The Pragmatist Futurist on therolle.com - The Pragmatist Futurist

Building a Custom Claude Code Statusline

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How I built a custom statusline for Claude Code, why every usage tracker I tried was wrong, the undocumented API that finally gave me accurate numbers, and how to make it survive dozens of parallel sessions.

Sovereignty Is an Option, Not a Default

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Data sovereignty in AI is not a single decision. It is a stack of them: infrastructure location, LLM provider, and API key ownership each require a separate answer.

How to Set Up Kiro with IAM Identity Center (And Why Your Credits Depend On It)

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you are an AWS Hero or Community Builder logging into Kiro with your Builder ID, you are not using your AWS credits. Here is how to fix that.

Vibe Coding: It's Not a Dirty Word

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The term 'vibe coding' is often used as a derogatory label by AI skeptics. But the actual definition might surprise you - and it's time we embraced it.

AWS User Group Finland re:Invent 2025 re:Cap at Vivicta

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Vivicta hosted the re:Invent 2025 recap meetup at Tieto's Espoo office with 52 attendees.

AWS Layoffs Hit the Community Where It Hurts

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday's AWS layoffs impacted people I consider friends -- community heroes who shaped the ecosystem. The human cost goes far beyond headcount numbers.

Building an AI-Native Company: Why Simplicity Beats Complexity

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Instead of stacking SaaS tools and complex workflows, we built Elexive around a shared AI memory and Claude Code as our central automation point. Here's why simplicity wins.

Diversity of Thinking in a Box: Building an AI Advisory Board

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I built an AI advisory board with well-known personalities to critique ideas from diverse perspectives. Here's why it works and how we built it.

Stop Overengineering AI Agent Pipelines

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The AI industry celebrates complex multi-service agent pipelines. Anyone who has run distributed systems in production knows why that is a terrible idea.

Elexive Year One: Rule 1 Start, Rule 2 Stay Alive

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Reflections on surviving the first year of building Elexive - from kill criteria to profitability, and everything we learned along the way.

From Startup CTO to AWS Contributor: My Kiro Powers Journey

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Two things I never imagined: contributing to an AWS Tier 1 AI product release and seeing my photo on the main stage at AWS re:Invent. Here's the story behind Kiro Powers.

Why Elexive Skipped Slush This Year

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Finland's biggest startup event came and went without us. Not because we couldn't go, but because we chose not to. Here's the reasoning behind that decision.

AWS re:Invent 2025 Watch Party

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Finnish AWS community gathered at Nitor to watch the re:Invent 2025 keynote together.

AWS User Group Finland November Meetup at Netlight

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Netlight hosted the November AWS Finland meetup at their Pohjoisesplanadi office with 76 attendees.

Stop Prompting, Start Commanding: How Agent Armies Build Better Systems

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Vibe coding got us this far, but it does not scale. At Vibe Coding Finland I laid out the case for structured agent orchestration over artisanal prompting.

Startup Founder Survival: Systemizing the Habits That Keep You Alive

Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Becoming a startup founder is like joining the Special Forces of work-life. Here is an honest take on building survival habits when exercise does not come naturally.

The AWS us-east-1 Outage and the On-Prem Fallacy

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Every major AWS outage triggers the same takes about moving back to on-prem. Most of them are driven by confirmation bias, not facts.

AWS Community Day Nordics - Learning to Step Back

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I co-founded AWS Community Day Nordics in 2018 and attended every single one. This year is the first I couldn't make it, and that's actually a good thing.

Nordic Business Forum and the Seeds That Became Elexive

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Last year at NBF I was thinking about my next career move. This year I'm returning as a co-founder. The difference a year makes.

AI in English vs. Your Native Language - It Actually Matters

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The language you use with AI tools is not a neutral choice. English prompts still produce better results from most LLMs, and that creates an unintentional advantage.

AWS Finland September #2 Meetup at S-Group

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

S-Group hosted the second September meetup at Ässäkeskus in Helsinki with an impressive 95 attendees.

Eighteen Years in AI - Old Enough to Drink

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My AI experience is old enough to drink. A look back at starting in machine learning and neural networks eighteen years ago, and what that perspective means today.

AWS Finland September Meetup at Knowit

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Knowit hosted the September AWS Finland meetup at their Kansakoulukuja office with 68 attendees.

Front-of-House Tech at an Outdoor Festival

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Last weekend I returned to my old life as a Front-of-House tech at an outdoor festival. Different world from cloud infrastructure, same fundamental skills.

Building a New B2B Buying Experience

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

After dozens of conversations with executives and decision makers, here is what I have learned about what leaders actually need versus what consultancies typically sell.

