What is an AWS Hero and how to become one?

You might have heard the term “AWS Hero”. In this article, we are going to discuss about such professionals who possess high expertise in AWS technologies. They contribute and impact the overall community with their knowledge. In this article we are going to discuss — what is an AWS Hero, how do you become an AWS Hero, what is this program, what do AWS Heroes do, and a lot of other details.

Let’s first discuss the cloud industry. As more and more companies are adopting cloud for their software needs, the demand for these services and infrastructure is very high. To fulfil these requirements, a lot of big and small players are providing cloud services. AWS, Microsoft, Google Cloud are the biggest contributors to the cloud revolution.

If we look at Gartner’s ‘Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services’, we can understand who are leaders in this space and how different providers stand in terms of uses.

We can see that Amazon Web Services (AWS) leading both in terms of execution and vision in the cloud sphere.

What is an AWS Hero?

As any technology evolves and becomes popular, the demand for experts in it grows in parallel. As more and more companies adopt AWS, the demand for professionals has grown tremendously.

AWS Heroes are the people who have a high degree of expertise in the technology, are motivated and enthusiastic for the work, and share their knowledge with the community in several ways. They are the leaders in AWS technology who contribute to the community and help it grow.

What does an AWS Hero do?

As we know, the AWS Heroes are experts in the technology, they spend their time and effort educating others on the AWS services, contribute as mentors, users, creators, writers, and speakers. They impact the overall AWS ecosystem by providing quality content to the AWS community across the globe. They can be involved in the following activities:

• Speaking at the tech conferences to share their knowledge and help the wider audience understand and grow in AWS services.
• Creating tutorials for people to educate them.
• Write blogs, articles, and books to share their experience.
• Answer the questions in AWS forums and other portals such as stack overflow.
• They also contribute to running AWS-related events, for example, user groups, hackathons, workshops, AWS Community Day events, etc.
• Develop and share projects on sites like GitHub, so that others could learn from them.

How to Become a Hero?

Becoming an AWS Hero is not a formal process such that you clear an exam and become one. It is more of your interest in the technology and the contributions you make related to that. You must already be doing all the things that we discussed in “What does an AWS Hero do?” section above.

By doing all that, you create your network, build relationships with other professionals and users. Someone has to be nominated by AWS employees who can acknowledge your contributions and efforts to enrich the overall AWS community.

Community Hero vs Category Hero

Community Heroes put their efforts and time into talking, sharing their experiences, writing books, creating projects, and contributing related to overall AWS services and not confined to a particular section of AWS.

Category Heroes are the experts of a particular category or topic. They possess great knowledge and contribute to their specific knowledge area. For example, there are Data Heroes, IoT Heroes, Machine Learning Heroes, and Serverless Heroes, etc.

How to find a Hero?

You can find community heroes or category heroes on the link provided below. You can get the insight by reading the blog posts written by Heroes or you can follow them on Twitter to keep getting the updates.

By clicking on the following link, you can find an AWS Hero based on location, their area of expertise, duration since they have become heroes, etc. — Find a Hero

If you are also an AWS expert and are willing to share your knowledge and experience with others, you could also become an AWS Hero.

If you are preparing for AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certificate exam, please go through the following post.

Happy learning!