A personal update

In May, I published a short episode of the podcast about my daughter Olivia being diagnosed with leukemia. It's been a rough couple of months, but I wanted to share how things are going, what the plan is, and give a tremendous thank you to the community.

Have you ever wished you could quit your job and go create content all day long while working for yourself? You can! In this episode, Yan Cui joins Allen Helton to talk about full-time content creation and consultancy within the serverless world. The two discuss Yan's journey to greatness, weigh in on the use of generative AI when it comes to content, and cover tips and tricks to get better engagement. About Yan Yan is an AWS Serverless Hero offering training and consulting on AWS and serverless applications. With experience running production workloads at scale in AWS since 2010, Yan has a proven track record of leveraging technology to enhance business outcomes. He has served as an architect and principal engineer across various industries, including banking, e-commerce, social networks, live streaming, and mobile gaming. Yan has worked on large-scale systems handling millions of concurrent users and processing billions of events daily. He runs the site "The Burning Monk", where he shares serverless tips, insights, and best practices, and hosts the podcast Real World Serverless, featuring discussions with practitioners from around the globe. Links Twitter - https://x.com/theburningmonk LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/theburningmonk/ The Burning Monk - https://theburningmonk.com Production Ready Serverless Course - http://productionreadyserverless.com/ LLRT Deep Dive - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K4ABY60_oo

I recently had a significant life event that has turned my world upside down. In this bonus episode, I share the story and let you know what you can do to help. Blog post: https://readysetcloud.io/blog/allen.helton/a-personal-update GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-olivias-fight-against-leukemia

You've probably seen some posts lately about the Believe in Serverless community. If you've been wondering what it is and why there's so much noise around it - great news! This episode is all about the community including what it is, where it's been, what it has to offer, and where it's going. Join Allen and four of the community champions, Ben Pyle, Danielle Heberling, Andres Moreno, and James Eastham, as they talk about this amazing new community. There's never been a better time to join! Links Believe in Serverless community - https://believeinserverless.com Ben on Twitter - https://twitter.com/benjamenpyle Danielle on Twitter - https://twitter.com/deeheber Andres on Twitter - https://twitter.com/andmoredev James on Twitter - https://twitter.com/plantpowerjames

There's no question that tech is booming all over the world. But how has it been received in places that have harder access to the internet, like Africa? Join Allen as he talks with Tobenna Nwokike about how technology is transforming Nigeria into something completely new. They discuss the cultural and economic changes brought on by tech, how easy it is to break into the field, the assistance the Nigerian government is providing for those who want to get into it, and much more. The whole world is embracing high-tech, making lives better everywhere it goes. About Tobenna Tobenna Nwokike is a software developer with over a decade of experience in the field. As a Senior Cloud Engineer/Consultant at Serverless Guru, he navigates the complex realm of cloud technologies, all while working remotely from Nigeria. Tobenna has a strong passion for uplifting the next generation of tech talent and has mentored over 30 software engineers ensuring they are well equipped for the job market/startup space. Links LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobenna-nwokike Twitter - https://twitter.com/tobeski 3MTT - https://3mtt.nitda.gov.ng

When was the last time you attended an event? It was probably virtual, right? Why is that? The tech industry has moved more and more virtual the past few years and we're starting to slowly but surely crawl our way back to in-person. In this episode, Raphael Manke and Allen Helton talk about their experiences with getting together in person and how it compares to virtual events. They talk about starting your own AWS user group, the value you get from networking with locals, their favorite stories from meetups, and much more. About RaphaelRaphael is a full-stack web developer leveraging serverless technologies in his day-to-day business. He helps customers build reliable and scalable solutions with minimal operational overhead. On his cloud journey, he shares his insights as a public speaker and connects other AWS enthusiasts on his local AWS Usergroup in Germany. Links LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphael-manke-a61912114 AWS User Group Karlsruhe 0 https://www.meetup.com/de-DE/aws-meetup-karlsruhe