AWS User Group Finland May Meetup #2 at KONE

Tue, 27 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

KONE hosted the second May meetup at their Keilasatama building in Espoo with 68 attendees.

AWS User Group May Meetup at Nitor

Tue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Nitor hosted the May AWS Finland meetup at their Aleksanterinkatu office with an impressive 91 attendees.

Co-founder Doing Everything

Tue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When you run a startup on a skeleton crew, you become the head developer, lead advisor, CFO, and janitor. All in one package. And honestly, I am loving it.

Creativity Is a Muscle: Why I Still Play Music as a Tech Founder

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Some people think creativity is a gift you're born with. Neuroscience says otherwise. Here's why practicing creative arts since childhood still pays dividends in my tech career.

The Next Frontier: When AI Becomes the Advertising Medium

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Marketing content created by AI is just the beginning. The real shift happens when advertising moves inside AI responses themselves. Early adopters will have a significant advantage.

AWS User Group April Meetup at Brightly

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Brightly hosted the April AWS Finland meetup at their Helsinki office on Pohjoisesplanadi with 72 attendees.

AI in Helsinki: Big Tech, Bold Ideas, and a Reminder of Our Nordic Edge

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Reflections from the Microsoft AI Tour in Helsinki and what it means for Nordic companies navigating the fast-moving world of enterprise AI.

Stop Accommodating Toxic Leaders

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The trend of 'how to work with a narcissistic boss' advice is fundamentally broken. You do not build high-performing teams by teaching people to accommodate toxic behavior.

AWS Finland March Meetup at Nordcloud

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Nordcloud hosted the March AWS Finland meetup at their Pohjoisesplanadi office with 64 attendees.

Announcing Elexive: Transforming Good Leadership into Great Leadership

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Today Henri Peltomaki and I officially launch Elexive, a Leadership Experience Company built on the conviction that traditional consulting is broken.

AWS User Group Finland February Meetup at Accenture

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Accenture hosted the February AWS Finland meetup at their Aleksanterinkatu office with 65 attendees.

Why I Read a Dozen Books a Month in the Age of AI

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Somewhere between university and corporate life, I lost the habit of reading books. Going full startup-founder mode brought it back with a vengeance. Here's why books and AI complement each other.

AWS User Group Finland re:Invent 2024 re:Cap at Gofore

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Finnish AWS community kicked off 2025 with a re:Invent 2024 recap evening hosted by Gofore in Helsinki.

AWS re:Invent 2024 Watch Party

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

AWS User Group Finland closed 2024 with a re:Invent watch party at Epicenter Helsinki, drawing 135 attendees.

AWS GameDay Nordics 2024 (Helsinki)

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

AWS GameDay Nordics 2024 brought 51 participants to Cloud2 in Helsinki for a hands-on team competition.

AWS User Group Finland September Meetup - Sponsored by Yle

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yle hosted the September meetup of AWS User Group Finland at Iso Paja in Helsinki with 69 attendees.

AWS User Group Finland May Meetup - Sponsored by KONE

Wed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

KONE hosted the May meetup of AWS User Group Finland at their Espoo headquarters with 66 attendees.

AWS User Group Finland February Meetup - Sponsored by Alma Media

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Alma Media hosted the February meetup of AWS User Group Finland at their Helsinki office with 91 attendees.

AWS User Group Finland reinvent 2023 recap - Sponsored by Cloud2

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

AWS User Group Finland kicked off 2024 with a re:Invent 2023 recap evening hosted at Cloud2 in Helsinki.

Graduating Executive MBA and Pivoting to Business: What the Future Looks Like

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

After graduating from Aalto Executive MBA and years in technology leadership, I'm making a deliberate career pivot towards business. Here's what that transition looks like and why achieving something new means letting go of something else.

AWS Finland October Meetup - sponsored by Eficode

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Finland October meetup hosted by Eficode, focusing on DevOps and cloud-native practices.

AWS Finland September Meetup - Sponsored by IBM

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Finland community meetup in September 2023, hosted by IBM at their Helsinki office.

AWS Community Day Nordics 2023 announced

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 11:39:05 +0000

We are really excited to announce the AWS Community Day Nordics on April 20 2023 in Helsinki at Nordea Vallila Campus. Full agenda is to be announced, but be prepared for a full day of top-shelf topics and talks from the industry leading experts. Brought to the community - by the community.

Stay tuned for agenda updates and keynote reveals.

Check the event details and link to registration at https://awscommunitynordics.org/communityday
Admission to the event is free of charge, but requires you to have the ticket in your own name to be admitted to the premises.

