Speakers
Community practitioners sharing what they've built, broken, and learned on AWS.
Darko Mesaros
Distinguished Developer Advocate · Amazon Web Services
Darko Mesaros is a Distinguished Developer Advocate at AWS, focused on developer productivity, Rust, and AI coding assistants. He created AWS's "Build On Live" livestream program — over 1,500 episodes reaching more than 1.3 million developers — and has spoken at 100+ conferences, including AWS re:Invent. Off camera, he restores vintage computers and puts them to work in ways they were never meant for.
AM Grobelny
Principal Developer Advocate, GameDay · Amazon Web Services
I've spent the past 10+ years working on or helping people work on software. I was also a professional educator previously in my career, so I have a particular passion for helping people more easily understand difficult concepts. I currently work at AWS, and I'm focused on helping people learn through experience by using AWS GameDay.
GameDay Session
AWS GameDay — A Casual Introduction To DevOps and Observability, But Make It A Contest
This workshop will teach attendees the basics of DevOps, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and observability in a fun gamified way that combines learning DevOps fundamentals with the undeniable drive of earning points to be on top of the leaderboard.
If you've never participated in an AWS GameDay, you can think of it like a job simulator for the cloud. You join the competition as an engineer at Unicorn.Rentals, the hottest fictional startup on the market. On your first day on the job, you're tasked with figuring out everything the previous engineering team did wrong.
You will gain hands-on expertise with AWS, New Relic, and HashiCorp Terraform in a free, safe, and sand-boxed environment. Bring your laptop and a web browser (no additional tools are needed to get started) and leave with tips and tricks that you can immediately apply to your own work.
What to Expect
This is an AWS GameDay presented with AWS, New Relic, and HashiCorp content that drops participants into a lightly competitive, real-world scenario where they must figure out non-prescriptive challenges with open-ended solutions. This is the platform that takes a participant's theoretical knowledge and makes them use it practically, because there are no step-by-step instructions. We're able to deploy full, realistic solutions with built-in flaws and challenges that the participants must diagnose as they move through the content.
Participants are not asked to download any software, sign up for any accounts, or spend any money. There are no sales pitches and everything is 100% focused on the tech. All accounts are provided by AWS, New Relic, and HashiCorp free of charge and without any information required from participants.
Much like an escape room, participants will also face unexpected chaos events through the content that simulate the turbulence of running software in production. The team will circulate throughout the room to help any teams that get stuck — or get just a little too frustrated — so everyone can work through the content and learn.
Small prizes may be awarded to the winners of the GameDay.
Speaker announcements coming soon
Once the CFP closes and sessions are confirmed, all speakers will appear here.