AWS re:Invent — Midnight madness launches Robomaker

Day 0 at AWS re:Invent and Amazon have kicked off the party/conference with an impressive midnight party. Not your normal party; a lot of grown adults eating chicken wings, a video commemorating said chickens, guinness world records for glow sticks and air drumming, popcorn, unlimited booze flowing way too easily (normal), start up launch and an AWS product launch.

Start up launch; Hiber

CTO/Co-founder, Maarten Engelen, from start up Hiber was at the event to launch their new product, a new way to communicate IoT devices globally using mini satellites. Ultra smart idea, low cost and you can order your own IoT kit to play around with. It will be interesting to watch how this opens up new ideas globally.

New AWS product in town; Robomaker

Robots are the future, there is no getting away from it. To start making robots is hard, it seems like you have to be nothing but a genius. Amazon have started their journey to solve the issues with Robomaker. You can simulate how your robot will work in AWS built environments setup by Amazon e.g. a living room or a retail store. Change parameters and re run thousands of simulations in parallel, something that would take days (and cost a lot) in the real world.

Launch of Robomaker

It is exciting and no doubt will open the way for many more startups to form quickly, easily and cheaply. BUT as someone mentioned beside me, nobody seemed that thrilled about it at midnight madness. Yes it is exciting for some but the crowd at the event didn’t seem to relate with the product. AWS re:Invent in a few years may have a slightly different attendance with robots flying around.

Guinness World Records

To add to the fun a few world records were attempted;

• Largest Air Drum Ensemble
• Most People Lighting Glow Sticks Simultaneously
• Largest chicken wing eating competition

Not forgetting the chickens…

This one was a bit bizarre but there was a whole video dedicated to chickens whilst a chicken wing competition was under way. Take away what you wish from this….