AWS Finland January Meetup - AWS re:Invent re:Cap - sponsored by Solita

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Recap of AWS re:Invent 2022 announcements at the first AWS Finland meetup of 2023, hosted by Solita.

AWS Finland - re:Invent 2022 Keynote Watch Party

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Finland community gathered to watch the re:Invent 2022 keynote live in Helsinki.

Sustainability at AWS re:Invent: From Session Guide to Main Stage

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Writing the sustainability session guide for AWS re:Invent and then speaking on stage about building a sustainable cloud practice. Here's what I learned about the intersection of cloud and sustainability.

AWS Finland October Meetup - Sponsored by Wärtsilä

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Finland meetup at Wärtsilä's Helsinki headquarters with 100 attendees.

AWS Finland October Meetup - Sponsored by Gofore

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Finland October meetup hosted by Gofore at their Helsinki office.

AWS Finland September Meetup - Sponsored by Siili

Tue, 27 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Second AWS Finland September meetup, hosted by Siili Solutions in Ruoholahti.

AWS Finland September Meetup - Sponsored by Cirit

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Finland September meetup at Allianssi-sali in Helsinki, sponsored by Cirit.

AWS Finland August Meetup - Sponsored by WithSecure / F-Secure

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Finland August meetup hosted by WithSecure at their Helsinki office, with a security focus.

AWS Finland June Meetup - Sponsored by Knowit and AWS

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Finland June meetup at Epicenter Helsinki, co-sponsored by Knowit and AWS.

AWS Finland May Meetup - Sponsored by Zalando

Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Finland User Group returned to live events at Zalando's Helsinki Tech Hub.

AWS Finland March Meetup in Jyväskylä - Sponsored by Cinia

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Finland User Group traveled to Jyväskylä for a meetup hosted by Cinia at Crazy Town.

Re:Invent Re:cap 2021 - AWS Finland Online Meetup

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Finland community gathered online to recap the biggest announcements from AWS re:Invent 2021.

AWS Finland November Meetup - Sponsored by Telia

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

AWS User Group Finland returned to in-person meetups for the first time since the pandemic, hosted at Telia's Helsinki office.

GameDay - Nordics v Benelux

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Nordic and Benelux AWS communities faced off in a cross-regional GameDay competition online.

Community

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 11:15:58 +0000

Here are some selected industry communities in the Nordics.

AWS Communities

AWS Community Nordics runs own site at https://awscommunitynordics.org/

Virtual community is in Slack at https://aws-community-nordics.slack.com/

Microsoft & Azure Communities

Serverless

Education

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 09:55:12 +0000

This is my collection of useful resources for specific learning resources in the field of business, cloud, security, data and machine learning.

AWS

Azure

https://azurebacktoschool.github.io/

The day for two topics: GDPR and Schrems II, and Video on Demand

Wed, 16 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

AWS User Group Finland tackled GDPR implications of the Schrems II ruling and building video-on-demand solutions on AWS.

AWS GameDay - AWS Community Nordics Edition

Tue, 11 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

AWS community members from across the Nordics came together for a competitive GameDay event online.

Robust CI/CD pipelines for serverless applications

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

AWS User Group Finland explored building reliable CI/CD pipelines for serverless workloads in this online meetup.

re:Invent 2020 week 3 recap - Don't look back in anger

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 11:18:00 +0000

The three-week segment is turning towards the end, and everyone is dialling down little by little towards the holiday season. Sure, we have some additional content coming in January in the extra week of Jan 12-14 (for some unknown reason), but I guess it is fair to say that at least the core experience of this re:Invent starts to be done.

The re:Invent 2020 experience

Being fully virtual required something different at scale. And the magnitude from 50 000 to 250 000 attendees also speaks volumes, that when doing the content virtually, it is in the reach for a far greater audience.

re:Invent 2020 - Final Keynote with Werner Vogels

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 11:31:00 +0000

Today marks the beginning of an end for the re:Invent 2020. Sure, there are still some sessions lined up, and additional content is coming up in January. Even, the final keynote of Werner Vogels has traditionally marked that we are near the finish line. And I don’t think this year it is any different. People start to go back to their normal routines gradually - and under normal conditions would begin the long way back home from dusty plains of Nevada.

AWS Community Nordics: Werner Vogels Keynote Live Session

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The AWS Community Nordics gathered online to watch and discuss Werner Vogels' re:Invent 2020 keynote together.

re:Invent 2020 week 2 recap - announcements keep on rolling in

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 09:21:00 +0000

Week 2 coming to an end. After two weeks of the virtual re:invent in 2020, it is certainly a bit a bag of mixed feelings. And probably it shows on the AWS execution side.

