In November 2024, Vadym Kazulkin was named an AWS Serverless Hero. This article reflects on his AWS journey, emphasizing the art of contributing effectively to the AWS community and general advice on achieving this.
This article isn’t named “How to become AWS Hero” as the process isn’t public and you can’t nominate yourself. Vadym focused on contributing to the AWS community and making an impact.
Vadym and ip.labs' journey to the AWS Cloud began in early 2017 as they decided to migrate from their datacenters to the AWS cloud and modernize their solutions along the way. Vadym and a colleague summarized this journey in their talk, Highly Scalable Image Storage with AWS Serverless, which they have given at several conferences including the GoTo. By 2021, they had migrated all applications to AWS and closed their last datacenter.
In 2018, they began experimenting with AWS Serverless technologies like Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, SQS, SNS, Step Functions, and EventBridge. Vadym and a colleague are currently presenting lessons learned and challenges of one of such a project in the article series Highly scalable image storage solution with AWS Serverless at ip.labs.
Vadym's first piece of advice is to find contribution topics that you are passionate about, and they should at least partially correspond to what you’re doing in your daily life and you should enjoy experimenting with these things. For him, these areas became:
Public speaking is just one way to contribute. Other avenues include:
Focus on what you're passionate about and what benefits you the most.
Vadym has been active on social media, like LinkedIn and X/Twitter, posting about his interests and promoting his content.
In 2022, Vadym started blogging to improve his writing skills. He chose dev.to and has published over 85 articles, gaining over 14,000 followers in two years. He also published articles in the German Java Magazine.
Through his contributions, Vadym was contacted by AWS service teams for feedback on service development and improvements.
Don't be discouraged by rejections from conference organizers. Keep applying with small changes to your proposals. Use rejections as an opportunity to refine your content through blog posts and incorporate feedback.
Vadym joined the AWS Community Builder program in 2020, which provided learning, networking, and content promotion opportunities. Check out the AWS Community Builders page if you are not a part of it yet. (Note: at the time of writing the original article January 2025 nominations were open, but check the website for current status)
Focus on contributing and making an impact, not just on titles. Building a personal brand can lead to recognition as an expert and invitations to prestigious conferences. Establishing connections with industry experts can enhance your experience and knowledge as well.
