AWS Community Nordics Virtual Meetup - Building a Serverless Analytics Pipeline

With in-person events no longer possible due to the pandemic, the AWS community in the Nordics came together for the first pan-Nordic virtual meetup, streamed on the AWS Community Nordics YouTube channel. This was a milestone for the community – our first online event – and it featured Marcia Villalba from AWS presenting on “Building a Serverless Analytics Pipeline.”

Marcia walked through how to construct a data analytics pipeline using AWS serverless services like Lambda, Kinesis, and S3, combined with analytics tools like Athena and QuickSight. The session also included a “News from AWS Community Nordics” segment to keep everyone up to date on community developments. The practical, architecture-focused content resonated well with the 42 attendees who joined the stream.

Moving to a virtual format was an adjustment for everyone. The spontaneous hallway conversations and networking over drinks were gone, replaced by chat windows and muted microphones. But the community adapted quickly. The chat was active throughout Marcia’s presentation, and the Q&A session showed that people were just as engaged online as they had been in person.

This event also marked the beginning of the AWS Community Nordics collaboration, where user groups from Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark started organizing joint events. The virtual format, while born out of necessity, actually made it easier to bring together community members from across the Nordic region. That turned out to be one of the silver linings of moving online.

It was good to see the community staying connected and continuing to learn together, even when the world outside was uncertain.