Don’t get us wrong, especially the keynote performances are well-rehearsed, the message is polished, and the content is well thought out. But all the feeling of danger in the live setting is kind of missing. And usually, there has been some thread woven through whole of the event, like those “Go Build” types of slogans. There is an empty space where they used to be.

re:Invent 2020, Machine Learning Keynote - level keeps on rising

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 09:58:00 +0000

Machine Learning (ML) keynote is the third keynote of the re:Invent 2020, and today we join with Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of Amazon Machine Learning to hear the latest news and industry trends & visions on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Machine Learning is, and continues to be, one of the most disruptive technologies we will encounter this decade. It is only fitting, that it has secured it’s own keynote in the roster for this year.

re:Invent 2020 - week 1 recap and the new normal of being virtual

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 08:07:00 +0000

As the week turns towards Friday, the first week of AWS re:Invent 2020 is done. Now it is the time to do some reflection back on the first few days of this three-week event.

Virtual experience - slam dunk or something else?

First, it is probably worth addressing the elephant in the room. As the global situation has set the tone for all of the events for being converted to virtual, re:Invent is no exception. And this goes so far beyond the events; most of us working in the IT industry have had to reshape our daily routines to the current normal, working from home and limiting in-person interaction.

AWS re:Invent 2020 officially opened

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 10:58:00 +0000

The AWS re:Invent 2020 in virtual format is officially opened. The next three weeks are going to be filled with virtual keynotes, leadership sessions and virtual breakouts covering the world of IT from A to Z.

And as a suitable kickoff to the event, CEO of AWS brought his keynote mayhem to all of us. Almost three hours full of industry leadership thoughts and naturally, a bunch of announcements of new services and features.

Serverless Data Streaming at Scale

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A virtual meetup exploring serverless data streaming architectures on AWS with 127 attendees.

AWS Community Nordics Virtual Meetup - CDK Crash Course

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A packed virtual meetup with 177 attendees diving into AWS CDK for infrastructure as code.

AWS Game Tech - How Are Games Customers Running on AWS?

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A virtual meetup exploring how gaming companies leverage AWS for their infrastructure and services.

AWS Community Nordics Virtual Meetup - Building a Serverless Analytics Pipeline

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The first virtual AWS Community Nordics meetup focused on building serverless analytics pipelines.

Cloud Transformation Summit - With Jeff Barr

Tue, 10 Mar 2020 21:20:00 +0000

We had the honor to host Jeff Barr in Cybercom’s Cloud Transformation Summit. Big thanks for Jeff for making the trip, even though the circumstances were uncertain at best, that if we could have the event or not.

In the evening, we had AWS User Group Finland meetup, with Jeff joining as well and yours truly having the honor to act as the host and interviewer for the interactive part.

AWS Finland March Special Meetup with Jeff Barr - Sponsored by AWS & Cybercom

Tue, 10 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Jeff Barr visited Helsinki for a special AWS Finland meetup at Epicenter, drawing 174 attendees.

AWS Finland February Meetup - Sponsored by Nordcloud

Thu, 20 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Nordcloud hosted the February AWS Finland meetup at their Helsinki HQ with 75 attendees.

AWS Finland January Meetup - Sponsored by Sanoma

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Finland kicked off 2020 with the January meetup hosted at Sanoma's Helsinki office.

Featured video by Cybercom

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 12:00:00 +0000

Just a quick share of this video, I was happy to be part of in making:

First take on AWS Savings Plans

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 09:10:35 +0000

There was a huge announcement about a new service, or rather a feature, with the bit monstrous name " Savings Plans for AWS Compute Services". Let’s just call it as Savings Plans for short for now, OK?

There is a AWS blog post and a very recent Last Week in AWS post about the launch, so I am going to cover the basic here really short and then make some additional points, which I think should be noted.

AWS User Group Finland October Meetup - Sponsored by S-Group

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 08:32:16 +0000

On October 24th, 2019 we had AWS User Group Finland October meetup sponsored by S-Group. Here are my short notes about the event, where we had around 50 quite senior attendees joining the meetup.

There was a bit of an overlap with some other events and I personally want to apologize for any inconvenience. There is definitely more coordination between big user groups and we have already started the talks with other meetup’s organizers about this.

Practical guide to re:Invent 2019

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 13:29:21 +0000

The annual AWS re:Invent is closing up and today (October 15th 2019) the reserved seating bookings open up at 10AM PST (that’s 19:00 Stockholm / 20:00 Helsinki time).

If you do not have any idea, what’s this all about, you can check out the event and register at the event site here: https://reinvent.awsevents.com/

There are multiple “how to survive re:Invent” guides out there, so I try to do something different here and to be really pragmatic and straight forward on my take on this. Check out for example acloud.guru take on that or this collection of guides by my fellow AWS Heroes.

