There is still a few hours to apply to AWS Community Builders program. And if you will be late, I am sure there will be more editions :)

What is AWS Community Builders program?

It is a great place for practitioners. As AWS Community Builders page says: The AWS Community Builders program offers technical resources, mentorship, and networking opportunities to AWS enthusiasts and emerging thought leaders who are passionate about sharing knowledge and connecting with the technical community.

It is a place where you can meet and chat with other passionate practicioners, AWS Heros, and a lot of interesting people from AWS.

You have access to special events, mentors, learning programs, and much more. Being fully honest, initially I was overhelmed by amount of materials, information available, how many people share their knowledge through communication channels.

And you shouldn't forget about swags ;P

Who should join the program?

If you are passionate about AWS, you share the knowledge or (and) create the space to share. You write articles, blogposts, you have a YT channel (or any other media), you do trainings, mentorings; generally, you are involved in sharing the knowledge about AWS, its services, approaches etc - you are a good candidate.

How to apply?

AWS Community Builders program is different than AWS Heroes in this area. Here you need to apply by yourself (while for Heroes program you need to be recommended).

Go to AWS Community Builders page and complete all steps!

The time to apply is limited, but long enough to make your application beautiful ;) And Builders are selected twice a year, so there is a plenty of time to apply. Well, for current edition you have just two days, but next will be announced by AWS :)

What to do when become Builder?

The same, but more :D

It is expected that you will continue your good work. Also, you will learn, share and participate in events which are created exclusivelly for Builders.

How did I become a Builder?

Well, my journey with AWS started some time ago, 6 or 7 years ago, to be almost exact. I still remember how simplistic the GUI console was these days :D

After that moment my story could be boring for you, so let's jump to the day when I joined EPAM Systems and realized that I can be a public speaker.

So, I joined my current company 2,5 years ago and quickly become involved in a few activities, one of them was Devops Community Poland. Around this time I started to dig much, much deeper into AWS not just as an engineer but mentor, teacher. I started to write articles, create and conduct trainings. Now I can say that I had and still have very positive feedbacks about these trainings.

What kind of training I have in my portfolio?

• Meet the AWS (around 16 hours training to become familiar with main services)
• Good start with CloudFormation (10 hours long marathon about CF and best practices)

I have a lot (well, maybe not really A LOT, but I am proud of the number :) ) public speaking activities, where I touched AWS topics multiple times. Let me give you some examples:

• CI/CD for Lambda
• Security for CloudFormation
• Alexa as a Service

For last years my main focus in AWS is Serverless (that the area where I was selected as Builder, btw), but obviously it is not only one. Other important areas are IaC testing and security, CI/CD.

Nowadays I am proudly leading very complex program (in fact, two different tracks of this program) at EPAM Systems Poland, it is DevOps and Cloud Academy, where we are shaping the future engineers. Obviously, AWS is the cloud of choice here, and vital part.

So, How to summarize what I achieved in order to be positively selected?

• Articles and blogposts
• public talks
• trainings
• mentoring
• teaching

Plans?

Well, become AWS Hero, obviously :) This is my goal and I try to navigate myself toward it.

Thanks to being Builder, I already received a few opportunities to speak and "influence" (I hope) others, I hope to speak more and more about AWS and its services. Especially when the crazy pandemic time will end.

The Academy, of course. I am very involved, even emotionally, with it and I really wish to "create" great Cloud engineers, DevOps. Actually, with my current group it is not a big challenge, they are AWSome :)

More and more technical stuff on my blog, and YT channel which should start... soon (whaterver the 'soon' word means here ;) )

To reveal my closest thing, I am working now on the interesting hands-on presentation about AWS Lambda observability approach. I should finish it soon and then I start to apply to different events with it. So, if you are interested, check my homepage, link with me on Twitter or LinkedIn to know where and when! :)

Need to mention

I have to mention, I am really happy that at least two people who I know personally become Builders together with me. Congrats and I am glad to be there with you, Faith and Rafal :)