AWSome Day SEA Roadshow | Manila

Amazon hosted AWSome Day South East Asia Roadshow 2016 in Manila last September 13, 2016. AWSomeDay is a free, one-day training event that provided a step-by-step introduction to the core AWS services for compute, storage, database and networking. Manila is the second city to host the SEA Roadshow next to Singapore. Bangkok, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur are next in line.

Amazon Web Services is one of the biggest and most flexible web service provider as of today. They offer Reliable, Scalable, and Inexpensive cloud computing services. Users can register and try their services for free for a limited time.

Registration started around 7:30am to 9:00am PST at least a thousand participants attended the event including the walk-in registrants. The keynote started around 9:00am where the experts shared key features, use cases and the best practices on using the services. They gave walk through demos and answered questions as they go.

Dat zoom tho...

The keynote speaker was Mr. Markku Lepisto - A Technology Evangelist :D. He presented basic usage and ideas using AWS Cloud Computing such as creating a Cloud System that operated a robot named Sphero which has a voice recognition system and a remote control system and both functionalities can be processed/computed via the cloud using Alexa and AWS Lambda. Some of its cute features is that when it is commanded to move forward it shouts "Gogogo" and "Wee" and says "Ouch!" when it hits a wall or get shaken. He did it because it was cool. It uses Intel Edison and Raspberry Pi 2. The logic of the system was simple and yet very clever.

 "Simplicity Scales, Complexity Fails."
- Markku Lepisto
Also, you can't be this cool. Deal with it. 

After the talk, the event took a break and surprise surprise Bizu was in the house catering an all you can eat buffet for the participants. The menu was delectable! The Pesto was perfectly matched with the raisin and chocolate bread on the side. This was just a snack, the lunch was even more heavenly
.

"Food is Love"
- Food Lover

The next presentation was not just a talk nor a keynote, but it was an official AWS Technical Essentials Training Course presented in beautiful detail by Mr. Karthik Chandy.
It covered the brief history of AWS from how it came from a company that sells books online and now they have AWS - the fastest-growing multi-billion dollar enterprise IT vendor in the world.

It also covered the 'AWS Infrastructure', 'Security, Identity and Access Management', 'Databases', and the 'AWS Elasticity and Management Tool'.

Karthik Chandy Presents... AWS Essentials

One of the topics there was EC2, where unlike the olden times, when you buy a physical/virtual server to host your application in which you have to manually scale up when needed, but will have difficulty or no capability to scale down. EC2 which allows your server to scale up if the server resources is at full and easily scale down if the load does not need the extra help anymore. The best thing is, scaling reflects the bill of the customer. It means, if it scales up, you'll have to pay more but if it scales down, you will have to pay less and you get notified depending on your preferences. I can't and won't discuss everything here because they gave to us a "booklet", as Mr. Chandy liked to put it. But this "booklet" is actually a 260 page Training Book Manual... :D
I just wanted to share EC2 since this kind of solution is the one needed by almost all the web application that deals with significant amount of requests per day. More about AWS.

My ideas before and after Mr. Chandy's lesson.

There were all in all 5 modules discussed in the training. And after discussing the AWS History and Introduction, Bizu served lunch at 12pm with Salad, Pasta and other fancy food. I regret I did not learn the names of the food. I was too hungry and was immensely in to the AWS technical stuff, that I did not mind the name of which I had devoured (lol).

This is heavenly

 
There were so many people who attended the event, that some had to sit on the floor just to have lunch, Nobody minded that though. Lunch time was fun since there is literally a fun corner. A dance arcade machine was setup, and the top scorers will win a VR box from a sponsor.

I wanted to dance but the dance does not want me, who am I to insist?

But these guys got it.

The booths are also fun and informative. I took some photos in the photobooths and I also took photos of the visual aids regarding the services of AWS and their sponsors: ePLDT, Double Take, Xurpas and MobKard

They closed the event with a lucky draw and the certificate collection. 

Winners!
(these are not tiny people, I was just too far away)
  

External Hard Drive

 

Bluetooth Headphones WITH a GO PRO went to just one lucky dude.
Why can't it be me? Just for once? (lol).

 

2 VR Boxes from the Fun corner

2 Firefly tablets 

Mandatory photo with the certificate
just to make sure that this is reality.
 

The event was a success, and my thirst for knowledge was quenched. I saw clear solutions for the problems I heard and encountered from my companies, thanks to the detailed examples of Mr. Chandy and Mr. Lepisto.

As a leader, I really enjoyed the enlightenment I got from the event. My brain won't stop thinking about the useful applications that can be done easily using AWS. And I can see that in the future, there will be less, or better yet, there will be no more problems with the server maintenance.

AWS, as I see it, is a huge brain. It's capabilities is so elastic that the only limit of the application might just be literally, your imagination. AWS is definitely a Keystone.
Although we can still say that AWS is still in the same situation as Fire when it was first discovered. Most people are still scared to go near it and only a handful has the courage to try and use it.

Anyway, this experience will be remembered and the knowledge I caught will be included to my repertoire. I will be looking forward for more of these kinds of events from now on and will try to include them to my budget in the future.Yay Knowledge!

We ended our day with a romantic walk by the sea side. This truly is an awesome day.