Blake's Take: Who are the AWS Heroes?

Let’s talk about the AWS Heroes program

The AWS Heroes program is a global program that AWS launched in 2014 where they recognise people for their impact on the community. Not everyone is aware of the AWS Heroes program, so let’s dive a little deeper.

AWS Heroes

You cannot apply to become a Hero, you have to be nominated internally by AWS staff, then pass a four stage approval process over 30 days. From what I understand, every Hero is accepted for different reasons, so there is no definitive list of things that you can do to be nominated, but from the Heroes we know, some of the activities that got them recognized include: open source contributions, organising large community events, speaking at events, writing newsletters, hosting podcasts, producing educational content, and working directly with AWS service teams on new features. All of these things have a strong community focus.

Once you get approved through the internal process, you are then invited to become a Hero, and from there you choose whether or not to accept. The Heroes are not paid or restricted in any way on what they can say or do. The Heroes designation includes a bunch of AWS credits that you can choose to hand out to help support other people in the community building in AWS or use yourself on a cool project, direct access to AWS service teams (which, by extension, allows for some sneak peeks at features and services before they are released), and a ticket to AWS re:Invent. In the past couple of years, AWS has also sponsored a special AWS Heroes Summit, where they bring all of the Heroes to one place so we can discuss the future of products in development.

Entry into the program is a two-way door; you are regulary invited to reapply to stay part of it. If your participation in the program no longer makes sense for either party, you can part ways amicably.

We would be remiss to not point out that Kristi and Matt, who built this platform, are both AWS Heroes

How Many Heroes Are Out There?

We have been getting different numbers for this one from different sources, but we were able to get the official latest numbers. Today, there are 273 Heroes from 57 countries. You can discover Heroes close to you on the AWS Hero website

This image was taken at the last Heroes summit in 2024; it’s not every Hero, but it’s quite a lot! Can you find Matt and Kristi? AWS Heroes

The Heroes Categories

AWS has a lot of different services, and as such, different umbrella communities have formed on the same platform. To help people find Heroes that resonate with their community, the Heroes have all been aligned to exactly one category. Heroes regularly provide content from outside their assigned category, but broad strokes, it helps narrow in on what their main focus is.

There are currently seven categories:

  • Community Heroes
  • Container Heroes
  • Data Heroes
  • DevTools Heroes
  • Machine Learning Heroes
  • Serverless Heroes
  • Security Heroes

The Go Build Award

You may or may not have seen that every year Amazon CTO Dr Werner Vogels hands out an award to one of the Heroes for their impact on the community. This is not a Hero of the year award and Werner does not pitch it as such, he says that it honours and celebrates all of the Heroes for the collective work they do all year, not just the person selected.

Our very own Matt Coulter was the inaugural winner of what was called the “Now Go Build” award at the time, presented to him on stage as part of Werner’s keynote in 2021.

Now Go Build Award

After this, it was renamed to the “Go Build” award and presented to Bhuvaneswari Subramani in 2022

Now Go Build Award

presented to Luc van Donkersgoed in 2023

Now Go Build Award

and most recently it was presented to Rossana Suarez

Now Go Build Award

Why Am I Writing About The Heroes?

There were several shoutouts made to the Heroes across the keynote stages at AWS re:Invent last week. The week was capped with this rallying cry by Dr Werner Vogels where he said:

The heroes are a group of people who continuously share their lessons with the rest of the world and build communities. There are 257 Heroes across 53 different countries, they are the feet on the ground that help everyone else be successful on our platform. Please listen to them and engage with them because they will have lessons to tell you that are valuable in building your own systems.

I Want To Listen, What Sessions Did Heroes Present at re:Invent?

Hopefully I haven’t missed anyone but these are the sessions we could find recordings for where Heroes were included:

You can click any of the links above to watch the individual talks, or we’ve created a handy YouTube playlist with all recordings together in one place.

How Did The Heroes React to Werner’s “Shout Out”?

There was a lot of joy and excitement amongst the community, some of the Heroes actually banded together the night before their flight home to create the website listen-to-the-heroes. This site watches AWS Hero accounts on Bluesky and if they post with the hashtag #listentotheheroes then the content shows on this site. The Heroes were: Philipp Garbe, Thorsten Hoeger, Johannes Koch, Markus Ostertag, Anders Bjørnestad and Monica Colangelo

Others like Nick Triantafillou created an awesome seasonal display with an absolute banger of a song:

What About The AWS Community Builder Program?

Matt and Kristi were both former community builders as well, so they can speak to some of the differences between the Community Builder and Heroes programs.

The biggest one being that there is an annual application process to become a community builder, which opens up again on January 6th 2025. If you are reading this before this date, then you can visit the Community Builder website and sign up for notifications when it opens.

The second difference is in the number of people accepted to be part of the program; last we heard, there are roughly 2,500 community builders worldwide, so they outnumber the Heroes by a factor of 10:1.

To take the description from the website:

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.

From this, the real difference is in the expectations for acceptance. The Community Builder program is a place where emerging leaders can be nurtured and supported with access to AWS service teams so that they can develop into the best version of themselves possible. I don’t want to give the impression that there is a promotion pipeline from Community Builder to Heroes or that they are in any way pitched like that because they are not comparable; they target different groups of people at different stages in their journey.

The All Builders Welcome Grant

This is not like the Hero or the Community Builder program but we thought it deserved an “honorable mention” as it’s been integral in introducing diverse, young talent into AWS and the AWS programs. Kristi was an All Builders Welcome (ABW) Grant recipient back in 2021, and it was what introduced her to the Community Builder program. She credits a lot of her involvement in the AWS Community today to recieving the grant.

The ABW grant is an apply-to-attend grant that covers the cost of AWS re:Invent for diverse, early career individuals. It includes the AWS re:Invent ticket, your flight to and from Las Vegas, the 5-day hotel stay on the Las Vegas strip, close to all the sessions, events, and activities for the week, reserved keynote seating, some coverage for meals/incidentals, and of course, some great SWAG items. On top of all of this, AWS also hosts a Welcome reception for all grant recipients to kick off the week, and a closing “ceremony” to the end week, both providing opportunities to meet, socialize, and share with other members of the community.

If you want to experience re:Invent and are early career but cannot afford the ticket/travel then this is definitely something worth applying for. Applications typically open in the summer, and recipients are notified in the fall before AWS re:Invent so they can get their travel in order. You’ll find some great reviews and recaps from multiple grant recipients over the years, but here’s an article with multiple people’s experiences of the grant to get you started! If you’d like to keep an eye on the ABW grant application, be sure to subscribe to updates for AWS re:Invent 2025.

What Now?

We hope after reading this article, you have a greater understanding of some of the AWS Community programs, how to find, follow, and listen to AWS Heroes’ content from AWS re:Invent and beyond, and how to get started in the AWS Community yourself. As always, keep an eye on our Teach Me AWS blog for more highlights, insights, teachings, and more!

Happy Holidays folks, we’ll see you in 2025! Kristi, Matt, and Blake