This month is a very special month for me. Exactly 10 years ago on July 09, 2015, I hosted the first AWS User Group Meetup in Hamburg as a fresh User Group Leader. It was a super exciting evening at mytaxi (nowadays FREENOW), lots of pizza and two great talks about CloudFormation and ECS.
2015: Where It All Began
I had been an AWS user since 2011/2012, but my first contact with the AWS Community started just one month before in June 2015 when I attended my first AWS User Group Meetup. This one was hosted at Jimdo and moderated by Sandra Liermann and Mark Bate from Amazon Web Services (AWS), it was a very memorable evening. What really stuck with me was how Sandra and Mark emphasized that a User Group should be driven by the Community, for the Community. This had been my personal main driver for almost everything I did as part of the AWS Community since that day. So when they mentioned they were looking for someone to take over the User Group, I volunteered that very evening.
Fast forward one month, I was hosting my first AWS User Group Meetup as User Group Leader. Since then, I've been deeply involved with the AWS User Group in Hamburg, organizing over 60 meetups, including 5 re:Invent re:Caps, and helping grow the group to over 2,700 members - making it the third-largest AWS User Group in Germany.
A big Thank You goes to Björn Böttcher who started the group back in 2011, and also to all my co-organizer who joined me over the years: Ramona Junge, Martin Schütte, Enrico Boldt and Sönke Ruempler. And I’m super thankfully for Vanessa Giese who is taking over the torch since I moved out of Hamburg.
In 2015, I had also the chance to attend AWS re:Invent for the first time. It was mind-blowing, huge, and an incredible experience. I attended as many sessions I could squeeze into the week, including a special and cozy gathering of about 20 User Group Leaders from around the world meeting the incredible Jeff Barr for a cosy evening.
In 2016, I contributed to the AWS Advent, writing a blog post as part of a series running from December 1st until Christmas, finalizing my submission during my second visit to re:Invent.
2017 marked another milestone when the first AWS Community Day in Germany was born at the AWS Summit in Berlin. Around a dozen User Group leaders from Germany met at the evening before the summit, organized by Marin Mamic from the German ISV Team. From the start, I was involved in organizing it, running the Kubernetes Track including a Call for Papers, selecting the talks, and moderating the talks during the event. It was a great first Community Day, including having Ross Barich as our special guest. Since then, I've been involved in all subsequent AWS Community Days, which have taken place in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Dresden, and two times in Munich (plus two virtual editions in between).
2019-2021: Expanding Horizons
In 2019, I organized our first AWS Community GameDay, hosted at my then-employer Smaato (Now part of Verve)'s office, on the Day after the AWS Community Day in Hamburg. Special Thanks to ☁ Jens Gehring ☁, Stefan Christoph, Robert Hanuschke, Thorsten Höger, Madlin Collins, and the many others who made it possible.
While COVID-19 presented challenges for community activities, 2020 brought also new opportunities. I was selected to join the first official cohort of AWS Community Builders, a program which really helped me expand my horizons and connect with AWS Community enthusiast from around the world. I'm proud to still be part of it today. Special thanks to Jason Dunn for what he has created here.
During 2020, I also launched the AWS Community DACH Slack space, which has grown to almost 1,000 members and serves AWS Communities across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland as place to connect. Along special channels for organizing our various AWS community events, also many User Groups have their dedicated channel there.
2020 was also the first re:Invent during COVID-19, which was complete remote. Together with Markus Ostertag, Thorsten Höger and Dennis Traub I joined a live re:Cap of Andy Jassys keynote on Youtube.
2021 saw us also adapting to the virtual world with our first virtual AWS Community GameDay, complete with unicorn costumes, alongside Linda Mohamed, Kristine Howard, and Dennis Traub.
2022-2025: New Milestones
In 2022, I became a founding member of the Förderverein AWS Community DACH. I’m part of the board since the start and served as second chairman and financial auditor. The Fördervereins mission is to facilitate engagement, knowledge-sharing, and networking opportunities across the AWS Community within the DACH region. Our Members are all either AWS Heros, AWS User Group Leads or AWS Community Builder. The Verein acts also as legal framework for our growing community activities, especially when it’s about handling finances, contracts, sponsors, insurances, etc. for the AWS Community Day DACH.
2022 was also the first time we all met again for the AWS Summit in Berlin. This time that the AWS Community got the chance to have their own dedicated stage and together with some Members of the Förderverein I joined organizing the Call for Papers, moderated the Sessions and had a booth where we presented the different AWS Community Programs.
2023 brought another exciting chapter as I co-founded a new AWS User Group from scratch in Bonn with Johannes Oehmen. Despite Bonn's smaller size compared to Hamburg, we've grown to almost 200 members, organized 12 Meetups (including one re:Invent re:Cap) at 6 different locations so far, and established a strong collaboration with our neighbors form the AWS User Group Cologne.
For re:Invent 2024, I joined a group of AWS Community Builders and organized a special "re:Invent at Home" event for the rest of AWS Community Builders program, featuring talks, keynote viewing parties, and knowledge sharing sessions. I also shared my experiences from previous re:Invents to help others navigate the event. Big thank you goes to Annem Sabah Shah, Endah Bongo-Awah, Emmanuel Mingle, Katoria H., Oluwasegun Adeniyi Adedigba and Jason Dunn.
2025 is already proving to be another landmark year, highlighted by an excellent AWS Summit in Hamburg. As every years since 2022 I helped to organize and run the Community stage. This one was our largest yet, with 350 seats.
Only one week later I was back at the local AWS User Group Meetup in Bonn, where I also gave a talk about AWS SES and was accompanied by my former Colleague johan beisser who spoke about Local Lambda development.
Just last month we closed already the Call for Papers for this years AWS Community Day DACH. Going through over 120 great submission took a while but I’m super happy and proud that we where able to create an awesome lineup again and just opened the registration a few days ago. Looking forward seeing you there :-)
Looking Ahead
As I reflect on these 10 years, I'm grateful for the connections made, knowledge shared, and communities built. The AWS Community has become more than just a professional network - it's a second family. I look forward to many more years of innovation, collaboration, and community building in the AWS ecosystem.
It’s impossible for me to name everybody I’m super thankful for being part of that journey, here a just a few which haven't been mention already in no particular order: Mathias Leppich, Matthias Schmidt, Philipp Garbe, Johannes Koch, Tom Lorenz, Christian Bonzelet, Davide de Paolis, Dmytro Hlotenko, Vadym Kazulkin 🇺🇦, Timur Galeev, Markus Kaiser, Michael Hanisch, Nora Schöner, Frank Prechtel, Gustavo Tavares, Aaron Walker, Julian Michel, Sana Shah, Stefan Bauer, Steffen Mazanek, Dr. Sven Seiler, Martin Raabe, Andreas Wittig, Michael Wittig, Chris Derby, David Heidt María Encinar, Thembile Martis, Susan Lopez, and many many more.
