One of the opportunities that you get when you are in the Community Builders program is the possibility to submit a talk for the DevChats of re:Invent.
And I did it. And a month later, I got the approval.
But how did I get the YES?
Community Voices Pilot - The yes to the world
At the beginning of 2023 I was invited to participate in a Pilot program inside the Builders program to learn/improve my skills as a speaker. That was the first YES of the year. During the program, I’ve had the opportunity to learn from Heroes and AWS employees on how to do my best presentation. And at the end of the program I have done a new presentation on the subject of automation and toil.
The journey on Community Voices, led by the wonderful person of Mark Pergola, started with me scared reading a script for my first presentation in the program because I wanted to get my English just right. And ended with me doing the same presentation without any script. I’ve got more confidence, more skill with storytelling and a confidence to submit this presentation for re:Invent.
re:Invent Call 4 Papers - The yes for myself
I’m used to submitting talks for call4papers - but in Brazil - It’s not in my comfort zone to send talks for abroad events. And then the re:Invent call4papers was open, and I though why not send a talk. The no, I already have. But I wasn’t that hopeful about my talk being approved. But deep down, I wanted to get the yes for this. I just didn’t know how much I wanted this. I asked some friends for help on how to set up my submission. Likewise, I had help from the mentors of New Voices and a couple of friends on the review.
The way to structure a submission in Brazil is very different from talks abroad. In Brazil, we can’t go direct to the point because it can be considered rude or “dry”. Now, for the USA at least, we need to go direct to the point. And the help from the mentors within the New Voices program, was perfect for the final proposal.
I submitted the talk and left with the universe de rest.
re:Invent - The final yes
As a friend said to me: be careful about what you wish.
A month later after the submission, I’ve got a notification on my watch. The title said that I was approved.
After the initial shock, I was happy. I have put effort on it. I had help. Not only that, but I had everything in place to have the Yes. And the YES came.
A person said to me that I placed a bet before I’ve got to Vegas, and won. And that is true.
Next stop: Las Vegas
After a couple of months from that Yes, I traveled to Las Vegas. Until I first saw the AWS logo on the Venetian, I wasn’t believing that this was happening.
About re:Invent
AWS re:Invent is the final AWS event of the year, and the biggest one. It happens every year on the week following the Black Friday. It happens in 5 different hotels on the Las Vegas Strip. All the hotels are casinos, and they are built like a maze. As in every conference that you go to, you better be ready to walk 20k steps per day, at least within those mazes.
The structure of re:Invent is unbelievable. They have food, Wi-Fi, transfers between the hotels, a lot of infrastructure to handle around 50k participants in the event.
One of the memories that you can make is riding the slide of Datadog:
I won’t say much about the event itself because it is something that you should see with your own eyes. And you can find plenty of blog posts around telling about how awesome re:Invent is. My only advice for you is to go with an empty luggage so you can take home all the cool swags that one can grab at the Expo.
Next on stage: Lays
Fast-forward to the 4th day of re:Invent, it was the day of my talk. The Community DevLounge was hosted inside the Expo. I was freaking out. I was anxious, sleep-deprived, and worried about how I would make my talk happen. That feeling didn’t turn down a little when I saw that the stage was full.
I still remember the feelings. I have written a script on my phone to use on my talk. That was the first mistake. I wasn’t so confident on doing my talk freely, and that made me to auto-sabotage myself by relying on this script. After the first two slides, I messed up. I lost myself, and thought: fuck this fear. I locked my phone, I looked for my friends in the audience looking for support, and then started to talk freely.
I was talking, and soon I got to the last slide. And all the 20 minutes of my slot passed. I’ve got plenty of claps. And it was over. My first international talk at one of the biggest tech events in the world was finished.
And I still don’t know how to feel about it.
You may find this strange. But after the talk I was so frustrated. I got this strong feeling that I didn’t put my best effort on it. I still don’t know how much of this is another level of auto-sabotage. But I know that even if it is, I could have done better.
If you follow this substack for a while, you can see that I can write and understand English very well. Because if you don’t know, I live in Brazil and English is my second language. Talking in English is my weakest point. And one of my goals for 2023 was to take English classes, and I didn’t. I cursed myself for this negligence. Because I had put significant effort on this submission and I forgot that I needed to practice my English, to have the best result for this talk.
But I did the best that I could do in the given situation. And so it’s life.
I don’t know how hard I’m being with myself, but since the record of my talk is already up on YouTube, I need to find the courage to watch it and see it for myself. However, until then, you may watch it here:
This is not a story about a woman who presented a talk in re:Invent. This is a story of a woman who challenges herself, that knows that it’s not perfect and still goes very hard on herself. It is a story of a girl that conquered a lot, and still has a lot to conquer. It is a story of a girl who went to Las Vegas for the biggest AWS event in the world, and got the best outcome possible from it. Because the no, I already had.
Like everything in life, this trip to Vegas got me out of my comfort zone (I know how cliché this is), and showed me that I still have a lot to improve on my skills. And if there’s anything that I love more, it is being challenged. So, I do hope that in the next newsletter that I wrote to tell about some presentation that I did, that all this fear and anxiety are forever deleted from my future self and is replaced by confidence and English fluency.
Finally, I need to leave a warm Thanks to Mark Pergola, Brian Tarbox, Ney Crepalde, Fernando Sapata and Justin Garrison for all the support before, during and after re:Invent.
That’s all for today, folks!