This report is about my participation in JAWS DAYS 2024, which takes place once a year in Tokyo. I participated in this year’s event as a member of a team that supported the corporate and community sponsors, moderated panel discussions, helped out at a friend’s workshop, and also took the stage to speak at the participatory content where we competed for proposals. In particular, I would like to share some details about the participatory content where we competed for proposals.
This is the first time in five years that the event has been held onsite! AWS users, partners and students from all over Japan gathered in Ikebukuro, Tokyo!
JAWS DAYS, the equivalent of AWS Community Day, is one of the largest annual JAWS-UG (AWS User Group -Japan) community conferences, which has been held in Japan for about 10 years.Due to COVID-19, it has been five years since the on-site The conference was held onsite for the first time in five years due to COVID-19. Many people type that the community conference had changed its look and feel, with a more varied line-up than last time. For myself, JAWS DAYS is also a very memorable conference, as I served as chair of the organizing committee in 2018. In addition, the keynote speech by Jeff Barr’s keynote speech resonated deeply with those of us in the community, and I am confident that we will continue to have more precious moments of learning and fun with our colleagues.
Presentation battle: “Team proposal competition – make a proposal to the virtual RFP!”
This is a participatory content event where participants submit proposals in response to a fictitious RFP (Request for Proposal) submitted by a fictitious company and compete for adoption. The event is run to a very tight timetable, with proposal documents being prepared one week before the event and submitted by the day before the event. Participants can apply individually or in teams of four or five people, and I participated as part of a team.
There were three main reasons for my participation: 1st, although I have a desire to speak at CFP (Call for Proposals), I wanted to actively try if there was a guaranteed place to present my work, as the number of applicants is increasing every year; 2nd, I wanted to be a part of a community I am usually involved in managing, which is a Third, I thought that by participating in participatory content, I could not only listen to the content, but also help to enliven the event itself. 3rd I thought that by participating in participatory content, I could not only listen to the session, but also enliven the event itself.
With this background, I formed a team called “Naniwa Musume” together with the management members of “JAWS-UG DE&I”, and we were able to demonstrate our strengths in our respective areas of expertise and win the championship. In fact, “Naniwa Musume” and the members of this year’s team had participated in the AWS Women Hackathon in the past and won that event as well, so this time they achieved a double crown.
Aiming to build storylines, pursue reality and make an impactful proposal!
The theme of the proposal was to improve the services of a company offering warehouse logistics management as SaaS to its end-clients. The presentation lasted only 10 minutes. With only a few hours of preparation time, it was clearly inadequate. Despite this, we concentrated on building the storyline, the reality of the service, the highly accurate visibility and architecture, and creating a memorable proposal. However, we thought that this alone would not be enough to win the competition, so we gave a thorough performance of attitude and character in the presentation on the day, as per our strategy. As a result, we made a strong impact, with ‘fun’ as the judging criterion. We received high marks not only for the architecture of our proposal, but also for the content as a whole. In particular, the focus on warehouse drones and AWS Panorama was a unique approach that no other team had taken. And we are confident that we can sell this proposal to real companies right away.
*Proposal documents are available here
The game format, but taken as seriously as if it were a real job, is because it is a community that values diversity.
What all the participating teams had in common was a serious, work-like attitude. Team members came from a variety of roles – engineers, consultants and sales people – and ranged in age and career. While many were meeting for the first time, mutual respect and care was necessary to achieve the goal. And we believe that this was possible because we were in an environment that respected diversity and allowed people to be themselves, so that everyone could really work on their fictitious proposals. This commitment to diversity is perfectly in line with our ethos, and the same can be said for our GameDay activities. We meet communities through AWS technology, and through these communities we gain experiences and meet people that we would not get in our normal work or corporate activities. This can also be felt through regular community management and study groups, but the more people we have the opportunity to meet, the stronger this feeling becomes.
Lastly..
A community is a place where you can experience personal growth and discover new things, not just on your own, but with the people around you. Through workshops, participatory content and involvement in management, you also have the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of yourself from different perspectives. If you are at all interested in these experiences, please contact me. Let’s have a fun experience together! Bye for now. See you!!