AWS Community Day Italy | Milano

Learn and Be Curious - AWS Community Day Italy in Milano

The theme of AWS Community Day Italy this year was “Learn and be curious.” A fitting motto - not only for technology, but for juggling, creativity, and the willingness to try something before you fully understand it.

Yes - I did juggle on stage, but more about that in the next post.

The Project Behind the Talk: OTTO

For the past two years, Philipp and I had the idea to build OTTO - an assistant for our AWS User Group in Vienna. Something that could:

• Answer questions about meetups
• Check speakers and sessions from Sessionize
• Generate visual assets and announcements
• Remove repetitive manual tasks
• Give us back our time and enthusiasm

Because community work should be meaningful, not monotonous. Consistency is important - but consistency alone can become a trap if it turns into repetition without growth.

So we submitted our OTTO talk to several Community Days - and then all four were accepted.

We now have to build the thing. Properly. And fast.

Conference-Driven Development

Conference-driven development.
Commit publicly. Then build until it works.

In theory, we would have:

• Completed training data early
• Finalized slides long before travel
• Tested pipelines with time to spare

In reality:

• Our InstructLab + CrewAI + Bedrock training pipelines ran for days
• The new dataset finished the evening before we left
• The slides were updated on the morning of travel
• We added a new agent halfway through the tour (because… of course we did)

It wasn’t polished. But it was real. And every iteration came directly from real-world feedback - from hallways, Slack threads, and post-talk conversations.

Trying, Failing, Learning (The Juggling Parallel)

When I learn a juggling trick:

• I watch tutorials
• Break movements into micro-steps
• Practice controlled repetition

There is structure. Method. Space to slow down.

With fast-moving tech:

• The documentation doesn’t exist yet
• The examples are incomplete
• The approach is unclear

Try → Fail → Adjust → Try again.

Not chaotic - just exploratory. Curiosity as a survival strategy.

The Atmosphere in Milano

Milano had its own character - warm, bold, direct. Sessions flowed into conversations, conversations into collaborations.

What stood out most was intention:

• A 50/50 gender balance on stage - not as a statement, but as a standard
• The Women of Cloud Workshop felt empowering, not performative
• A community that recognizes contribution, not status

This is how you build an inclusive and resilient ecosystem.

Acknowledgements

• Monica Colangelo - for curation, leadership, and thoughtful balance
• Suzana and Darya - for the impactful Women of Cloud workshop
• Dmytro - colleague, photographer, storyteller, community anchor, and friend
• Massimo, Faye, Jimmy, Davide, Anton, Kenneth, Luciano, Martina, Jocelyn, Renato and many more who made it a shared effort

Watch the Highlights

🎥 Aftermovie: https://youtu.be/9zTrN-0R_oo?si=FAqEP7z7PD6HbJs7

It captures the energy - the movement, the laughter, the learning, the juggling.

Next Stop: Timișoara

We’re taking OTTO further - to Romania next. The code will change. The slides will change. We’ll break things, fix things, and learn new things.

Learn and be curious. Always.