AWS re:Invent 2020
November 30-December 18, 2020
Virtual & Free
Although things have been anything but normal this year, Amazon Web Services has pivoted and decided the show must go on, continuing with their annual and highly anticipated conference AWS re:Invent.
Given the changes the event has undergone, we have put together a complete guide to AWS re:Invent 2020 that includes all of the necessary information you will need to navigate the event this year, such as live keynote speakers, session topics, tracks, certifications, and more.
Keep checking back as this guide will be updated as the event gets closer!
(This article is part of our IT Conferences & Events Guide. Use the right-hand menu to navigate.)
The Guide
To help you find what you
Re looking for, we have separated the information in the guide into three distinct categories:
Each of these categories are broken down further, providing everything you will need in order to map out your schedule.
GENERAL INFORMATION
AWS re:Invent 2020 is the Amazon Web Services annual user conference that focuses on:
- Cloud strategies
- Cloud operations
- Security and developer productivity
- IT architecture and infrastructure
Typically, the conference spans seven different properties in Las Vegas and welcomes over 60,000 attendees over the course of a few days. This year, the event will be 100% virtual, taking place over the course of three weeks.
This year’s re:Invent will ‘follow the sun’, with broadcasts repeating to serve multiple time zones.
- Americas (PST)
- Asia-Pacific (SGT)
- Europe (GMT)
These sessions, including keynote sessions, will happen live in the Americas and then will be rebroadcast at the designated times in the two other time zones.
Registration
Registration for this year’s event opens in late October. Sign up here to be notified once registration opens.
LEARN
Although it will look much different this year, re:Invent promises to provide all the same information and expertise. With more access to AWS leaders than ever, the 2020 event ensures to give you numerous ways to advance your AWS skills, hone your current knowledge, and learn new methods of working with AWS—all from the comfort of your computer screen.
Sessions
Spread out across three weeks of learning and collaborating, the 2020 conference will feature hundreds of live sessions from top AWS experts and customers from around the globe. Offered at various skill levels, these sessions will provide opportunities to:
- Interact with technical content geared towards your market
- Access community members that will be able to answer any technical, product, or service questions
Training & Certification
As in past years, re:Invent also offers access to relevant trainings and certifications that can enhance and transform your understandings of the cloud. Designed by expert cloud practitioners and partners, these trainings support learners from all skills levels. The AWS certifications validate expertise of necessary knowledge and key competencies.
Keynote Speakers
The keynote speakers are always some of the most highly anticipated events, with major launch announcements about new services and products. They also feature some of the top AWS experts in the world, sharing their unique experiences and knowledge. Even on the virtual platform, for the estimated 250,000 attendees, these keynotes won’t disappoint.
AWS Keynote: CEO Andy Jassy
Andy Jassy takes the virtual stage to share his insights and the latest news about AWS customers, products, and services.
| Americas (Live) | Asia-Pacific (Rebroadcast) | Europe (Rebroadcast) |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, December 1 8:00 AM-11:00 AM PST | Wednesday, December 2 8:00 AM-11:00 AM SGT | Wednesday, December 2 8:00 AM-11:00 AM GMT |
AWS Partner Keynote: Doug Yeum, Sandy Carter & Dave McCann
Don’t miss the AWS Partner Keynote with Doug Yeum, head of Worldwide Channels and Alliances; Sandy Carter, vice president, Global Public Sector Partners and Programs; and Dave McCann, vice president, AWS Migration, Marketplace, and Control Services, to learn how AWS is helping partners modernize their businesses to help their customers transform.
| Americas (Live) | Asia-Pacific (Rebroadcast) | Europe (Rebroadcast) |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday, December 3 8:00 AM-9:45 AM PST | Friday, December 4 8:00 AM-9:45 AM SGT | Friday, December 4 8:00 AM-9:45 AM GMT |
Machine Learning Keynote: Swami Sivasubramanian
Join Swami Sivasubramanian for the first-ever Machine Learning Keynote at re:Invent. Hear how AWS is freeing builders to innovate on machine learning with the latest developments in AWS machine learning, demos of new technology, and insights from customers.
