10 insider tips for AWS re:Invent attendees

For first-timers or veterans, there are always ways to re:Invent better. Here are 10 quick tips to get the most of the year’s best cloud conference.

If you haven’t attended re:Invent before or visited Vegas, the famed annual gathering of the AWS faithful can be a different kind of tech conference. After 4 previous re:Invents, here are my top tips to get the most out of this year’s pilgrimage.

Update: some great extra tips appeared on this Reddit thread.

1. The time to book tickets, hotels and flights is *right now*.

There’s still time to book a conference ticket, while hotels and flights are starting to thin out quickly. For hotels, some off-strip hotels like the SLS, Hard Rock or Elara may be the best for balancing cost and distance to events. Be aware of the excessive daily resort fees of Vegas hotels, most over $40 a day in 2018. If you’re tight on time, most of the conference happens from Tuesday to Thursday so it’s not strictly necessary to stay longer. Keynotes are Wednesday and Thursday.

2. Don’t cram your schedule.

You have to book your sessions on the re:Invent website to get the best chance of a guaranteed place. But most first-timers pack their day with sessions from morning til night which results in a mad dash from one end of “The Strip” to the other and an exhaustive death-march between events. This is a long conference, and you can catch sessions on YouTube a few weeks after the event.

Focus on a topic — serverless, storage, security — and attend unique events like workshops, hackathons or builder sessions. You’ll get more out of these and won’t feel conference fatigue by Wednesday! Also, there are usually surprise announcements at the keynotes resulting in new sessions appearing on Thursday. It pays to keep a laptop open at the keynote so you can book one of these ahead of the crowd (I managed to score a Deep Lens last year).

3. Meet other people.

The main reason to go to re:Invent is to meet other people — whether it’s those new to the cloud or established veterans, everybody is here. The event is a Who’s Who of brilliant minds, so don’t miss the opportunity to meet as many people as possible. I’ve met some great people here.

I get it — we’re in IT, it’s an introverted profession and networking sucks. But it’s completely legitimate to walk up to people, start talking, make contacts and learn something. What’s the worst that can happen? If you’re shy or not convinced, see this guy…

… that’s me! Ping me at @jbesw and I’ll be happy to come and say hello. Don’t miss this awesome opportunity to meet other cloud enthusiasts and learn about what they’re building.

4. Reinvent parties list.

AWS has a legendary re:Play event but there are dozens of other, smaller scale meetups happening outside of the official agenda. The best place to keep track of these is the re:Invent Parties list, an unofficial but incredibly helpful guide to what’s going on. These events tend to happen in the bars and restaurants around the casinos so there’s plenty of free food and drinks. It’s literally the only free thing in Vegas so don’t miss it.

5. Use Twitter.

Twitter shines at conferences and you can get realtime information by following the event hashtags. Even if you don’t use or like Twitter in real life, it’s a useful communication tool when there are 50,000 people running around a dozen venues. If the buses are late, a session is canceled, or something important just happened, Twitter will know first.

6. Remember: it’s Vegas.

Pace yourself — a week is a long time in Vegas. Bring everything you need like contact lenses, ibuprofen, medication, toothpaste and earplugs because you’ll pay double if you have to buy it in the captive environment of The Strip. Also bring comfortable sneakers because you will walk miles every day, and getting blisters early is a surefire way to hate the conference. The distances between locations are immense.

Also, dress casually. Unless you’re a vendor, nobody’s expecting you to look smart. Given the constant running around and variable weather, you don’t need much more than jeans and a T-shirt. You’ll load up on so many free T-shirts, socks and giveaways in the vendor hall, you can easily survive a week in free clothes.

7. The keynotes aren’t essential.

It’s great to see Andy Jassy and Werner Vogels live on stage but you’re competing with 30,000 people for seats in an auditorium half the size. This means you’ll need to get in line at least an hour before doors open, which can impact your energy for the rest of the day. The keynotes are live broadcast to other locations with no lines. They also tend to run late which can impact the sessions immediately after.

8. Disconnect from work.

Re:invent is an immersive conference with excellent content, and you’ll miss out if you’re handling constant work issues from colleagues. Set the expectation before you leave that you’re gone for a few days — they will manage and you’ll extract all the value from that $1800 conference ticket. I see endless people leaving sessions and dealing with outages on their laptops — it’s a total waste of their time, and you should aim to minimize these disruptions before arriving.

9. Have some fun.

I really enjoy re:Invent — primarily for the educational content of AWS but also you can have a blast in Vegas. For foodies, some of the best restaurants in the world are available, and not just on The Strip. Check out District One, Sparrow + Wolf, Esther’s Kitchen and Other Mama for some of the best dining you’ll ever experience.

This is the right place if you want to go skydiving, race a sports car, fire a machine gun, ride a helicopter, try ziplining or do a Sky Jump. All the best Cirque du Soleil shows are here, and touring the Hoover Dam is a one-of-a-kind experience. Don’t limit yourself to the conference and the hotel room — there’s something for everyone.

10. Some myths busted.

Jeff Bezos hasn’t attended in the last few years. Casinos don’t put the easy slot machines near the door. The free drinks while gambling aren’t very generous. Las Vegas is no longer cheap and hasn’t been for a while. And despite what you might hear after the whole thing, you’ll definitely want to come back to another re:Invent. See you there!