for a few key things like infrastructure, but I want my tooling to be independent and able to adapt to other situations. For example,why should I ever use CloudFormation over Ansible or Terraform when it lacks many features and can't be applied to other providers?
- zippie 7y ago
  I’ve been slowly coming around to this. Also there is no reason why something like salt cannot be adopted into the k8s world, it would bring better base image management capabilities by forcing larger organizations into a common image. A common base image would be easier to patch, upgrade, and maintain. Larger k8s deployments tend to not be so great at image management, which is a cost paid in operations dollars that were supposed to be saved by k8s. What it comes down to is tooling which separates the application enough from the platform where I can move between metal, virtual, and containers without much effort. If this goal is achieved, moving between providers is achieved in tandem.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Well, then you get the worse of both worlds. Why use AWS at all if you’re not using their managed services? You’re spending more on raw resources and just as much on maintenance. As far as Terraform, there is nothing portable about it. Each of its provisioners are cloud specific.
  - arminiusreturns 7y ago
    > Why use AWS at all if you’re not using their managed services? Is this a serious question? I can value the infrastructure the AWS provides, such as regions and availability zones, while not wanting to get tied into their other services including the managed services for reasons such as business requirements for cloud agnosticism, which is for example one reason I tend to use HAproxy instead of ELB even on stuff on AWS. With CI/CD pipelines applied to infrastructure and a move towards no-ops, the maintenance costs of self-managed infra is reducing more and more. I understand for some shops with a lack of personnel or knowledge to accomplish that self management may want to buy into a holisitic solution, but I think it's awfully intellectually disingenuous to not recognize the potential value of not buying into a holistic solution in certain situations. Also, common, 'cloud specific'? So if I want to spin up my stack on Google or some other platform, I just have to rewrite a few lines of some .tf files. If I want to do that and I'm tied to CloudFormation.... I'm sol...
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Really? You would go as far as managing your own load balancers instead of using a managed, highly available ELB from AWS? Have you tried using Terraform across providers? It’s far more than just “a few lines of codes”. If you just want cross region availability and still manage things yourself, there are much cheaper ways than AWS.
      - arminiusreturns 7y ago
        Yes I would, there are some cases where the featureset is better. Also, it really is just a few lines of code. If you separate out IAC-code and configuration code even if you are running through say a jenkins pipeline it's not much trouble to change a few .tf files around to get the same result on a different provider... You act like writing terraform is hard or convoluted and I don't understand where you are coming from on that. https://github.com/terraform-providers https://github.com/terraform-providers
zwily 7y ago
You’ll have better luck if you limit yourself to 400-level presentations. Still not perfect, but you’re less likely to get 20 minutes of beginner-level introduction before you get to the good stuff. But yeah, it’s frustrating. If you’re only going to breakout sessions at re:Invent you’re not getting your money’s worth. You need to have lots of discussions with AWS engineers in the AWS portion of the expo hall, and if your spend is high enough, get private meetings with the service teams you’re using or are interested in.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  This is definitely true. The highlight of the week was the serverless summit on Monday. It’s a shame this left the rest of the week a little bleak by comparison.
  - ignoramous 7y ago
    > The highlight of the week was the serverless summit on Monday. List of Serverless talks at reinvent 2019: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/serverless-at-aws-reinvent-2019/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/serverless-at-aws-...
spondyl 7y ago
I enjoyed the talk about scaling Pokemon GO + migrating from DBshards to Aurora PostgreSQL which went into what they tried, what failed and what succeeded rather than just saying "We used X service and it was great" I couldn't find it in that catalogue but you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eEKuK5eOC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eEKuK5eOC4
- jamiesonbecker 7y ago
  There are no security talks listed either.
  - ldoughty 7y ago
    Might be saving good stuff for their security focused conference: re:enforce.
    - jamiesonbecker 7y ago
      Good thought! It looks like they updated the site and there are a lot of security talks listed now! whew

gamegoblin 7y ago

I found a lot of videos of the actual presentations on the AWS Events youtube channel here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdoadna9HFHsxXWhafhNvKw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdoadna9HFHsxXWhafhNvKw/vid... . Would've been nice if they were linked on OP's page.

deleted 7y ago

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RocketSyntax 7y ago

reinvent was a total waste of time. i didn't know that you had to reserve a seat in every single session you wanted to attend. didn't get into any.