This August, I attended my first Global AWS Heroes Summit in Seattle, just in time to enjoy the tail end of some gorgeous weather. I’m not really here to talk about the discussions and presentations, because the whole post will just be a mass of [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] like a file released from the NSA.

Rather, I want to talk about the energy, the people, the sense of being part of something big.

The AWS Heroes Program is a bit shrouded in mystery. There are...