All Things AWS re:Invent 2019
8 minute read | Last updated 8-Dec-2019 | 
AWS, AWS re:Invent
AWS re:Invent 2019 started on December 2nd, 2019. There is going to be a ton of things happening during the week and leading up to it. This page is the only way I can keep it all straight. Come back regularly to see what’s going on leading up to and during the show!
The ultimate guide to AWS re:Invent
Every year, I write an “Ultimate Guide” to the conference. It may not be “ultimate” (but only because I hasn’t battled other guides officially) but it is a very useful resource. The guide is updated regularly as AWS released more and more information about the week, so please check back often and let me know if anything is missing.
Thanks to A Cloud Guru for publishing the guide on their blog.
My official AWS re:Invent guide
Last year was the first time AWS invited a number of AWS Heroes. It was a smashing success! He continued those efforts at AWS re:Inforce in the spring and now we’re back for AWS re:Invent 2019.
My guide is called, “Practical Security”.
In the guide, I recommend a number of sessions that will help you modernize your security practice and get the most out of building in the AWS Cloud.
I’m speaking at AWS re:Invent 2019
This year, I have the privilege of speaking at the show. This will mark talks #15 and #16 at the show for me. Every year I try to deliver at least one talk that either shows a new side of modern security or brings everyone up to speed on the bigger picture around modern security.
This year, we’re back to big picture.
I’ll be delivering SEC204-S, “Strong security made simple: Putting all the pieces together”. Here’s the description from the session catalog:
Organizations struggle with extending their security practices to the cloud. Traditional approaches don’t work, and new cloud-only practices duplicate work for an already overtaxed team. The goal of cybersecurity is simple: to ensure that what you build works as intended and only as intended.
This session teaches you how the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework and Well-Architected Framework can help you create a cloud security strategy. For tactics, learn how to integrate key AWS security services, open-source tools, and AWS Lambda automations into the workflow of your organization. Strong security doesn’t have to be complicated; this session shows you how.
Here’s the talk in full:
I’ll also be delivering a portion of DOP204-S, “Transforming IT pros to DevOps gurus: How to secure your new tech stacks”. This is a joint session with Trend Micro customer, Pivvot and it’ll mainly be Jason stage share his and his team’s experiences with their cultural & technology shift away from traditional IT to a true DevOps philosophy. Jason’s a great speaker, you should definitely come check out this talk.
Here’s that talk in full:
Road to AWS re:Invent 2019
Leading up to the show, I’ll be streaming regularly on LinkedIn. These streams usually last 30 minutes and in each one, we tackle a specific service, technique, or issue. The goal is to help introduce different parts of the AWS Cloud to the audience before we all dive into a week of crazy learning at AWS re:Invent.
27-Nov-2019 // 4 days left
AWS has recently explored with great machine learning services. From the core building blocks to services design to teach you techniques to simple transactional services that just get the job done. This stream looks provides an overview of these services and when you might want to use them.13-Nov-2019 // 18 days left
AWS offers a number of services it labels as "compute". What are they? How do you pick one that makes sense for your workload? How are they different from each other? This live stream tackles these questions as we take a look at computation in the AWS Cloud01-Nov-2019 // 30 days left
Amazon DynamoDB is an exciting database services. It's a cloud-native, NoSQL offering that is lightning quick and scales seamlessly. However, if you treat it like a traditional RDBMS, you're not going to see any of those benefits. In this live stream, I explore some mistakes I've made and how to fix them by moving to a DynamoDB-friendly approach.30-Oct-2019 // 32 days left
AWS offers a mountain of great database services, but it can be hard to determine which one your should be using. In this live stream we look at each of these data services in turn and talk about why you would select one over the other.Eventually, we stumble through a DyanmoDB example that will have most saying, "AWS Hero? More like ZERO"...redemption will be sought 😉.
17-Oct-2019 // 45 days left
The cloud is an amplifier for teams. It allows small teams to build previously unheard solutions at scale.The downside of that ability is that teams are dealing with more complexity than ever. Holding to the core principle of "systems over people" will reduce the change of mistakes...but they are still going to happen.
Ideally, you leverage [IAM](https://aws.amazon.com/iam/) to reduce permissions and prevent mistakes but realistically, you still need a system to catch mistakes. In this live stream, we look at a few ways to do just that.
15-Oct-2019 // 47 days left
Every year the opening of reserved seating brings up mixed feelings for me. On one hand, I'm excited that I can start to firm up my schedule and hopefully get a seat in some great talks.On the other hand, the system usually crashes and people get—understandably—frustrated with the entire experience and miss out on seats in their preferred sessions.
That's why I considered this one of the riskiest live streams yet. Fortunately, it was a rousing success and from what I can tell online, the system stayed up and the reserved seating process was smooth this year. This is an excellent omen for the show!
07-Oct-2019 // 55 days left
I'll be attending ServerlessConf in NYC this week so I thought it was a great time to do a introduction to serverless.You're going to see the term serverless come up more and more. There are huge business benefits to these architectures. The downside? Builders need to change their mental model and security needs to completely adjust how they work.
But we (as an audience) are not there yet. This stream covers the basics. What is serverless? How is the term used? Why is this important?
03-Oct-2019 // 59 days left
I delivered at talk called, "Advanced Security Automation Made Simple" at the AWS Summit in Toronto. This summit grew tremendously this year, more than doubling last years attendance. That's a great sign for Canadian teams building in the cloud.This talk focused on taking advanced security work flow and automating them with a very simple approach. The goal of the talk was to demonstrate that security doesn't need to be complicate if you treat is a core part of everything you build.
02-Oct-2019 // 60 days left
Amazon Athena lets you treat files in Amazon S3 like they were a database. That doesn't sound too cool until you realize the possibilities: data stays in place, storage is low cost, data management gets easier. Now add in Amazon Quicksight. This service allows you to quick and easily visualize that data and share your insights. This one-two punch is key to the AWS data pipeline.30-Sep-2019 // 62 days left
Amazon S3 is one of the cornerstones of the AWS Cloud. This stream dives into the basics of the service and how permissions work. In 30m, we cover creating a bucket, uploading files, setting permissions, and hosting a website in your bucket!25-Sep-2019 // 67 days left
Looking to learn about the core principles of the AWS Cloud in this stream, we talk about the Shared Responibility Model. This model dictates how both operations and security work in the cloud.
I like to think of the model in simpler terms and not as an isolated security thing. It's really core to how everything works in the AWS Cloud and if you don't understand it, you're going to run into issues.
In the stream we also stumble using AWS Artifact but we get enough of the point across: this tool helps you verify that AWS is fulfilling their responsbilities under the model.
23-Sep-2019 // 69 days left
Following some feedback from viewers of the last stream, we tackle a great way to start getting a handle on using AWS services: the AWS CLI.20-Sep-2019 // 71 days left
An introduction to AWS Lambda. In the stream, we get a look at the basics of AWS Lambda, write a simple function, and then connect that new code to a trigger that works when a file is uploaded to S3.17-Sep-2019 // 75 days left
Kickoff video polling the audience for content requests and explaining the overall concept.