AWS User Group Finland September Meetup - Sponsored by Digia

Fri, 27 Sep 2019 13:43:36 +0000

On September 26th we had the second AWSFIN meetup which was sponsored by Digia.

We had around 50 people attending and came all the way to Pitäjänmäki, so thanks for all of the attendees to take the time to travel and coming to hear us talk.

The lineup for the evening was as follows:

New & Noteworthy in AWS, Rolf Koski
Managing your multi account environments with Control Tower, Arto Mäkitalo, Digia
Yle and Data - the journey so far, Anahit Pogosova, Solita

I kicked off the evening with my regular “New and Noteworthy” session. You can find my slides from below for the announcements I decided were important since the last meetup.

AWS Summit Stockholm 2019 - Are You Well Architected

Tue, 28 May 2019 09:03:00 +0000

Last week, on Wednesday May 22nd, the AWS global summits tour 2019 arrived in Stockholm. I had also booked time from my calendar to make a trip to Stockholm from Tuesday until Thursday - as I like to be effective and I’ll try to combine several engagements when I go visit a site in Sweden or elsewhere in the Nordics.

And it was indeed a three activity full days - I was back at home only late on Thursday night. This is a short recap of AWS Summit Stockholm and some related activities I attended during the visit.

ServerlessDays Helsinki 2019 - The Aftermath

Thu, 02 May 2019 13:09:59 +0000

ServerlessDays Helsinki was organized the first time ever last week, on April 25th. I had both the honor to be invited to be one of the members of the core team of event organizers and also accepted to talk at the event.

The first steps and idea conceived by Marcia Villalba to have a ServerlessDays in Finland was conceived some time in the spring of 2018. I have been working together with Marcia as community leads in AWS User Group Finland meetup for some time, so when the core team extended an invitation, it was an easy decision for me to accept.

AWS ReInvent 2018

Sun, 02 Dec 2018 18:54:11 +0000

First a disclaimer: I’ve had this article in the works for a long time. So if you are seeing this only right now, it’s because I’ve backdated the article to last December :-)

AWS ReInvent is AWS yearly main event held in Las Vegas at Venetian hotel and other venues throughout the city (as it has grown so large).

Venetian and Las Vegas Boulevard by night

I had the good fortune to pack my bags and join the event for third consecutive time this year. And it was bigger than it has ever been.

AWS User Group Finland October Meetup – Sponsored by New Things Co

Thu, 18 Oct 2018 20:19:41 +0000

Time for October AWS meetup!

This time we were gathering at New Things Co. They had smaller premises, but really cool and modern office. Unfortunately this time we could only accommodate under 50 people on site, but we were experimenting with live streaming this time as well, as we did a bit with previous Liquid Studio meetup.

Lessons learned from there:

we should probably have our own account on some platform for streaming
we should probably shoot the video straight from front, so that slides are visible and readable
we need to discuss, whether online stream is the thing we want to have or edited videos afterwards. There are variables to consider here

If you have input on these, contact me for example in the AWS Nordics Slack team.

Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service 2018

Thu, 31 May 2018 08:54:16 +0000

This year’s Gartner analysis on the Cloud IaaS is fresh out and there are few interesting pointers and easily worth your time to read it through, if the area is of interest to you. You can also find my thoughts on the 2017 Quadrant in my blog post from last year.

Microsoft has also bought the distribution rights to this paper, so if you want to access the whole study, you can do it for example here:

AWS Summit Stockholm 2018 - Stream recording and materials

Fri, 25 May 2018 11:42:31 +0000

Earlier this week, I wrote this short summary about my trip to AWS Summit in Stockholm.

Here is a summary of relevant materials from the Summit, which have been published since.

Highlight reel

Keynote recording

Materials

Session slides are available at: https://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/tag/stocksum18

AWS Summit Stockholm 2018

Mon, 21 May 2018 11:40:16 +0000

AWS Global Summits

AWS organizes annually a series of global AWS Summits, and one of them for last years has been organized in Stockholm.

As they describe the event, it is a " free one-day event bringing together the Nordic cloud computing community to connect, collaborate, and learn more about AWS". This years agenda was particularly interesting, as the main keynote speaker was Werner Vogels, who is the CTO of Amazon.com and known for his keynotes in AWS re:Invent events.

Building Cloud Competence

Tue, 13 Mar 2018 08:19:23 +0000

So what is competence anyway?

Simply put: Competence is one’s ability to execute given tasks successfully and efficiently. And without going too much to the theoretical definition, what competence is - you need to have enough of right competence at right time to succeed in business.