Event-driven architectures (EDA) is an intimidating subject for many, but don't confuse complexity with unfamiliarity. While EDA might seem unnecessarily complex, it's a necessary architectural pattern as the world goes more and more distributed. Join James Eastham and Allen Helton as they discuss all things EDA, ranging from what to put in your events to how EDA compares to request/response architectures to observability. Whether you're looking to get into events for the first time or have been practicing for years, the episode is for you.#### About JamesJames is a Senior Cloud Architect at Amazon Web Services and content creator. He has over 10 years of experience in software, at all layers of the application stack. He has worked in front-line support, database administration, back-end development and now works with some of the biggest companies in the world architecting systems using AWS technologies.James also produces content on YouTube, focused on building applications with serverless technologies and event-driven architecture. Links Twitter - https://twitter.com/plantpowerjames LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-eastham YouTube -https://www.youtube.com/@serverlessjames Believe in Serverless Community - https://believeinserverless.com

Join Johannes and Allen as they talk about the world of modern CI/CD. The duo describes exactly what CI/CD is and is not and how your pipeline might be a bit more involved than you think. Johannes shares what he considers "the best" pipeline in the industry today, describes his experience with Amazon Code Catalyst, and goes into detail about a project he's working on to make pipeline generation a snap. Whether you're looking to get started with CI/CD or you're an experienced veteran, there's a little bit of something for everyone in this episode. About Johannes Johannes is a Sr. DevOps Engineer at FICO where he contributes to the FICO® Platform. He is a builder at heart and loves to solve problems in different flavors. He believes in full CI/CD automation and everything required to run the solution being written in code.Johannes was in the AWS Community Builders program from 2022 to 2023, he founded the AWS User Group Bergstrasse, helped to start the AWS Community DACH Förderverein, and is part of the team that organizes the AWS Community Day in the DACH region. He also writes about his experiences on his personal blog and recently started a YouTube channel to share experiences and best practices related to CI/CD. His mission is to empower developers to start their new projects with a true CI/CD pipeline, enabling rapid value generation through automation.He enjoys sharing knowledge as a public speaker, but also helping and mentoring engineers who are starting their cloud journey. He believes in true collaboration within the AWS community to make the individuals successful. Links LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannes-koch-353b2158 Twitter - https://twitter.com/lockhead Blog - https://lockhead.info YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@cicdonaws

They say the best way to learn is by doing, but is that always true? Does the way people effectively learn change the further they get into their career? Join Luc and Allen as they discuss continuing education as a developer and what they've experienced over the last decade. The two cover the benefits of side projects and the impact taking them to production has both from a learning perspective and the effectiveness of how it sharpens your skills. About LucLuc is an AWS Serverless Hero and Principal Engineer at PostNL, where he designs and builds enterprise-scale serverless architectures. He is well known for his articles, presentations, videos, and podcasts about AWS. Luc strives to help team members, colleagues, and local and global AWS communities embrace and grow their skill sets so they too can experience the joy, fun, and sheer scale serverless brings to application development. Links Twitter - https://twitter.com/donkersgood LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/donkersgoed Blog - https://lucvandonkersgoed.com AWS News - https://aws-news.com Empowered by Marty Cagan - https://rdyset.click/GDix65 The Software Engineer’s Guidebook by Gergely Orosz - https://rdyset.click/inkhV2 Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton - https://rdyset.click/qyGDyv Learning Domain Driven Design by Vlad Khononov - https://rdyset.click/iMfBjo Architecture Patterns with Python by Bob Gregory and Harry Percival - https://rdyset.click/ambmw2

Join Allen Helton and Jeremiah Dunham as they explore math in the world of computer science. Do developers use it as much as they thought they would or is it abstracted away to a point where we have no idea? What if there was a way to use math to prove the correctness of your code instead of writing unit tests? Guess what? It's possible. Tune into the episode as Allen and Jeremiah talk about the future of testing and exactly how you can (or can't) guarantee your code does what you expect it to. About Jeremiah Jeremiah is a Senior Software Development Manager on the AWS IAM Access Analyzer team. In 9+ years at Amazon, he's launched new services and features (AWS Elemental MediaStore and AWS IAM Access Analyzer custom policy checks), helped hundreds of people adopt AWS (including your podcast host!), received 10 patents, and spoken at several conferences, including re:Invent and re:Inforce. He cares deeply about using math to make the world a better place. When he's not thinking about things related to math, you'll probably find him running or enjoying a craft beer. Links LinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdunham AWS IAM Access Analyzer - https://aws.amazon.com/iam/access-analyzer Custom Policy Check Science Blog - https://www.amazon.science/blog/custom-policy-checks-help-democratize-automated-reasoning Dafny - https://dafny.org