117.
That was the total number of people that attended the first Amazon Web Services (AWS) Community Day on November 2 in Hong Kong. “Sincerely, we didn’t expect this many people,” said Gabriel, part of the staff team. “We also received many volunteers to help in the making,” continued. This event and the ones yet to happen are conferences designed specifically for developers looking for cloud innovations and real-world insights. Yet one question was still in the air. Wasn’t this actually the second time that AWS created an event of this kind in Hong Kong?
“The thing you are talking about is the Summit,” Alex -another staff member- clarified. “Although they are similar and working in the same field, you could say that the difference between the two is that in the Community Day we are precisely building a community, talking peer-to-peer about technical developments so we can all learn. The Summit in May was more of a business encounter”, explained. He also highlighted that this affair was taken from other cities that had done it previously.
The event was celebrated in Dorsett Kai Tak, next to Kai Tak Stadium, which for those that are not familiar with the place can be a bit laborious to find -although in their website they provide a Notion document with specific directions. The personnel of Kai Tak Stadium didn’t know where the building was nor the event, and it was not signaled either. Alex and Gabrield also pointed out that other people had the same problem so they had to ask colleagues to place themselves at the station to give directions.
Despite the odds, that amount of people were present. “Many of them are from Hong Kong but we also attracted many people from outside. Japan and Taiwan for example,” Alex said. Once inside, the hall was divided into three areas: two of them dedicated to conferences about AI, Telecom, visualisations (in English mostly but some of them also in Cantonese) and one meant for a card game for those who wanted to learn in a more interactive way about the AWS Architectural Framework. The event was also divided into the morning and afternoon sessions that ranged from 9:30 to 17:00 HKT with a one hour lunch break at 12:45.
The attendees had different reasons to assist. As a summary and bringing the opinion of the staff, the first part could be defined as more informative and the afternoon more technical. Esther for example was a Computer Science student that came with her college friends as part of a field trip with his professor. They only assisted in the afternoon part because they wanted to learn new perspectives in the field. However, Martin was a finance professional and he came out of pure curiosity to the afternoon part.
Therefore, this attempt to approach new technologies and ideas did not only attract those for whose sessions were made to, but also the curious ones that are willing to get a slice of what this new market is about. From easy to advance, the event was prepared to attract any kind of attendee -even the ones who only wanted to participate in the Trivia.