My first time experiencing AWS re:Invent, thanks to the ABW grant!
This article shares an ABW Grant recipients experience at re:invent 2025, taking you through how they spent their time from Sunday to Thursday and their takeaways from attending the conference for the first time.
re:Invent 2025 was an incredible experience for me and could not have been possible without the AWS All Builders Welcome Grant . I was selected alongside many others globally to attend the event all expenses paid and cannot thank Norma Stevens, Marisol Jenkins, and the extended ABW Grant team for your support and guidance.
If you are in the first 5 years of your career and meet the requirements for the application criteria — I urge you to apply for the grant in 2026 when they open next year! The opportunity to attend through the grant is once in a lifetime and you will genuinely walk away from the conference feeling seen, inspired, and more confident in yourself.
Day 0: Arriving to Las Vegas and the ABW Grant Welcome Reception
After 16 hours of travelling from Belfast , I arrived at Harry Reid airport in Las Vegas around 5pm on the 30th November, the day before re:Invent officially kicked off. After all the TSA business and bag collection (aka the “will my bag actually arrive or is it lost?” segment of travelling) I walked towards the ride-share area of the airport with a few of the other grantees and was met with AWS staff who checked us in to collect our badges, which was used as a pass into re:Invent hosting hotels, sessions, and even some exclusive parties that happened in the evenings throughout the week!
We got a Lyft over to Treasure Island, checked in, I dropped off my things, and then quickly headed over to the Welcome Reception for the ABW Grant via shuttle bus, which was a 7pm start at a very cool venue within Area15 . This was a chance for all of the grantees to connect with each other and the alumni advisors, play games, have a couple of drinks, eat some food, and overall break the ice before heading into the first day of re:Invent.
Members of the ABW Grant team and previous recipients welcomed us to re:Invent, sharing insights on their personal journeys and the reason why the program is so important. They reassured us that our selection was not by chance, but a deliberate recognition of who we are and the unique value each of us bring to the table. We were assured that we are exactly where we are meant to be, and encouraged to take full advantage of this opportunity. As someone coming from a background of low income status, limited technology access in early education, and as a woman seeking equal representation in STEM roles, this validation from the team meant the world. To feel seen and genuinely valued for my full story felt overwhelming, in the best way possible of course!
Day 1: Sessions, House of Kiro, and the Expo Hall!
My first session was scheduled for 8am at MGM Grand, “Amazon Braket: Get hands-on with quantum computing”. Honestly, I picked this session because it sounded like an engaging, intermediate workshop that would allow me to learn something new within the AWS ecosystem that I normally wouldn’t get to work with.
The session started off with a lecture style introduction to quantum computing and algorithms, then we jumped into implementing our first quantum algorithms by running circuits on gate-based devices and simulators within a workshop that had been set up in a Jupyter notebook. We had the workbook and solution available to us and if we needed further assistance, there were multiple guides in the room who were more than willing to help!
After the workshop I headed back to the Venetian, I did have one more session planned for day one but I did not make it! Before heading to re:Invent, I was aware it’s large scale across the strip and had many people sharing wonderful tips and PSA’s about leaving enough time to get to your next session. I now understand why there were so many, and one thing I would add to that is to definitely account for what kind of person you are so you know how much time you need between sessions! I am easily distracted and value a good conversation, at re:Invent — there are many distractions and many good conversations to be had. Good time management and discipline are definitely needed to ensure you attend all of the sessions you want to see throughout the week, but it is also important to take the conference at a pace that suits you and brings the most value to your career.
After the missed session, I decided to seek out all of the cool stuff happening in the Venetian and wait for the expo hall to open and welcome us all at 4pm! The first thing I spotted was the house of Kiro — It was so cool! I first heard about Kiro when Eric Johnston was visiting Belfast a couple of months ago to host a session for the Belfast AWS User Group (Which was awesome!!) so it was nice to get free credits and the cutest SWAG ever from Kiro — p.s. swag pic is in the summary.
After making a note of all the cool stuff to come back and see later, (Datadog slide, The Fragrance Lab, AWS Merch Store!!) it was time to start queuing for the expo hall. This queue got reeeal long. I was thankfully right at the front, ready for them to pull the curtain!
