An EPIC re:Invent!
Friends,
Last week I had the opportunity to attend my 7th AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. I must say, it was my most invigorating one yet! There were 3 primary reasons:
1. AWS made some super exciting announcements about cutting-edge technology. We, of course, announced Amazon Nova, the new suite of multimodal foundation models that include text, image, and video generation. We launched AWS Security Incident Response, our first security event response service based directly in the console. And we released Aurora DSQL, something that is near and dear to my heart since I spent years as the Global Bus Dev Manager for Aurora PostgreSQL. (Congrats to all my former Aurora colleagues for this fantastic achievement!)
2. I had the privilege of delivering three meaningful EQ talks to hundreds of customers. I co-delivered INO101: Emotionally intelligent leadership for an AI-powered future with my fellow innovation and transformation programs leader, Alla Simoneau. I had a blast co-delivering SEC218: Emotionally intelligent security leadership to drive business results with the coolest and funnest security leaders in the world, Sarah Currey and Hart Rossman. I also had the opportunity to have engaging conversations with scores of customer executives on these critical topics. One of the quotes I shared was from Harvard professor Ronald Heifetz, "The single biggest failure of leadership is to treat adaptive challenges like technical problems, and therefore to apply technical solutions." This has been true since Dr. Heifetz observed this 20 years ago, and it's even more true today. With the rapid advance of AI, we are facing one of the greatest adaptive challenges of our modern age. It is serendipitous that AWS's biggest AI announcement was Nova, which, of course, means "new.” Not only is it a new era for technology, it's a new era for leadership. You can watch the sessions here:
3. Last but not least, I got to shake hands with, give hugs to, and personally (re)connect with many wonderful friends, colleagues, and customers. There is nothing like seeing people in person and talking face-to-face, even for a few minutes. It was a special treat meeting up with my customer, colleague, and fellow EPIC Ambassador, David Lynch, CTO of bolttech. We had an invigorating conversation about how to bring EQ skills to more of the world through a combination of humans + AI. During our conversation, I was struck by how much these skills benefit not only our careers and organizations, but also our families and loved ones. EQ is not just a vital professional skill, it's a vital life skill. Check out this episode of AWS Innovation Ambassadors featuring David to learn more about the human side of successful innovation:
Another highlight was speaking with Andrew Phillips, CTO of Equals Group and also an EPIC Ambassador. Rew (as he likes to be called) sponsored an EPIC workshop for his engineering leadership team earlier this year, and it had a profoundly positive impact on his organization. (To find out more, check out this interview between Rew and EPIC Innovation Specialist, Kelle Hand.)
I was inspired to see leaders like David and Rew practicing and spreading EPIC leadership skills across their spheres of influence. They (along with a host of other EPIC Ambassadors) are making a difference--not only as business leaders but also as fellow humans!
Meeting up with all these people was incredibly fulfilling and made the (somewhat crazy) trip to Las Vegas more than worth it. In the end, relationships are what it's all about. When it comes to EPIC (empathy, purpose, inspiration and connection), it's not just a paradigm for effective leadership--it's a paradigm for a happy and successful life!
Warm regards,
Rich