| Americas (Live) | Asia-Pacific (Rebroadcast) | Europe (Rebroadcast) |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, December 8 8:00 AM-9:30 AM PST | Wednesday, December 9 8:00 AM-9:30 AM SGT | Wednesday, December 9 8:00 AM-9:30 AM GMT |
Infrastructure Keynote: Peter DeSantis
Join Peter DeSantis, Senior Vice President, Global Infrastructure and Customer Support, to learn how AWS has optimized its cloud infrastructure to run the world’s most demanding workloads and give your business a competitive edge.
| Americas (Live) | Asia-Pacific (Rebroadcast) | Europe (Rebroadcast) |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday, December 10 8:00 AM-9:00 AM PST | Friday, December 11 8:00 AM-9:00 AM SGT | Friday, December 11 8:00 AM-9:00 AM GMT |
VP, CTO Amazon.com Keynote: Dr. Werner Vogels
Join Dr. Werner Vogels as he goes behind the scenes to show how Amazon is solving today’s hardest technology problems. Based on his experience working with some of the largest and most successful applications in the world, Dr. Vogels shares his insights on building truly resilient architectures and what that means for the future of software development.
| Americas (Live) | Asia-Pacific (Rebroadcast) | Europe (Rebroadcast) |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, December 15 8:00 AM-9:30 AM PST | Wednesday, December 16 8:00 AM-9:30 AM SGT | Wednesday, December 16 8:00 AM-9:30 AM GMT |
2020 re:Invent Leadership Sessions
Every year re:Invent offers sessions on a wide variety of topics that are led by some of the top experts in the industry. AWS Leadership Sessions feature top AWS leaders as they share the latest advances in AWS technologies and discuss successes and the future of products.
Analytics: Rahul Pathak, Vice President, Analytics
Rahul is the Vice President for Analytics at AWS. During his nine years at AWS, Rahul has focused on managed databases, data warehousing, big data, and data makes.
Architecture: Rudy Valdez, Vice President, Solutions Architecture and Training & Certification
Rudy leads the AWS Solutions Architecture and Training & Certification teams and is responsible for helping customers build Well-Architected applications and services on the AWS platform and develop cloud skills across the AWS ecosystem. Rudy has been at AWS over 15 years, and helped pioneer the AWS business.
AWS Public Sector: Teresa Carlson, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector
Teresa Carlson is the founder and leader of AWS Worldwide Public Sector, and one of the most accomplished and forwarding-thinking technology leaders in the world today. Teresa’s charter expanded in 2020 to include AWS’s worldwide financial services, energy services, and telecommunications industry business units.
AWS Public Sector Partners: Sandy Carter, Vice President, Global Public Sector Partners and Programs
Sandy Carter is AWS, Vice President of Global Public Sector Partners and Programs, driving growth in the public sector Internationally, as well as in the U.S. She previously built an enterprise workload team as the Vice President of Enterprise Workloads at AWS focused on migration and modernization through containers and serverless.
Business Applications: Larry Augustin, Vice President, AWS Business Application Services
Larry is responsible for a number of Business Applications, including Amazon Connect, Amazon Workspaces, Amazon Honeycode, Amazon Pinpoint, Amazon SES, Amazon Chime, and many others.
Compute: David Brown, Vice President, Amazon EC2
David Brown is the Vice President of Amazon EC2, a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. He joined AWS in 2007 as a software developer based in Cape Town, working on the early development of Amazon EC2.
Containers: Deepak Singh, Vice President, Containers, Linux, HPC & Open Source, AWS
Deepak Singh leads the Containers, Linux, and High Performance Businesses at AWS. He also leads the Amazon Open Source Program Office. Prior to joining AWS in 2008, Deepak spent many years in the scientific software and bioinformatics industry.
Databases: Shawn Bice, Vice President, AWS Databases
Shawn leads AWS efforts to help organizations lower costs, reduce complexity, and accelerate innovation by optimizing their database investments to support their long-term data strategies and is responsible for over 15 fully managed, purpose-built database services including Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB.
Edge: Bill Vass, Vice President of Engineering, AWS
Bill oversees more than 42 cloud and edge technologies. Under Bill’s leadership, AWS teams develop and operate the largest software defined storage, streaming, IoT, management and governance, and monitoring and observability systems in the world, used by web-based companies, consumer companies, enterprises, and governments.
Enterprise: Dave McCann, Vice President, AWS Migration, Marketplace & Control Services
Dave leads a portfolio of services that include AWS Migration Services, AWS Marketplace, AWS Data Exchange, and Control Services to help customers modernize and govern their applications.
