Sessions are available for reservation starting in like, July. Reserve as many (non-overlapping) sessions as you can as early as you can. You can always cancel them (or just not show up) if something better appears.

The non-reserved seats open up 10 minutes before the start of the session (and that’s when reservations expire) but there is usually a 50-200 person line of walk-ups by that point so if you plan to walk up to a session, get there an hour early if you want to ensure you get a seat. 1 hour is when the walk-up line begins to form.

If you are attending a Builder session, the seating is MUCH more limited! One builder session we attended allowed 6 walk-ups in, with over people being turned away.

It’s vastly more efficient than going to the booth in a venue.

Workshops are available for self-paced learning during re:Invent. In 2023 the url was reinvent.labs.awsevents.com. These labs are available to anyone during re:Invent and are a great way to fill time between sessions (or when waiting in line for an hour as a walk-up).

Official re:Invent hotels in order of desirability (personally) based on 2023:

1. The Venetian a nice hotel; it’s close to expo main hall and Caeser’s forum where many sessions are located. It also has a meal hall co-located there.
2. The Wynn is nice and is relatively close to the Venetian/Caesar’s Forum. It’s also a nice hotel. Meals are not provided in the Wynn but it’s a pretty quick walk over to the Venetian or Caesar’s Forum for meals and plenty of sessions happen in the Wynn.
3. MGM Grand is nice; it’s a metro ride from the rest of the venues but plenty of sessions take place in the MGM and the metro ride to the main cluster (Venetian/Caesar’s/Wynn) is pretty easy. The MGM also has its own meal hall, which is convenient.
4. LINQ - This hotel is pretty bad but it is close to Caesar’s Forum and has a metro stop attached to it.
5. Mandalay Bay - Truly in the middle of nowhere. Don’t stay here. Don’t even plan to attend sessions here if you can help it.

re:Invent attendees ride the metro for free between venues (you can’t just go anywhere on the metro). Don’t buy a ticket!

Do not take shuttles. They are simply not worth it unless you are disabled or injured. The shuttle between the Venetian and the Wynn took more than twice as long as it took to walk. Also, almost all the walking is inside hotel bridges. You can pretty much spend a week inside if you don’t actively go outside the hotels.

Minimize back and forth, even to your hotel room! Getting anywhere takes longer than you want and all the hotels and casinos are labyrinthian. The quickest paths between venues are ~20 minutes.

Mandalay Bay is effectively in the middle of nowhere. It takes forever to get there and forever to get back. Don’t stay there or plan sessions there. If you must plan a session there, plan try to stay there for the whole day.

The Wynn, Venetian, and Caesar’s Forum are all walkable between each other (and from the LINQ/Harrah’s). There are shuttles but they take much longer than simply walking.

The MGM Grand is a very short Metro ride away from the LINQ/Harrah’s metro station, which is right next to Caesar’s Forum.

This is almost impossible but you can…

• Reserve a PeerTalk table in one of the PeerTalk locations. These are limited to 30 minutes though.
• Upstairs in the Venetian (in 2023) there are “Lounges”, which are available to reserve through your AWS Rep or you can walk up and see if there are available locations/cancellations. Again, these are time-limited to under an hour (we got 30 minutes).
• Content Hubs have some limited seating, which you can take advantage of to do work on an unscheduled basis. They are quiet because the other people in there are listening to Simulcasts of other sessions.

Breakfast and lunch are provided in a “Meals” room in some of the conference venues (not all the hotels) - Caesar’s Forum, the Venetian, and the MGM all have meal halls. They are strict on the timeframe though and for the last 30 minutes of lunch they limit the options to grab-n-go boxes, which sucked (think small salads and red delicious apples). Take advantage of free food!

Coffee and snacks are provided throughout the day in the halls between conference rooms. There are almost always vegetarian/vegan options for all meals/snacks.

Note: The quality of the catering drastically decreased on Friday and they didn’t serve lunch either, so plan for that.

Just some restaurants that were good:

• Siam Thai (cab ride away from the strip). Really awesome Thai food and not crazy expensive (~$30 including a beer IIRC)
• True Food (not quite sure on the name here). It’s right across the boulevard from the LINQ and it actually serves vegetables, which was a nice change from most of the other restaurants we went to.

Avoid the restaurants in the casinos (at least the ones in the LINQ). They are overpriced and while the burgers/fried food is good, the salads are disappointing and you will probably get sick of eating high calorie pub food.

I guess this could go under professional stuff but unless you are in a position to pay for cloud observability services, the expo is really just an opportunity to learn company names, get free stuff, eat snacks, and drink for free.

• There is an expo happy hour M-Th at 4:30 with snacks and drinks for free.
• You can play games or do activities for more swag.
• Go to the “front” where the main re:Invent registration desk is (you literally can’t miss it, it’s backed by a 100ft tall and 300ft wide LED screen) to collect your hoodie/water bottle/pins and stuff.
• Be willing to say “no you cannot scan my badge”. These companies _will_send you spam after re:Invent if you let them scan you.

Here’s what we did:

• Cirque du Soleil - absolutely incredible, one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. We went to Mystere (the OG Cirque Vegas show from 1993) at Treasure Island.
• Piff the Magic Dragon - he’s a basically a magician who incorporates some standup-style audience bullying into his routine. It almost obscures how excellent his magic skills are but it’s definitely funny. I’m not sure I would recommend volunteering though.

Eh, I could take it or leave it. It’s certainly a spectacle with things like dodgeball, pickleball, ping pong, a giant bouncy slide, and some mediocre food, but it’s not exactly a great party and you end up spending a lot of time standing in line for the activities. Next year I plan to try to get invites to some of the company parties (e.g. CloudFlare) because I’ve heard those are better.