Stunning memories from AWS Community Summit APAC & Japan 2022
Tags: aws, community
Published: 2022-12-06 03:37:05

AWS Community Summit APAC & Japan 2022 was first of its kind inviting 300+ AWS Community Builders, AWS Community Leads, and AWS Heroes from countries across APAC & Japan. 

That 2 days was certainly a home away from home, very well planned, organized and flawlessly executed. Personally for someone who have made several trips to Bangkok and every-time end up craving for vegetarian food, a pre-planned vegetarian meals were delicious.

### Table of Contents
* [Welcome Dinner](#welcome)
* [Community Awards](#awards)
* [Community Farewell to Rohini](#farewell)
* [Short SlideShow](#SlideShow)
* [Blogs & Videos on AWS APAC & Japan Community Summit ](#blogs)
* [Thank you](#Thankyou)


### Welcome Dinner <a name="welcome"></a>

Shafraz whole heartedly welcomed the gathering. It was indeed refreshing to meet and greet community folks with whom we all have been interacting over phone and video calls.

![TeamIndia](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/dnmzwp358u65mne2cmz9.png)

Serana kept the audience engaged with the well thought Ultimate Quiz. The $50 amazon vouchers for the top 3 winners kept the energy and participation high.

![Ultimate Quiz](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/vbm05gcooqhnopiqnog5.png)

![Our time](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/o0zw7ckrtjnjo2en86iw.png)


### Community Awards <a name="awards"></a>

India had 3 big wins over and above several nominations across all 10 award category.


**Sanchit Jain for  "Earn Trust" Community Award**

Sanchit Jain is someone who have earned trust as a doer even before he technically became the co-organizer for AWS User Group Mumbai.
Here is his great contribution to the community

- 

![Sanchit](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/n9yld8e1xaq5hpvvjo6i.png)


**Vivek Raja for  "Invent and Simplify" Community Award**

Here is why Juries would have thought Vivek is the right choice for the award.

- Vivek  launched AWS Madurai UG in February 2022, and has been continuously innovating new ways to engage the community.
- UG launch event on YouTube saw 550+ views, highest among any UG in India and South Asia. He along with Neetu Mallan recently launched the AWS Cloud Practitioner Bootcamp, which featured 17 video sessions, 2K+ views and 500+ registrations, out of which 400 users were first time AWS users. 
- He is also working on new initiatives like EverydayAWS (features one AWS service each day), AWS Quidditch (A gamified way of learning and understanding AWS tech through Quiz), AWS Comics (To help non-tech and beginners to learn and understand AWS services through comics) and AWS Memes (to onboard people from social media especially focussed on Tamil language).

From my eyes, 

> Being the youngest AWS Hero from India, Vivek have shown more mature ways of running AWS community meetups, empowering first-time speakers, creating a platform to learn aws cloud through local language, #Tamil and running various initiatives, "Invent and Simply" category award sounded custom-made for Vivek Raja P S 👏 👏 👏
> Wishing you many more laurels to Vivek Raja P S, Neetu Mallan and AWS User Group Madurai💐

![Vivek](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/jdfvjqnwyotdxb60m7f5.png)

**Bhuvaneswari Subramani as  "AWS Hero of the Year" Community Award**


I went on recounting what would have fetched **AWS Hero of the Year** recognition, here are few things which comes to my mind
- First and foremost I attribute the credit to my male allies Jeevan Dongre, Sathyajith Bhat, Runcy Oomen, Prashanth HN and Habeeb for creating a more inclusive platform for me to be myself in terms presenting tech talks, organizing meetups, organizing and hosting AWS Community day events, writing blogs and so on. 
- Had the pleasure and proud privilege of presenting at AWS reInvent in 3 consecutive years - 2019, 2020, and 2021 
- First-ever AWS Hero to speak at the AWS Summit India keynote, along with Ekta Parashar and other AWS customers. Receiving this opportunity and representation in AWS India's largest tech event was a great win not just for myself but for the community. 
- Had the great opportunity presented a breakout session for the India Summit on **End-to-End CI/CD at scale with Infrastructure-as-Code on AWS**
- Enjoy writing blogs, media articles and present about AWS and DevTools via AWS conferences, 3P communities, Industry Conferences and universities. 
- Get the contentment in guiding early developers or cloud aspirants on AWS certification, blogging, community connect etc. 
- Recently got to speak at TedEx for Youth on my journey as a technophile and represented AWS community too. 
- Got to work with AWS Team for AWS Developer story to inspire more women to embrace tech space and together we were quite successful to fetch 2.7 million views.


