AWS Community Builders Day 2026 Recap

I attended AWS Community Builders Day 2026. This was the first community event of 2026, prepared for 200 attendees. The organizers had extensive experience with events of this scale, so they took care of every detail from session planning, catering, and vendor coordination, allowing attendees to fully enjoy the event without any inconvenience.

At the entrance, there was a space for picking up participant badges. They were sorted alphabetically, making it easy to find mine quickly.

Participant gifts included a foldable umbrella and a laptop screen cleaner. The flow was designed so that after picking up badges, attendees naturally proceeded to QR scanning for check-in and gift pickup.

Sessions were divided into 3 tracks, but rather than having specific themes per track, sessions were arranged considering attendee interest levels and energy throughout the day. Broadly speaking, there were technical sessions from Community Builders, AWS re:Invent 2025 recap sessions from Heroes, and I was responsible for introducing AI services and new features announced at re:Invent.

Despite the cold weather, many people arrived early and filled the seats. This was the Track 1 and 2 space - it was used as one large area until the opening keynote, then walls were set up between tracks when sessions began. The organizers' expertise really showed here.

The event kicked off with an intro from Community Builder Jiyeon Choi and AWS Tech Evangelist Yongho Choi. A total of 143 people attended, and from an organizer's perspective, there was some regret that we could have accepted more participants considering no-shows to reach the 200 capacity.

Since I was scheduled for the second session, I helped with event preparation after arriving and explored the venue. In my spare time, I mostly stayed at the Community Hub, a space for interacting with participants. The Community Hub had 6 tables, each with different themes: meeting previous session speakers, tech topic talks, AI/Kiro talks, AWSKRUG activity inquiries, global program guidance for Community Builders and Heroes, and an "Ask Me Anything" table.

I rotated between the AWSKRUG, AI/Kiro, and speaker desks. It was a great opportunity not only to discuss these topics with participants but also to connect with other community members sitting at the desks.

I presented on 2026 AWS New AI Services and Trends. I introduced new features of Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and services I'm personally excited about: the Amazon Nova2 family, Nova Act, and Nova Forge. I had so much to share that I failed at time management and couldn't cover the Kiro content I had prepared, which was disappointing. On the spot, I decided it would be better to simply point interested attendees to the Kiro Korea User Group rather than diving into detailed features.

I had practiced a few things related to presentation and recording beforehand, but when the presentation actually started, I completely forgot to hit the OBS record button(...) With a positive mindset of "I'll do better next time," I quickly moved past the brief self-criticism and headed to the speaker desk at the Community Hub feeling relieved.

Time flew by as I savored the thrill of event participation and presenting that I hadn't felt in a while. The first AWS Community Builders Day held in Korea concluded successfully. Thank you to all the organizers, speakers, and AWS employees who provided generous support and assistance.