IoT: Dirk Didascalou, Vice President, AWS IoT
Dirk has worldwide business, product and engineering responsibility for the Internet of Things (IoT) at Amazon Web Services. AWS IoT provides capabilities for industrial, commercial, and consumer customers to deliver connected products and applications that are driving change across industries globally.
Management Tools & Governance: Bill Vass, Vice President of Engineering, AWS
Bill oversees more than 42 cloud and edge technologies. Under Bill’s leadership, AWS teams develop and operate the largest software defined storage, streaming, IoT, management and governance, and monitoring and observability systems in the world, used by web-based companies, consumer companies, enterprises, and governments.
Networking & Content Delivery: Mayumi Hiramatsu, Vice President, EC2 Networking
Mayumi is accountable for Network Function Virtualization (NFV) platforms and Networking Services including NAT Gateway, Transit Gateway, Application/Network/Classic Load Balancer, Site to Site VPN, Client VPN, PrivateLink, Traffic Mirroring, and IP Management.
Security, Identity & Compliance: Stephen E. Schmidt, Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer
Stephen’s duties at AWS include leading product design, management, and engineering development efforts focused on bringing the competitive, economic and security benefits of cloud computing to business and government customers.
Serverless: David Richardson, Vice President, Serverless
David leads the serverless portfolio – a group of AWS services that enable customers to build applications that are agile, scalable, secure, and low cost, all without managing servers. His services include Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, EventBridge, SNS, SQS, and Amazon MQ.
Storage: Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, Vice President, AWS Block & Object Storage
Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec is the global Vice President for AWS Block and Object Storage services, which include Elastic Block Storage (EBS), Simple Storage Service (S3), and Amazon Glacier. Mai-Lan has been an engineering and product leader of AWS storage and compute services since 2010.
Training and Certification: Maureen Lonergan, Director of AWS Training & Certification
Maureen is the global leader of AWS Training & Certification. With flexible training offerings alongside an industry-leading certification program, her team helps the builders of today and tomorrow leverage the power of the AWS Cloud.
We Power Tech: Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, Vice President, AWS Block & Object Storage
Check out the main Leadership Sessions page for detailed information about when the sessions will be available for each time zone.
PLAY
While re:Invent is known for its quality content and beneficial AWS sessions, it’s definitely not all work. Even though the activities this year will have to be virtual, there are still multiple opportunities for attendees to collaborate, network, and have fun.
AWS DeepRacer
For those interested in gaining knowledge and experience of Machine Learning, AWS DeepRacer is the fastest way to get started. With hands-on learning offered to developers of all skill levels, this session teaches you how to train reinforcement learning models in a cloud-based 3D racing simulator. Later, compete for prizes in an autonomous car racing experience with other developers across the world.
Jams and GameDays
Jams and GameDays are gamified sessions that allow participants to gain hands-on experience working through real-world scenarios that encourage the use of a variety of AWS and Partner services.
Participants of all skill levels are encouraged to join to learn new skills and to validate and enhance current ones. There are time-based options as well as on-demand content.
Watch parties
Just like with other major 2020 tech conferences, you can expect that there will be a variety of virtual watch parties to choose from, allowing attendees to connect with individuals from around the globe.
You can also create channels to chat about the sessions and various announcements with friends and coworkers, offering a virtual replacement for the in-person mingling at the usual event.
Sponsors
There is word that there will still be plenty of sponsors with awesome swag, they are just going to be getting a little more creative this year in terms of how to present it and give it away. Most sponsors will likely have an online prize giveaway to get attendees involved, as well as virtual meeting room and attendee chats.
AWS re:Invent 2020
Every year, AWS re:Invent is one of the most highly anticipated cloud conferences, and for good reason. Whether it be the unparalleled access to top AWS experts, leadership sessions from major players in the industry, or the exclusive networking and collaboration opportunities, re:Invent provides a unique experience you can’t get anywhere else.
Keep checking back as this complete guide to AWS re:Invent continues to be updated and make sure to register so you don’t miss out on this ultimate event! In the meantime, get excited with a recap of the top moments of re:Invent 2019.
Additional resources
For related reading, explore these resources:
- IT Conference & Events Guide
- AWS Guide, a series of explainers and tutorials
- BMC Multi-Cloud Blog
- BMC Machine Learning & Big Data Blog
