On May 21, I went to AWS Summit at COEX.
The event ran from 9 AM to 5 PM, but I arrived around 10 AM. I did miss the very beginning, but the venue was still busy enough that it did not feel like I was late to an empty hall. COEX was already full of people moving between registration, keynotes, booths, lounges, and hands-on areas.
Before going in, I checked the entry QR and headed upstairs.
Even in the morning, there were already quite a few people waiting to enter. It felt less like a small tech meetup and more like a proper industry event.
Getting In
The entrance area looked much larger than I expected. The registration gate alone made the event feel serious.
Once I got inside, I could see why the venue felt so busy. The summit was spread across three floors at COEX, so moving around was almost part of the event itself. It was not the kind of conference where you sit in one room all day and just listen. There were sessions, booths, experience zones, and stamp tour spots scattered everywhere.
After registration, I received my badge and the stamp tour sheet. The stamp tour became a small mission for the day. It was a simple thing, but it gave me a reason to move around the whole venue instead of only staying near the sessions.
Keynotes and Sessions
After getting in, I went to listen to several keynote sessions. Since I arrived at 10 AM, I did not follow the full schedule from the start, but I still caught enough talks to get the main mood of the summit.
The sessions that stayed with me most were the Baedal Minjok talk and the AWS Config session.
The Baedal Minjok session was memorable because it connected cloud infrastructure to a service that everyone in Korea already knows. It is one thing to study AWS services for certification exams, and another thing to hear how a large real-world service thinks about architecture, operations, and scale. That kind of talk makes cloud feel less abstract.
The AWS Config session also stood out. When I studied for Cloud Practitioner and AI Practitioner, AWS services sometimes felt like a long list of names to memorize. But at an event like this, Config felt more practical: not just a service name, but a way to keep track of what is changing, what is compliant, and what needs attention.
There was also a 20th anniversary area for AWS, which made the scale of the company feel even more visible. AWS is now old enough to have its own history section at an event, which is a little strange to think about.
Certification Lounge
One part I wanted to visit was the Certification Lounge.
I currently have two AWS certifications: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner and AWS Certified AI Practitioner. Because of that, I was able to enter the lounge area for certified attendees.
This felt quietly satisfying. When I studied for Cloud Practitioner, AWS still felt like a big map I was trying to read for the first time. After passing AI Practitioner too, I still do not feel like I βknow AWSβ in any complete sense, but I do feel like I have crossed the first gate.
The lounge made that progress feel a little more real. Certifications can sometimes feel like just badges on a profile, but at the summit they gave me access to an actual space. It was a small thing, but I liked that.
Skill Builder
After the sessions and lounge, I went to the AWS Skill Builder area.
There was a line, so I waited for a while before trying the experience. It was one of those event booths where the actual activity is short, but the waiting time gives you a chance to look around and see how many people are interested.
After finishing the Skill Builder experience, I received a small keyring.
It was not a huge item, but I like these small event souvenirs. They are easy to forget at the moment, but later they bring back the day more clearly than expected.
Booths, Data Centers, and Startups
The rest of the day was mostly about walking around the venue. Since the event used three floors, there was a lot to see.
One area showed a data center-related exhibit. I liked this because cloud is usually invisible. We talk about regions, availability zones, storage, compute, and networking as abstract concepts, but somewhere underneath that language there is still physical infrastructure.
The server model made that point more tangible. It reminded me that βcloudβ is not magic. It is a huge amount of hardware, cooling, networking, software, and operational discipline.
There were also startup booths showing how different companies use AWS. I liked this part because it made the event feel less like a vendor showcase and more like an ecosystem. AWS itself is the platform, but the interesting part is often what people build on top of it.
I also saw a booth for Kiro, a new IDE that seemed closely integrated with AWS services. As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about AI coding tools, developer workflows, and how tools fit into real work, this naturally caught my attention.
The more I walked around, the more the summit felt like a snapshot of where cloud work is heading: AI, developer productivity, governance, infrastructure, startups, and training all mixed together in one place.
The Stamp Tour
By the afternoon, I had walked through all three floors and completed the experiences needed for the stamp tour.
After filling all the stamps, I went to exchange them for goods. The line was huge.
I was hoping to get an umbrella. It would have been more useful and, honestly, a better souvenir. But by the time I got through the exchange, I received $20 in AWS credits instead.
It was not bad. AWS credits are actually practical if I want to test something later. But still, I wanted the umbrella. That small disappointment is probably going to be part of how I remember this summit.
After the Summit: Kkanbu Chicken
After the event, I went to Kkanbu Chicken near Samseong Station with the people I came with. Apparently, Jensen Huang had visited this place before, so it had become a little more memorable than just another chicken restaurant.
We ended the day with chimaek: chicken and beer.
It was a fitting end to the day. A full-day cloud conference can be exciting, but it also takes a lot of energy. After walking around COEX, listening to sessions, visiting booths, completing the stamp tour, and standing in the reward line, sitting down with chicken and beer felt exactly right.
Looking Back
What I liked most about AWS Summit was that it connected several layers of AWS in one day.
There were keynote sessions that showed how large companies think about cloud. There were certification spaces that made my own study progress feel more concrete. There were Skill Builder experiences for learning. There were booths for infrastructure, startups, developer tools, and real services.
Studying for AWS certifications gave me the vocabulary. The summit gave me more context.
Cloud Practitioner helped me understand the basic map. AI Practitioner helped me connect AWS to AI services and use cases. But walking around AWS Summit made the ecosystem feel more alive. It was not just a set of services to memorize. It was companies, infrastructure, training, operations, developers, and business decisions all in the same building.
I arrived at 10 AM, stayed through the day, finished the stamp tour, missed the umbrella, got $20 in AWS credits, and ended with chimaek.
That is a pretty good AWS day.
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