The conversations, swag, and networking that can happen with companies in this hall is an experience I had only ever read or heard about. Nothing could have prepared me for the scale of this hall once they finally lifted the curtain at 4pm! It is truly one of those got to be there moments. One of my favourite stalls was 100% the GitHub one. As someone who shamefully was late to using copilot agents and didn’t even access the official update until weeks after it’s release (sorry again to my seniors at the time lol) you’ll be happy to know I have walked away from the GitHub stall (and many others) with many resources, connections, and so much guidance on levelling up my workflow. I also received my now most prized possession from here, an official GitHub branded Stanley cup!!
Day 2: Leaders Fireside Panel and The Fragrance Lab
Picture this: the session you are most excited for this week starts at 8am, you hop in the shower, lather shampoo in your hair, and then the water cuts out in your room… My day two was meant to involve a foundational bootcamp on a variety of AWS services, but I unfortunately could not make it due to my water cutting out. Whoops!
While I was waiting on the water issue to be resolved, I took out my phone and had a look at what sessions would be happening that I could reserve a seat for or walk up to instead. I found the perfect one, which was a breakout session for the ABW grantees to listen to and get advice from 3 AWS leaders.
Helen, Mark, and Sonu did an amazing job sharing their advice on strengthening decision making capabilities, alongside helping me overall better understand myself through how I am currently making decisions and how I can improve that process in a way that allows me to know my value and what I can bring to the table.
On a personal level, I believe everything in life happens for a reason and with purpose. As much as the bootcamp would have improved my technical skills, the panel answered questions about myself that I didn’t even know I had and has allowed me to walk away from the session with some of the most powerful advice I have ever been given in my technical career to date. I took many notes during this session I am happy to share, feel free to reach out if you would like to read them!
After this session, I caught up on some of the information from Matt Garman’s Opening Keynote online while I was in the line for The Fragrance Lab. I want to highlight here, that AWB Grantee’s get priority access to all of the keynotes which is amazing. They fill up fast, so it is great to know that as long as you show up within the time window you need to be there for — you will have a seat reserved if you are a part of the grant. If you watched the opening keynote — what excited you most? For me, it would have to be Lambda Durable Functions!
The Fragrance Lab allowed attendees to create a custom fragrance and it’s campaign, which is generated by Amazon Nova in Amazon Bedrock. You popped on some headphones and through a short conversation, 3 keywords are selected. I got bold, floral, and comfortable — the station did a fantastic job picking up my voice despite the loud atmosphere. Once I smelt Valora for the first time I absolutely loved it, a bit gutted that I cannot repurchase it!
Day 3: dev/quest/, shopping, and socialising at the Sumo Logic Slam Jam
Due to planning some shopping and an event in the evening, I headed over to the Expo hall to collect my card for dev/quest / late in the morning and worked on collecting some stamps for the level 1 and 2 swag, which included AWS branded items such as a keyring for level 1 and your very own builders jacket for level 2. Level 3 and 4 were either gone or low in stock as we were on day 3, but if you made it to level 4 some of the swag included the Ray-Ban Meta Sunglasses or even a Coach Cloud Tote — how cool! After some more networking in the expo hall and collecting enough stamps to reach level 2 of dev/quest/, I headed back to Treasure Island to have a rest before my evening started. The tiredness hit me the most on Day 3 and it is very important to pace yourself and take breaks.
Once I was well rested, I grabbed some dinner and headed over to the Fashion Show Mall — which was connected to Treasure Island via bridge! I absolutely love shopping, and there were a few stores I wanted to visit as I have never had the chance to back in Belfast. A highlight for me was visiting a physical Popmart store — my close friends know I love Labubu’s so I had to pick one up (They were also a level 3 prize as a part of dev/quest/). I unboxed it when I got back to the hotel and it was actually the secret! What about that for some Vegas luck?
