The real title of this article should be ‘The Things I Do to Keep Up with AWS & Kiran’! For those that don’t know who Kiran Chinnagangannagari is, he’s one of my ultimate best friends I’ve known for 11+ years, my business partner, our CTO and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met! We love to play ‘Stump Kiran’ by asking him bizarre questions about past, present & future tech (and a whole lot more). We even tell our customers to ask him any question to see if you can stump him! I’m not saying he knows everything, but…
Seriously – at last count I saw that AWS has more than 175+ products, capabilities and services and that number is constantly growing! This includes everything from their S3 storage capabilities to AWS Ground Station (which allows you to “easily control satellites and ingest data with fully managed Ground Station as a Service” – you can seriously control satellites in space!!!). Not only does AWS have a ton of services, but each one of these capabilities has an almost impossible number of features and capabilities that are constantly changing & improving!
So how does one keep up? How can you possibly learn about all these things and have a hope to understand all the TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) that come with the territory? I’m going to share some of my secrets of how I attempt to Keep Up with Kiran (no way I’m keeping up with AWS at this point)!
AWS Podcast – Simplest Way To Stay Cloud Savvy
I love The Official AWS Podcast! At this point I feel like I’m best friends with Simon Elisha & Nicki Stone, the Official AWS Podcast hosts! They do an absolutely fantastic job of continuously delivering high-quality content, making it simple enough for me to understand and always keeping it entertaining!
Podcasts (in general) are awesome because you can so easily consume the content via your phone, tablet, computer! And you can listen to them anywhere while doing almost anything!
While I’m writing this there are 388 episodes for you to catch up on if you’ve never listened to any of them yet! Honestly, I don’t know that I’d recommend to anyone to start from #1 and try to catch up. That’s a pretty daunting task! I’d start with the current one and make it a practice to keep up moving forward! I definitely have some favorite episodes and am going to go back and find them to share with you! So keep on the watch for those!
The Official AWS Podcast episodes range anywhere from six minutes to almost an hour. Most of them are 20 to 35 minutes long. This is my ultimate shortcut for keeping up with Kiran. There’s even been a handful of times I actually knew something before him (and yes I’m counting)!
But Wait – There’s More!
As if 388 episodes, plus more published weekly, wasn’t enough, AWS has 4 more podcasts (that I’m aware of – there are probably more out there)!
The AWS Podcasts page is awesome for a couple of reasons. This website lists four of the five podcasts (this page does not have the AWS TechChat podcasts) and you can filter by each podcast separately or see all the podcast content. There’s obviously a search which allows you to find content you are interested in, but there’s also a cool filtering mechanism that allows you to filter by category (Analytics, App Integration, Containers & many more), industry (Automotive, Customer Engagement, Healthcare & many more) and product (too many to list – but a great way to learn about specific AWS products).
These five AWS podcasts offer a plethora of knowledge and make it so easy for you to UP your AWS game! From high-level sessions about AWS capabilities to the details of how to implement specifics!
I’d love to hear from you and how you are keeping your skills sharp. I’m always trying to find easier and smarter ways to keep up with AWS and especially Kiran!