Also, the sooner you realize, that no-one can develop competence on anyone else’s behalf, more better off you will be.

So - how do you have a good strategy for managing your talent, whether it be existing or new?

AWS User Group Finland March Meetup – Sponsored by Gofore

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 12:25:13 +0000

On March 8, 2018 we had AWS User Group Finland meetup, which was sponsored by by Gofore.

Meetup venue

The meetup was organized at Gofore’s Helsinki office penthouse.

Tero Vepsäläinen was kind enough to work as the local host and provide space and beverages for all of us.

The servings were fabulous, made by Fafa’s. Also not forgetting excellent selection of drinks, and also non-alcoholic ones, which I can say, is still today a rarity.

AWS Dev Day Helsinki 2018 and Meetup

Fri, 26 Jan 2018 21:37:32 +0000

AWS Dev Day Nordics

On 25th of January, AWS had it’s Dev Day summit in Helsinki, where there was a full day of technical talks produced by the AWS Evangelist team.

Ian Massingham, Danilo Poccia, Abby Fuller, Julien Simon, Paul Maddox and our very own Adrian Hornsby were about to lay the law about the hot topics of the day.

You can find the event site and the evangelist bios here: https://aws.amazon.com/events/Devdays-Nordics/

The event was held in the new Clarion Hotel Helsinki. As you can see, the morning was grey and rainy. But I was hoping for really good day, so it did not matter too much.

AWS User Group Finland December Meetup - Sponsored by Cybercom

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 22:07:48 +0000

On 13th of December, we gathered to restaurant Maxine in downtown Helsinki for AWS Meetup.

This meetup was sponsored by my employer, Cybercom, so yours truly was acting as the MC.

The agenda and the speaker were as follows:

Welcome Words - Marcia Villalba (Rovio)
Impressions from attende point of view - Rolf Koski (Cybercom)
Customer impressions - Ari Niemi (SOK)
Finnish hackathon team story - Pasi Niemi (Nitor)
Most important releases - Rolf Koski (Cybercom)

Reinvent 2017 - Some expectations and some predictions

Thu, 23 Nov 2017 09:56:38 +0000

Next week one of the main events of the IT and especially Cloud Services landscape takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I guess if you are planning to go, you already have everything set up, as it is only under a week before it starts. And factoring in the fact that the event is sold out, so you would be out of luck, it you didn’t have a ticket secured.

AWS CloudFront Expands to Helsinki

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 23:24:17 +0000

AWS just announced minutes ago, that they added six new edge locations to their CDN network. And that Helsinki is one of them.

There are also three other completely new locations, which are Manchester, Denver and Phoenix.

One could say, that this has been long overdue. But finally it is here. This also brings the total number of POPs to over one hundred.

And this complements nicely the announcement from last week, where AWS announced their network POP (Point of Presence) in Helsinki, which is located in Equinix HE6 facility.

AWS User Group Finland November Meetup - Sponsored by Yle

Thu, 16 Nov 2017 21:30:18 +0000

On 16th of November we had the possibility to go to Yleisradio in Helsinki and use one of their main TV studio spaces as the premises for the AWS Meetup. Big thanks for Olli Vistbacka from Yle for enabling this.

We had a turnout of about 80 people, so this was a very good session and there were also good discussions during the evening.

The topic for the evening was “Road to Re:Invent” and the official agenda was as follows:

AWS User Group Finland October Meetup - Sponsored by Zalando

Thu, 26 Oct 2017 21:49:42 +0000

On October 26th we gathered to downtown Helsinki to Zalando office for a AWS meetup.

I started the journey early in the morning from Tampere and was greeted by the first snow of the season. Morning seemed quite bright with the snow in the ground.

Zalando has big offices in Autotalo in Kamppi, in the very center of Helsinki.

Our agenda was shorter than usual, but that did not slow us down. I held the now already traditional “New and Noteworthy” session and the Rami from Zalando had very interesting speech about Zalando infrastructure in AWS.

Me as AWS Community Lead

Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:58:27 +0000

There is a short post (in Finnish) here about my role as AWS Community Lead for AWS User Group Finland.

https://www.cybercom.com/fi/Suomi/Yritys/Ajankohtaista/aws-user-group-finland-on-tuhannen-pilviasiantuntijan-kohtaamispaikka/

Let’s see if we can get that published also in English at some point.

In the mean time, go and check out these pages:

And the featured picture is from my bike trip some time back to Gotland in Sweden. Really good roads for motorcycle riding and nice scenery, highly recommended.

AWS User Group Finland August meetup at Alma Media

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 13:19:10 +0000

On the 29thof August 2017 we gather to Alma-building for AWS Finland August meetup, which was sponsored by Alma Media.

