# Story Behind the AWS CB
Let’s roll out my journey on the cloud first. I started my cloud journey as a student through the Github Education pack with AWS Educational credits. It was worth one hundred dollars to use most of the available AWS resources to learn more about the compute, network and storage concepts. I was much more curious about how large companies scale their distributed services globally with tens of millions of users in the real-time scenario, all it was possible via cloud computing. This curiosity about the issue came closer to me when my team conducted CTF and challenges were hosted on the AWS cloud during hacktoberfest.
Traffic hits way higher than expected when the competition started due to user enumeration on specific endpoints. Challenges hosted on the single EC2 instance exposed the ports for running multiple containers. We perform ssh for the running EC2 instances to figure out the issue. Damm, the container was down. We didn’t have any monitoring and alerting. We resolved it instantly using the docker-compose via running its replicas. After onwards, We knew we might have something that automates the container failure, roll back to an older state, and health check at that moment. We use the autoscaling group for this quick solution and resolve it. Kubernetes might be the solution, overkilling just for two days CTF program. These moments gave me a broad way of thinking about the cloud with its importance.
There was an announcement about AWS Ambassador Program for the student before the covid pandemic went on, I applied double times during those hard times early on, but I didn’t get selected. But it didn’t stop me on my cloud journey. I have been part of the community by attending sessions during the pandemic. I was on the way to contributing to the AWS Community via blog posts, helping the students on how to get Educational credits, and building minor projects like s3exploit. I have been following AWS leaders of my local area who advocate for people on cloud computing. Luckily, I got attention to Anjani Phuyal posts about AWS Community Builder, AWS Leader, and APN ambassador lifting the AWS community in our local area. Luckily I did have the opportunity to share my ideas about AWS with students in the clubhouse with him during the lockdown period. I applied for the program 2021. After a few months, I got the mail from AWS.
I couldn’t bear my happiness at that moment, I often refresh my browser’s tab multiple times to ensure it was delivered to my mail, or I became a hallucination. I replied to the mail for this opportunity and quickly for a few moments, I even got the response. Thanks to Shafraz Rahim and Jason Dunn. OMG, that was the best feeling I have ever got so far. Now, I am officially AWS Community Builder. This was the journey of how I got into AWS Community Builder.
Meanwhile, for a few days moment, I saw every tweet and LinkedIn post about AWS Community Builder. That vibes were cool and I could reach out to more people with their expertise in AWS Community Builder. I love how they onboarded us as community members.
I have been receiving lots of questions about what is this about and how to join. Now I will be sharing the program information and how you can be a part of it. Stay tuned till the end of the blog :D.
# AWS Community Builder
Whenever someone asks me about the program, I would always give the reference from official one about the program. The AWS Community Builders program offers technical resources, education, and networking opportunities to AWS technical enthusiasts and emerging thought leaders who are passionate about sharing knowledge and connecting with the technical community.
Lots of doubts will be cleared from their FAQ sites. The application opens twice a year and is open to someone like you who is passionate about AWS and shares what they have learned through the process via blog posts, webinars, meetups, podcasts, and many more. There is a bunch of ways how you can be part of it. I usually express my experience to help others in such a way that people don’t have to repeat the same mistakes and can able to look at the problem differently with multiple solutions.
There are lots of Community Builder categories, you can find the list below.
- Cloud Operations
- Data
- Dev Tools
- Front-End Web & Mobile
- Networking & Content Delivery
- Serverless
- Storage
- Many more.
You can be one of them in our community builder program. There are lots of benefits for you to join the program.
# Benefits of the AWS Community Builder program
The above picture shows the benefits of the AWS Community Builder program. It has given the overall ideas on how builders get the benefits from the community. The first thing right after fully onboarded on this program, you will be getting the Swags.
Well, there is a diversity of multiple AWS Enthusiasts people all over the world with their expertise. You can connect with them and have some ideas about what you will do later on. You can also get the opportunity to share your knowledge with them via review procedure on your CFP with AWS experts on local meetups, conferences, and many more. Did I ever forget to tell you that you will get USD 500 credits for your purpose also if you get to participate in many internal workshops and programs, you might get more on it with a bunch of swags. Lots of awesome internal workshops will be going on which you can take participate based on your interest. You will be closely associated with AWS teams of certain services for mentorship, feedback, and lots of fun. You will get exposure from AWS product teams for new services and features too. You will be getting out the Cloud academy premium subscription with a bunch of AWS learning resources with an exclusive slack group. AWS teams always support the content creation part via on Dev. to and advocate to be a part of community-based work. You will establish a good relationship and gain a unique insight into AWS services insight into how things are working under the hood and how it is being done. Also, we as a builder always seek better ways to solve problems in various ways, share the best practices, and receive resources to improve the community. In the end, you are growing yourself too on the way.
# New to the community, start here
Are you new to the AWS Community? Do you want to get involved? We have a few ways to get involved. Pictures say it all :). The first thing I prefer to get involved with the community is to attend the physical or webinar of the AWS User group from your local area. You can find the link below.
You don’t need to know everything before involving at AWS User Group meetups. Go, talk to the people, network, volunteer, and get involved. That’s it but don’t be afraid of trying new things.
You can also help out the people who are into it. It can be via mentorship or sharing your solutions and knowledge via blogging. Most of the time, people are stuck in the same thing. If you solve the problem, it’s better to share the solution and help others. I usually shares via my blog and newsletter. You can also ask and answers AWS-related questions on forums and sites like stackoverflow, repost, etc . You can also contribute to the AWS opensource projects and enhance the features you are working. Eg; let’s say if you are working on the AWS S3 CDK modules, there might be a way to enhance them . You can share your ideas with the community and get feedbacks. You can create an issue, have a conversation and submit the Pull request.
Being a public learner, learning from others, and sharing knowledge is a way to grow yourself. If you are the one who wants to surround yourself with like cloud leaders with passionate with similar mindsets, you can be a part of the AWS Community Builder program. I hope you will enjoy the program and get involved.
