This October the AWS North Community Conference will bring together professionals from across the cloud computing community, right here in the North East.
AWS North Community Conference
Taking place at the Catalyst in Newcastle, the event will see everyone from global technology leaders, developers and innovators to graduates with an interest in AWS, benefit from a jam-packed schedule dedicated to creating opportunities for learning, sharing experiences, and offering peer-driven insight into cloud transformation.
Featuring international, national and regional speakers the full day event will see presenters and delegates explore how AWS is transforming the way organisations build, innovate and scale software solutions.
Here, Steve Moreland, Chief Technology Officer at Leighton – who are powering the event – tells us what attendees can expect to see, what he’s looking forward to most and what his hopes are for future years.
Offering global opportunities in our own back yard
Traditionally those based in the region have had to travel to Manchester or London for opportunities like this so this event really is a first for the North East. Throughout the day we will have some exceptional speakers joining us from across the globe to talk about what they’ve achieved in their careers and their various approaches to building on AWS.
This is a really good opportunity for the regional AWS community and will give them the chance to hear from some really key players from across the UK and beyond. It’s also a chance for us to showcase some of the outstanding work going on in the North East to an international audience.
Speakers in focus: a snapshot of what to expect
There has been a huge level of interest from potential speakers, so much so that we’ve added a fourth track. Personally, I am incredibly excited to hear from Ricardo Cino from Post NL about his work on the parcel locker system across the Netherlands. An AWS Community Builder and experienced developer when it comes to building applications at scale, Ricardo promises to be a hugely engaging presenter with an exciting story to tell.
Equally we have two very impressive keynotes in AWS Hero, Sheen Brisals, who has been responsible for a huge amount of innovation within lego.com and Luca Mezzalira, an experienced solutions architect at AWS and author of monthly newsletter, Dear Architects, who has a passion for micro frontend architecture. Having learnt a lot from both of them over the years, I’m really looking forward to having them in Newcastle.
We will also see lightning talks from regional speakers and AWS Community Builders, Rob Bulmer and Jake Bazin which I’m really excited about. As a community-led event, it was really important to us to carve out time in the agenda for local AWS talent to share their experiences.
We’ve also got Chris Dobson and David Boyne delivering talks on ‘Streamlining an Event-Driven Architecture: A Real World Transformation’ and ‘The Three Guardrails to Manage Complexity with Event-Driven Architectures’. I have a real passion for event-driven architecture so I’m also looking forward to both of those.
Finally, AWS Hero and host of tech blog and podcast ‘Ready, Set, Cloud!’, Allen Helton will be joining us all the way from Texas. Allen has done so much in the AWS space and is dedicated to building for impact, so it’ll be great to hear more from him.
In addition to a very exciting line up we also have some great sponsors including AWS who we’re delighted to have on board, and North East-headquartered AWS specialist, Leighton. We also have support from Dynamo North East, which is a great membership organisation dedicated to supporting the North East’s thriving tech ecosystem and the AWS North East User Group.
Looking forward – what’s next?
Ultimately, we wanted to create an event in the North East that would allow attendees to make connections across the worldwide AWS community without having to leave the region. We wanted to promote examples of best practice and provide a platform for continued learning and development. We also want to highlight the career opportunities in AWS, stimulate and ignite new ideas and really change the way people are doing things in the industry for the better.
We’ve been blown away by the interest in the event so far so we’re expecting it to be a huge success, we want this to become an annual event that gets bigger and better each year. Hopefully as we grow and develop the shape and size of AWS North Community Conference we can see more lightning talks from local practitioners, offer workshops that give attendees hands on programming opportunities with these experts and ultimately provide more opportunities for people in our region and beyond.
For more information about AWS North Community Conference, for sponsorship opportunities or to purchase tickets please visit: www.northcommunityconf.com
Discounted tickets are available for Dynamo North East members.
AWS North Community Conference
16 October 2025
The Catalyst Newcastle upon Tyne