Twelve months ago I hit Publish on my very first AWS blog post. Today I’m writing this as a AWS Community Builder, a member of the AWS Emerging Talent Community. Here’s everything that happened in between and what I learned along the way.
April 2024 – “Let’s try this blogging thing”
| Date | Article | Views |
|---|---|---|
| 14 Apr 2024 | Serverless Computing and Containers in AWS – a side-by-side comparison of Lambda & Fargate | 47 |
I’d spent weeks tinkering with Lambda function for a university project, and friends kept asking, “When would you ever choose containers instead?” Turning that answer into an article felt terrifying…right up until the moment I pressed Publish. The post didn’t break the internet, but it did break my fear of writing blogs about AWS.
Highlight posts
| Date | Article | Views |
|---|---|---|
| 16 Jun 2024 | Amazon RDS Multi-AZ Deployments vs Read Replica | 376 |
| 8 Dec 2024 | Connecting AWS RDS to Spring Boot | 1 695 |
Metric snapshot: 13 AWS-focused posts · 4 076 total views · 145 reactions
The December post took off after someone shared it in an enterprise Slack channel—proof that depth plus timing can out-perform follower counts.
Badges that opened doors (Jun → Nov 2024)
| Badge | Date earned |
|---|---|
| Getting Started with AWS Database | Jun 2024 |
| Getting Started with AWS Storage | Jul 2024 |
| Getting Started with AWS Compute | Nov 2024 |
In November 2024 an email arrived:
“As an AWS Educate badge earner you qualify for the **AWS Emerging Talent Community…”
Free certification preparations, career guidance, and earn points by completing content that I can use for rewards in the ETC!
The email that changed everything (5 Mar 2025)
At 12:39 PM the subject line lit up:
“🚀 Welcome to the AWS Community Builders Program”
I re-read it three times before noticing my category: Data.
A few days later the welcome pack landed on my doorstep:
Why diversity is more than a checkbox
I’m originally from Sri Lanka, and moving to Melbourne, Australia, for my master’s forced me to adapt to new customs, time zones, and accents. That experience taught me how to explain tech ideas so people from any background can follow along. AWS’s selection criteria explicitly call out diversity, and it’s more than lip service, the Slack channels hum with accents from Lagos to Lima to Lahore.
Unique backgrounds aren’t just tolerated, they are accelerators.
Balancing code, class & content
- 🎓 Studies: full-time Master (Coursework) in Information Technology
- 💼 Part-time job: IT Support Technician (kept the bills paid and my troubleshooting sharp)
- ⏳ Hardest part: Time management, learning to schedule writing sprints between lectures and night shifts. My trick: 25-minute Pomodoros + shutting every tab except the markdown file.
Takeaways for you
- Ship something small. My first post had 47 views—and that was enough.
- Stack learning pathways. Badge → blog → community invitation → bigger badge.
- Find a feedback loop. AWS Experts gave me real eyes on early drafts.
- Tell your unique story. Backgrounds that feel “non-traditional” in tech are actually superpowers.
Ready to start your own journey?
- Earn a foundational badge on AWS Educate.
- Publish a working-notes style article—perfection later, URL today.
- Join a local AWS User Group (or start one!).
- Apply for the next round of AWS Community Builders 2026.
Questions, feedback, or just want to say hi? Connect with me on LinkedIn
Thanks for reading, and see you in the cloud! ☁️👋
