AWS Re:Invent My personal experience

 

Hey everybody your friend Khal4n1 here! I want to start the year talking about my personal experience related the last conference I attended at 2025: AWS Re:Invent, which took place at Las Vegas, Nevada, celebrated from November 30 to December 4. This was a massive event all related AWS content, where we could see presentations, trainings, showcasing, labs, workshops and more, this was my first experience in this conference, and I'm a cyber security researcher with not much experience in AWS , so I will give you my experience as a newbie and I will try to be concise on my personal experience.

First Glance

Let me tell you, I have been at defcon since the 32 edition, and its been great, good organization, a bit overwhelming to me as I am not used to big events, so gotta keep track of the talks and keep a mental map to not get lost and miss any of my favorite talks... AWS Re:Invent in the other hand is defcon times 10. OMG! I can see how big the AWS community is. The location were multiple and I'm not just talking about having lots of halls and rooms where the talks happened, I'm talking about having to use busses to transport from one talk to the other.

For those that have no idea about this, AWS Re:Invent happened at Caesar's Palace, The Venetian, Mandalay Bay, MGM and Wynn. and the talks were well split on those, luckily AWS was good with us to get us busses that were driving back and forth from one hotel to the other. So my first though was: "Oh god this will be hard".

As a security researcher that have just a little experience on AWS Architecture, this was a very challenging experience as most of the talks were requiring some technical knowledge, even they are split on levels, if you are a first timer like I was and have almost no experience with AWS terms, architecture and so, I HIGHLY recommend you to take a udemy course or something. 

Who is directed to

This is a tricky question were the easiest answer is: To any AWS enthusiast with SOME experience on it. I entered to dev talks, architecture, AI innovation, security talks and more, so its really a place for anyone on any are that wants to get more in depth into AWS new technologies, techniques, innovations etc. But again, I'll insist in this during the whole article, its for people that has some experience on AWS.

Reinvent content

There was lots of areas of interests at AWS Re:Invent, from Agentic AI, Application Security, Automation, Blockhain, Business Intelligence, Containers, Quantum, DevOPS, Edge Computing Gen AI, Machine Learning, etc, to cover them al I would need one article per area, what I have noticed is that AI and Quantum computing are the top of the top, those talks were massive, full of content, and leading the advances in technologies including robotics and medical/scientific researches. 

Kiro, for example, as a big deal on the conferences, for those are not familiar with kiro, its an agentic AI IDE launched by Amazon in mid 2025, this revolutionized the way people interacts with AWS as is its not just helping the developers and architectures to create applications and trust policies, but also to improve processes of checking if everything is well configured, giving you the tools to analyze the whole cloud configuration for a specific account, which we know, its a very big area (lambda functions, Ec2, S3, Cloud Formation, Kubernetes, IAM, etc). Highly recommend you to give a good dive on this, as its chat gpt, for AWS with steroids.

Things I wish I knew before

Ah, those mistakes that I'm embarrassed to admit, but just for you all I will make them public.

- Bring a laptop is a MUST- yeah you will read this and may think: why in the world you didn't bring one? well, based on other conferences where I was just carrying the laptop around, making my back hurt, and considering that these were in lots of locations, I thought I didn't need it... BIG MISTAKE.

- There is food - first 3 days I was having same sandwich and coffee at a starbucks, and lunching burgers for the price, but man, there are free food courts at the hotels, for breakfast and lunch. So make some time for that, because some times they are crowded. 

- Transportation sponsored - Again, the buses I mentioned before, I was not aware until the second day so the first day I used uber to transport fast between conferences, huge mistake too as buses are incredibly fast, I heard you can use also a train but I haven't. 

Dos and DO not

Here are some of the things I recommend to do and to do not:

Do

- Use the mobile application called "AWS Events" you can check the calendar there and set yourself reminders , see talks descriptions and so.

- Check your times, some talks have lines, for those are walk in, so expect lines and you might lose your spot if you are not early enough.

- On the final party, go check everything and first thing to do, GO GET SOME FOOD, as lines are super long and you will get just a bite, so you will need to do it more than 3 times.

DONT

- Don't forget your laptop, its ok to carry some extra weight.

- Don't forget to save the spot for those talks that you are really interested in, there are some that you need to reserve weeks before, pay attention to those.

- Don't miss a chance to do the training's, worth a lot.

Conclusion

If I get lucky to be invited again to assist, I would get the time better, and trust me I'm excited to go again, so, if you have a chance, don't miss the opportunity to attend, its an amazing experience, full of people that loves technology, full of new technology break outs, and full of awesome stuff. just don't forget, get some experience to AWS if you have not and BRING A LAPTOP!

Hope this help you and I hope to see you in the next AWS Re:Invent.

Khal4n1

Security Researcher & Red Teamer