![Bhu-Award](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/bybyakdnvvghqoshm87x.png)

Well, I thought, it warrants a [post](https://dev.to/aws-heroes/aws-hero-of-the-year-2022-4j4d) of its own too.

### Community Farewell to Rohini <a name="farewell">

![Rohini](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ilfmmn323ien9m3xr4rp.png)


### Short SlideShow <a name="SlideShow"></a>
Well, as always my event blogs are know for lots of pics and descriptions. 
For change, pictures turned into a slideshow kind of video with lil music, which I loved :) 
{% embed https://www.youtube.com/embed/it_qzvdZ8wM %}

### Blogs & Videos on AWS APAC & Japan Community Summit <a name="blogs"></a>
Usually an event will have one or two blogs and videos but even after 10 days, we still continue to see new blogs and videos from the delegates who have experienced and enjoyed the event. Would love to capture them all under one roof

#### Blogs <a name="blogs"></a>
- [Experience of attending AWS Community Summit APAC 2022](https://dev.to/aws-builders/experience-of-attending-aws-community-summit-apac-2022-4k69) by Avinash Dalvi
- [AWS Communities, a Welcoming Community!](https://dev.to/aws-builders/aws-communities-a-welcoming-community-1pd7) by Kaye Alvarado
- [AWS Community Summit APAC 参加レポ〜](https://dev.to/aws-builders/aws-community-summit-apac-can-jia-repo-gj8) by Shiomi Sumi
- [AWS APAC Community Summit Wrap up](https://dev.to/aws-heroes/aws-apac-community-summit-wrap-up-1an4)

#### Videos <a name="videos"></a>

- **AWS APAC Community Summit'22 - Experience with AWS UG Madurai** by Vivek Raja P S

{% embed https://www.youtube.com/embed/JwbyI54Acr8?start=1 %}


- **Moments from APAC & Japan AWS Community Summit 2022** by Jones Zachariah Noel
{% embed https://www.youtube.com/embed/dPwuq3tARiA %}


### Thank You <a name="Thankyou"></a>

A big **Thank you** to the AWS Team behind, who made this first ever AWS Community Summit India 2022 a memorable one for all of us. 
They not only made our visit to Bangkok a memorable one but also ensured that we are back home safe and sound. I would definitely quote few incidents where Shafraz, Ridhima and Rohini stood out with their care and warmth.

## One
> Though lots of communication happened to all AWS Community Summit attendees through emails and slack. We had lots of first time travellers to Bangkok, Rohini was very patient in addressing all of that through her personal experience and past visits which was handy for many.

## Two

> I hate to travel early morning to airport. When I  learnt Shafraz also going to be in same flight and we decided to leave together to airport around 5:30am. Later he informed me that he has to leave an hour early because he has some work and he knows very well that I am independent traveller. Upon reaching airport, I learnt that he advanced his travel to accompany another delegate of AWS Community Summit to airport to help her out. Huge respect for that!!

## Three
> Another delegate from AWS Community Summit missed the onward flight to Bangkok and arrived with an alternate arrangement. As she was about to check in, she realized that the return flight ticket had also been cancelled since she missed the onward flight. 

> She called Shafraz but he has checked in, finished security, and is about to fly so he can't go back and help her. We both started coordinating with Neoniche team who had come to Thailand to help book the ticket on the same flight. In order to book the ticket on the same flight, we began coordinating with the Neoniche team that had come to Thailand. The Neoniche team has been working on my AWS-related travel since 2018, hence I had their India contacts. We woke them up early in the morning and they were also eager to help us contact their travel partner and purchase a ticket. But that ticket wasn't available to book online. 
> By now, Rohini and Ridhima had joined in the conversation, and they were also exploring different options. Finally, the superwoman Ridhima, rushed to the airport to get the ticket for our friend in the same flight and sent her home. 
> Its not about sponsoring or inviting someone for event but ensuring the safety and well being of the individual until they are back home safe means a lot. My sincere appreciation to the entire team!



![Wrap](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/1sarondudluzxelx2qgz.png)



![AWSTeam](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/idpymwxgm2cvps5fpcqd.png)


Never miss this lovely video to get a glimpse of the effort that has gone into it and the impact the event have made in the #awscommunity  
{% embed https://www.youtube.com/embed/AUR-O1DswgQ?start=1 %}