A brand-new conference created to support the expanding technology sector in the North of England is set to launch in Newcastle later this year.
Powered by leading Amazon Web Services (AWS) software development company Leighton, AWS North Community Conference will bring together the regional technology community to facilitate discussions and foster a community that can shape the future of cloud computing with AWS together.
The conference, which is first of its kind to run in the North East, will take place at The Catalyst on Thursday, October 16, and is designed to give the North East AWS community a space to innovate together without having to travel outside the region.
Steve Morland, along with his Leighton colleagues Lee Gilmore (AWS practice lead) and Dan Pudwell (solutions architect), are some of the North East’s biggest AWS advocates and will be responsible for shaping the conference.
Steve Morland, chief technology officer at Leighton, said: “We’re delighted to be able to launch the AWS North Community Conference. There’s a real gap in the region for a place where our professionals can come together and innovate so to be able to organise an event of this calibre, with the support of organisations such as Dynamo North East, is great.
“It’s really important that the North East has the infrastructure in place to support our talent with their continued professional development. Leighton’s decision to fund the conference will allow us to create that.
“The event will help to really foster collaboration across the AWS community and give opportunities for everyone to learn and develop in their own way. By making sure that we have an event which is closer to home, but that also equals some of the other events happening nationally and even internationally we will be able to engage more of what is a thriving ecosystem in this region.”
The organisers have already secured a line-up of international speakers including AWS ‘serverless heroes’ Sheen Brisals and Yan Cui, Luca Mezzalira, principal serverless specialist solutions architect at AWS, James Eastham, developer advocate at Datadog, and Ran Isenberg, principal software architect at CyberArk, with more to be announced in the coming months.
Al Alzein, membership engagement manager at Dynamo North East, said: “As a not-for-profit tech sector organisation on a mission to build a stronger tech ecosystem in the North East of England, we at Dynamo are thrilled to support this community-led initiative.
“This is a landmark moment for the region, as the North East hosts a technical conference of this scale for the first time in recent history.
“It’s fantastic to see AWS community leaders like Steve Morland and Lee Gilmore driving this forward, bringing together talent, world-class expertise, and ambition to further strengthen our region’s thriving tech sector.
“A huge thank you to the team at Leighton for investing significant resources to make this community conference possible.
“We encourage all AWS users in the region and beyond to get involved – this is an excellent opportunity for CPD and networking.”
Over the course of the day the conference will bring together AWS practitioners and technical experts, developers and engineers, SMEs, tech innovators and disruptors, industry leaders, academics and students to explore how AWS is transforming the tech landscape and how as a community the sector can transform how it designs, builds and scales software solutions.
Throughout the event there will be three streams:
- Leaders and architects – designed to allow thought leaders and global innovators to share their vision for the future, as well as share new products and best practice.
- Builders and developers – designed to allow delegates to take a deep dive into the technical side of AWS through case studies and problem sharing around architectures, infrastructure, scalability and futureproofing.
- Lightening – designed to give the brightest emerging talent a stage to present delegates with fresh perspectives.
In addition to the future of the tech sector in the region, speakers will also present on key themes including modernisation, serverless, containers and modern cloud architecture and migration.
