Amir and I represented Konekti at the AWS Public Sector Summit in DC last week. What a great event! I’ve enjoyed the summit events as they aren’t as hectic as the annual re:Invent conferences. We had the opportunity to chat with people we know in the public cloud community as well as meet new people. I thought I’d use this post to share some pictures and thoughts on the event.

AWS Summits are typically free to attend. You can’t beat the value given the quality of the talks and opportunities for professional networking. The public sector summit cost a mere $150 for people who are not employed by the federal, state, or local governments.

The Walter E. Washington Convention Center was an excellent venue for the event. Although the crowd was large, the space didn’t feel as packed as some summits (I’m looking at you, Javits Center).

Teresa Carlson, vice president of Amazon Web Services’ Worldwide Public Sector, gave one of the keynote presentations. The biggest news from her presentation was that AWS will team up with Northern Virginia Community College to offer an associate’s degree in cloud technology. Konekti calls the DC metro area home, so we will welcome the cloud-savvy grads to the ecosystem in several years. Read more on the AWS blog site.

Our favorite presentation was AWS Networking for Migration and Hybrid Environments by Haider Witwit, a Senior Solutions Architect at AWS. Haider packed a large amount of networking content into the talk. He crafted the presentation in a manner that held the audience’s attention, which is impressive as the attendees had varying levels of expertise in the VPC and networking. You can watch the video here.

On a fun note, AWS stocked its Certification Lounge with classic arcade games such as Pac-man, Dig Dug, and Street Fighter II. I was solidly beaten by everyone I challenged. AWS gave out video game-themed stickers for certifications. My kids got a kick out of these.

My advice – try to attend one of the remaining summits this year. Perhaps you’ll run into me and Amir. We’d love to talk about networking in the VPC and in hybrid cloud environments.