After my shopping was done, I got ready to head out with some of my fellow ABW grantees and alumni advisors to head over to the OMNIA Nightclub at Caesars Palace to have a few drinks, socialise, and watch some traditional sumo wrestling at the Sumo Logic Slam Jam (for free, I may add!), which was an awesome night and great to catch up with Tanya, Daniel, and the rest of the crew— Daniel also has his very own youtube channel and shares some great tips on becoming an AWS Community Builder. The slam jam seems to be a yearly occurrence, so definitely look out for it if you are attending in future and see they are sponsors, as it is an awesome event for re:invent attendees only!
Day 4: Final sessions, hanging out in the ABW Lounge, and re:Play
I started off my day with the speed mentoring and networking session that was created specifically for participants of the ABW Grant! The session was split into two parts that allowed you to focus on developing strategies to create, nurture, and leverage professional relationships while establishing a compelling personal brand within the tech industry then you would move on to focus on understanding the fundamentals of building and maintaining scalable data infrastructure that enables advanced analytics, ML operations, and implementation of AI.
As someone who is new to public speaking and also building up fundamental skills within AWS and the broader tech industry — both parts of this session provided me with amazing insights and answers to some issues I had been having in the past in both areas! Again, I took many notes from this session and happy to share with anyone — particularly if you are new to public speaking and would like to know of some of the resources recommended to me.
Before the next session, I hung out in the ABW Lounge for a bit to get some professional headshots and catch up with Amarisse and Ruth, who I had met at the start of the week and travelled over to the hotel with! It was great to catch up and hear about what they got up to and exchange stories as we were entering the final few hours of the conference.
After hanging out in the lounge, next up was a leaders fireside panel on how the community helps with your certification journey! As someone who does not have any certifications (yet), this was a great way to gain some advice on where to start. Prahlu, Jenn, and Koki are all in possesion of the very awesome golden jacket — which means they hold all currently active AWS certifications, what an achievement!
I wanted to add that as a part of the ABW grant, recipients received discounts for the certifications! As a 2025 recipient of the grant, I received 100% off one certification of my choice and as a ticket holder for re:invent, I have another 50% off discount that I can also use.
Now that all sessions were done for the final day, it was time to head over to the closing reception in the Wynn for the All Builders Welcome Grant to do some final socialising, drinking, and grab some food before heading to the one event that everyone was excited for, re:Play.
re:Play is the official closing party for the main conference week. It’s been created as a non-technical, high-energy networking event where attendees are able to unwind, celebrate their accomplishments, and socialise. It is stated to be “the ultimate party in tech”, and this statement is very much true. re:Play has a festival-like atmosphere where you can play games and watch headliner acts such as Beck and Kaskade! I stuck around for the Emo Nite and to watch Beck, making it a very memorable evening that closed off re:Invent perfectly for myself. Was cool to finally see some of his songs live, including loser!
Summarising re:Invent
Well… This is most definitely going to be one of those blogs where I will look back and say to myself “I should have wrote about this!!” or “I can’t believe I missed out that” but honestly, I feel like that sums up the kind of experience re:Invent provides. I walked away with so many new things to talk about, that I will be randomly remembering parts of my experience as I chat to others and read through everyone else's experiences! Here are my 5 key points:
- re:Invent is HUGE and sees around 60,000 attendees from all around the world and spans across 6 hotels on the Las Vegas strip — very awesome, your step count will be insane.
- Your network with grow rapidly, I have met so many people through the ABW program, during sessions, and even just when travelling to other parts of the conference which is super valuable for me in my early career.
- You will learn a lot about yourself as you have been placed in an environment with many likeminded people who are willing to give some of the most priceless advice and lessons learnt through sessions, or even just over a coffee.
- Keep being yourself, because fitting in is boring and you’ll never find your people if you always play it safe!
- And finally, the SWAG is out of this world. I had to be mindful about what I was bringing back to Belfast with me, but below I have provided images of all my loot!
Thanks so much for taking the time to read through my first experience at re:Invent as an All Builders Welcome Recipient! My DM’s are always open on LinkedIn if you ever want to connect and chat.
Take care,
Yas ❤
Enjoyed reading this content? Let the author know!
Your likes, comments, shares, and saves help creators reach more builders.
Loading recommendations
Loading article