Orientation and Welcome Drinks

As I have every other year I’ve attended AWS Re:Invent, I’ll be blogging my journey and my thoughts as I go. The first challenge with re:Invent is getting there. From Melbourne it’s a 14.5 hour flight to Los Angeles, and then a 1 hour flight to Las Vegas. When all of the additional time (travel to the airport, check-in, waiting for the flight to board, getting lost at LAX, and then waiting for the connecting flight) is taken into account, it is in excess of 24 hours worth of travel. I was lucky enough to be let into the Qantas lounge by my collegue Angie, and we whipped together a quick video of our initial thoughts and expectations.

This year I’m staying at Caeser’s Palace, which isn’t an official conference venue, but is walking distance the The Venetian which is the main conferennce venue.

Sunday was my first full day in Vegas, and it started out with the mandatory shopping (my partner had a list of demands), and then I met my other Telstra Purple colleagues. We registered and collected our swag, drew the Telstra Purple and Telstra logos on the re:Invent Blackboard, rode the Data Dog slide and then went for lunch.

After that we went our separate ways, and re-conviened at the Juliette cocktail lounge for welcome drinks arranged by AWS. It was also a good opportunity to meet some of the internal Telstra team who I hadn’t met before. After the welcome drinks we had a very late dinner.

I think I’m now acclimatized and oriented, and ready for the first day of sessions.