They have a blog post about the meetup (in Finnish) here: https://www.almamedia.fi/tapahtumat/2017/aws-meetup

Agenda for the evening was (links to slides in the topic rows):

Opening words from Event Sponsor and greetings from AWS User Group Finland - Rolf Koski (Cybercom) and Simo Syrjänen (Alma Media)

New and noteworthy - short update about AWS announcements since last meetup - Rolf Koski (Cybercom)

And the results are in - Gartners Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS 2017

Mon, 26 Jun 2017 08:35:51 +0000

Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service 2017

The latest Gartner analysis on the Cloud IaaS is out and there are few interesting pointers and easily worth your time to read it through, if the area is of interest to you. AWS has also bought the distribution rights to this paper, so if you want to access the whole study, you can do it here:

https://pages.awscloud.com/mq-download-report.html

The quadrant

For those of you, who are not familiar with the concept, the Magic Quadrant is a market research conducted by Gartner research group.

AWS User Group Finland - May Meetup 2017

Mon, 29 May 2017 12:25:57 +0000

Last week we had AWS User Group meetup, which was this time sponsored by Solinor.

The meetup was at Solinor’s office, which is located at Teollisuuskatu in Helsinki. And if I counted correctly, we had around 45 participants to attend the meetup.

As usual, we had pizza, beer and talks about various subjects. I was also preparing the notes until the last minute, as I had some customer engagements most of the day until the meetup.

Living on the Edge

Tue, 25 Apr 2017 16:21:11 +0000

Cloud services delivery endpoint is moving more and more to network edges and closer to clients little by little.

Why is that?

Because delivery of the content is not limited any more to human clients. Services are consumed by loads of automated services discussing with each other through API calls. And the whole IoT megatrend is creating even more demands for very low latency communications across the globe.

And as you cannot increase the speed of light, or move the existing warehouse scale data centers, which we all utilize nowadays in a form or another, the only possibility to make the execution faster is to move execution of the services closer to the clients. And including even the dynamic parts of the services, which have traditionally been served from backends (or origins in CDN lingo) thus passing through all of the infrastructure.

AWS Summit Stockholm is just around the corner

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 18:23:14 +0000

The AWS Summit in Stockholm is very close, 3rd of May in the Waterfront Congress Center.

If you are planning to come you should move fast with the registration because it’s almost sold out.

Cybercom will be there as one of the Gold Sponsors.

https://aws.amazon.com/summits/stockholm/sponsors/

I am also personally traveling already on 2nd of May to Stockholm to some customer engagements. But I will be in the summit the whole day to discuss and hear about the latest AWS things with customers and peers.

Helping out in Cloudy Gothenburg

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 19:56:44 +0000

Cloudy Gothenburg - AWS meetup April 2017

Part of my job description is also helping out internationally the different sites we have around the Nordics and Europe. This time it meant packing the bags and heading towards Gothenburg with very early flight.

There is a relatively new meetup called Cloudy Gothenburg which is sponsored by Cybercom’s Gothenburg office. It was originally founded by my former colleague Marcus Tannefalk but as he relocated to different country and had to leave not only Gothenburg but Cybercom, the meetup future was left a bit uncertain. So I offered my help to keep the momentum going and together with Magnus Skebäck and other crew on site we decided to push on with the really well received meetup.

AWS User Group Finland - March meetup

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 20:32:18 +0000

Real life IoT in Amazon

The march meetup for AWS User Group Finland was a first try to have a event in Tampere.

Cybercom was sponsoring the event and it was held at our office at Pakkahuoneenaukio. We got around 25 participants to show up, so it was a positive signal. So possibly we will have other sessions at Tampere in the future as well.

Adrian from AWS was demoing his IoT demonstration. You can find the links to the slides and source code from his github repository.

The Subtle Art of Upselling

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 20:25:25 +0000

I just had an experience (and actually not related to my work, or even to IT) where I clearly communicated that I wanted to buy certain service. The service in question could be considered as premium service in it’s class. But during the sales process, or discussion, I was more or less directed towards getting just the standard service instead. So after some turns of events - I noticed I had settled for the bulk.

re:Invent 2016 starting

Sat, 26 Nov 2016 20:14:20 +0000

I had the possibility this year to attend to AWS Re:invent, which is one of the largest IT conferences currently in the world. We had a team of three attending the conference to tune in to the latest announcements from AWS and to meet peers and AWS personnel in addition to going through a tight schedule of sessions.

Conference is held at The Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, United States. And to reach the location, it requires quite hefty amount of travel.

