Skills Enablement key focus at AWS Summit 2019 Sydney

The dust is starting to settle after AWS Summit 2019 Sydney. This year’s Summit was the largest AWS conference outside of AWS Re:Invent in Las Vegas, with an estimated 17,000 attendees.

It’s no surprise that AWS Summit is centred on Innovation. Day One is actually called Innovation Day, and is focused on new platform functionality and services, as well as showcasing key customer success stories.

This was led predominantly by Glenn Gore, Worldwide Lead Solutions Architect for AWS, who talked about how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are driving customer-focused innovation.

A highlight from Day One was the on-stage discussion between Glenn Gore and Alan Joyce, CEO of Qantas. Alan Joyce explained how Qantas’s cloud-based flight simulator, Constellation, is saving the company $40 million a year in fuel. Developed in partnership with AWS and Sydney University, the system is one of a number of data-driven tools that will soon allow Qantas to offer non-stop flights to London and New York from Australia’s East Coast.

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Day Two started with keynote presentations from:

Paul Migliorini, Managing Director ANZ, Amazon Web Services
Glenn Gore, Worldwide Lead Solutions Architect, AWS
Paul Bassat, Co-Founder, Square Peg Capital
Lisa Miller, Group Lead of Global Acquisition, Activation and Engagement, Canva

Here is an overview of four of the keynote presentations from Day Two of AWS Summit 2019 Sydney for reference.

1. Building a future ready business, Just Add Skills

The focus of Paul Migliorini’s presentation was on the need to “Just Add Skills”. Building a future ready business involved having a flexible, reliable, secure and scalable infrastructure platform, as well as having a skilled and experienced team to leverage the platform’s capabilities.

AWS provided the world’s leading IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) platform. It was up to businesses to ensure their teams had the necessary training and experience to assess, implement and optimise the platform. Without appropriate training and skills enablement, they would struggle to migrate into a future ready business.

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Paul outlined a number of different skills enablement initiatives that AWS supported.

Partnerships with institutions and Government
- Skills Guilds like NAB, IAG and Australia Post
- Diversity programs like Code like a Girl, and Women in AI
- Community like hackathons, meetups, Kids in Tech, and Swinburne University Cloud Innovation Centre which was launched at AWS Summit 2019 Sydney
AWS-led skills enablement initiatives
- AWS training and certification, with 150,000 people trained since 2012
- AWS Educate, academic gateway for the next generation of cloud professionals, with over 10,000 students enrolled
- AWS GameDay, learning in a challenging and fun simulated team competition
- AWS Academy, in partnership with 30+ tertiary institutions across ANZ
- AWS re:Start, training and job reskilling program

Paul then announced an extremely bold objective for training and certification, setting a goal of 500,000 new builders in 5 years (2019-2024).

That equates to a 333% increase from the 150,000 people trained from 2012 – 2018, highlighting the importance of skills enablement on the AWS Cloud platform.

2. Becoming a leader in the global technology ecosystem

Paul Bassett is a co-founder and major shareholder in Square Peg Capital, a venture capital fund focused on investing in early stage technology companies in Australia, Israel and South East Asia.

The key message from Paul’s presentation was that Australia is behind other countries in terms of being a leader in the global technology ecosystem.

Australia’s historical economic growth was from national retail brands and packaged goods. For example, banks such as Westpac and Commonwealth Bank, supermarkets like Woolworths and Coles, department stores like Myer, and packaged goods brands like Vegemite.

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The brands that were succeeding in the new economy were digital platforms with the ability to expand globally. For example, brands such as AirBNB, Uber, Stripe, Fiverr, Wego, Atlassian and Canva.

Whilst Atlassian and Canva are Australia-centric businesses, they represent only a small proportion of digital-first businesses emerging from Australia. The future of Australia’s economy (and employment) meant increasing the number of digital-first businesses.

3. Create Tomorrow

With over 170 services, AWS has the breadth and depth of industry-leading services that enable millions of organisations worldwide to build and operate applications in ways never seen before.

Glenn Gore, World Wide Lead Solutions Architect for AWS shared global insights on how organisations of all sizes are using AWS to drive greater business efficiency and innovate faster. He posed the question, what does it take to create tomorrow?

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Firstly, mindset. When faced with change we need to focus less on what we are going to lose, and more on what we are going to gain.

Secondly, platform. AWS provided brands and developers (“builders”) with the broadest and deepest platform.

Thirdly, skills enablement. In simple terms, people need to understand the technology in order to leverage the possibilities available.

4. Busting an old model

Lisa Miller, Group Lead of Global Acquisition and Activation from Canva explained how the born-in-the-cloud start-up has grown to support creative people across the globe.

Canva is an online design and publishing tool which makes graphic design simple for everyone. People no longer need to license expensive software or hire specialist designers. The digital platform has also challenged convention thinking, not just in the design space but in associated offerings such as stock images.

Canva was designed and built to scale, and scale it has. The design platform has grown to over 15 million users across 190 countries since launching in 2013. It has more than 1 billion designs created, at 33 designs per second.

It’s achieved tremendous growth, not just in terms of customers, and designs, but also in terms of staff. They have over 500 team members globally, although their head office is in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Talent acquisition and skills enablement was critical to Canva’s success. They had been able to secure local Australian talent with the necessary skills and experience.

Individual skills enablement

Innovation and skills enablement were the key messages from the keynote presentations on Day Two of AWS Summit 2019 Sydney.

Organisations need individuals with cloud skills to help transform their business. AWS Training and Certification helps you build and validate your cloud skills so you can get more out of the cloud. Whether you are just starting out, building on your existing IT skills, or sharpening your cloud knowledge, AWS Training and Certification can help you be more effective and do more in
the cloud.

AWS- endorsed instructor-led classroom training offers the most in-depth training for those who want to deepen their technical skills. Classes include a combination of presentations, hands-on labs and group discussions led by authorised AWS instructors.

Organisation Training Plan

Bespoke Training can assist with designing a skills plan for AWS Cloud team enablement relevant to your organisation’s stage of adoption:

Identify the capabilities required to meet your objectives
Divide your core technical staff into role-based learning paths
Focus on training your existing staff, ensuring they transition to cloud-based roles while leveraging their knowledge of existing business infrastructure and systems

Ultimately we will collaborate with you to create a training plan tailored to your specific needs, so you can meet your business objectives as quickly and efficiently as possible.