Microsoft and friends - cloud ecosystem partnership

Fri, 25 Nov 2016 13:00:28 +0000

Yesterday I attended a Microsoft Azure workshop in Keilaniemi, Helsinki. This was a joint session arranged by Arrow ECS and Microsoft to promote Microsoft and their “Microsoft & Friends” titled cloud ecosystem and involved partners offering.

Working intensively with AWS technologies currently, it seemed to me, that still the angle on this event was to promote “use cloud for secondary workloads, as DR and backup”. That has been the angle on most of the Azure discussions, I have been involved in lately.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional

Mon, 14 Nov 2016 19:23:58 +0000

Now Professional Certified

After couple of quirks in the road out of my control, I finally had the time slot for my certification.

So, now I have the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional status. Kind of relieved, I passed on the first try. Let me just say that it was definitely not for granted, as the test is quite complex and long.

I will later write some tips and pointers about passing the exam, but for now, I’m going to relax the train ride back home.

OpenStack Autumn 2016 meetup

Wed, 02 Nov 2016 21:00:44 +0000

OpenStack Finland User Group had it’s autumn meetup on November 2nd 2016. The topic for this event was OpenStack Operations and Operators.

I had also promised to talk about our operations at Cybercom, and specifically in our Managed Operations Center running our 24/7 operations, even though I have been mostly concentrating lately on other tasks at my daily work. Toni, who was supposed to keep the talk originally, was on parental leave, so I promised to help there.

How to farm your servers

Thu, 06 Oct 2016 21:09:28 +0000

… or the cloud-tale of pets, cattle and … insects?

There is quite an old anecdote in IT how to classify your servers running your services. And it still seems to hold true in the era of cloud computing — at least it has for now. It states, that you should divide your farm to pets and cattle and treat them accordingly.

Pets are something you care about deeply. You give them names. You take care of them as personal units and if one gets sick, you treat it and make it better. You will hold on to your pets for long periods of time.

Santa Monica - Security Day 2016

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 18:02:52 +0000

I attended Santa Monica security day on September 27th with one of our Chief Architects, Mika Ahoniemi. The event was held at Helsinki Messukeskus.

There was interesting speeches by Santa Monica represented vendors. Mainly Juniper, Fortinet and F5 had interesting sessions, among others.

Fortinet for example discussed the share responsibility model in the cloud and it’s implications to security.

Also new EU information security regulation was discussed.

Naturally the keynotes were very technology and vendor specific forged to promote their own solutions. Nevertheless, the value for the day was maybe actually more, what I was originally expecting. So there were some good takeaways from the actual contents and it was not purely slideware.

The Golden Cage of Public Cloud

Sun, 25 Sep 2016 22:21:50 +0000

… and should you even try to avoid it?

Cross-cloud portability, that one great argument against using specific cloud provider to it’s full extent. This is also kind of often used by competing cloud providers as a leverage to get at least some business from a client coming their way.

The Golden Cage - Term used in IT to represent a vendor lock-in situation, where customer is forced to stay within a vendor, a product or a service because of architectural, contractual or other specific reasons, which make “escaping” too complicated or expensive

Public Cloud - Someone else's Data Center or something else?

Sun, 11 Sep 2016 22:18:21 +0000

There’s been some time this one internet meme has been going around. It says:

" There is no cloud - it’s just someone else’s computer ".

You might agree with this statement, or you might not, but it’s a good catch phrase. And good catch phrases are easy to relate to.

But if you think on a bigger scale, not just computers or servers, but on an enterprise level and on a data center infrastructure level. Is it actually that here is no cloud, there is just someone else’s data center.

AWS Certified Architect - Associate

Thu, 08 Sep 2016 16:00:14 +0000

Today I passed the Associate level exam for AWS Certified Architect track. The licence number was AWS-ASA-20688 so I guess there starts to be quite a few certified people globally already.

The test itself was pretty straightforward consisting of couple of dozen questions in 80 minute time limit. For this level of questions, the time was more than adequate. The questions are sometimes a little catchy - which is pretty usual in the industry for these multiple choice tests.

About

Sun, 29 May 2016 14:31:34 +0000

The Pragmatist Futurist is a blog discussing themes and topics around technology disruption, Generative AI and the role of cloud services enabling the change.

There is quite strong focus towards Amazon Web Services, but no other topics are left undiscussed, if I find the need to do so.

The focus tries to be more business and strategy oriented than tidbit technical, but every now and then there are some technical thoughts as well.

Blog posts

Sun, 29 May 2016 14:31:34 +0000

Blog posts in timeline order from newest to oldest

NetApp Insight 2015

Mon, 30 Nov 2015 22:04:40 +0000