Join the Ultimate AWS GameDay Challenge with Confluent

What if learning could be a game?

Imagine you’re facing down a data pipeline challenge with no predefined answers. Your team’s creativity is your best asset, and every decision could be the one that pushes you to the top of the leaderboard. That’s AWS GameDay—an immersive experience where cloud experts test their knowledge in real-world scenarios using Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Confluent Cloud. But no, this is not your typical workshop. It’s learning reimagined as an open-ended, competitive journey.

The benefits of AWS GameDay

AWS GameDay is an interactive team-based exercise designed for technical professionals to explore AWS services, architecture patterns, and best practices in a realistic, gamified, risk-free environment. Unlike traditional workshops, AWS GameDay is open-ended and non-prescriptive to give participants the freedom to explore and think creatively as they navigate a wide array of technical challenges.

Through an interactive and gamified approach, attendees deepen their understanding of AWS and partner products and services, enabling them to build effective cloud solutions that leverage the strengths of both AWS and its partners.

Participating in an AWS GameDay offers numerous benefits:

• Interactive learning: Gain practical experience with AWS services and solutions.

• Team collaboration: Work with team members from different disciplines, enhancing teamwork skills.

• Risk-free environment: Experiment and learn without the fear of impacting production environments.

• Problem-solving skills: Tackle real-world challenges that improve your problem-solving abilities.

• Innovation: Discover new ways to leverage AWS services to drive business innovation.

AWS GameDay with Confluent

Since 2022, AWS and Confluent have partnered to develop AWS GameDay scenarios (Quests) that reflect the strong partnership and integration that exists. During AWS GameDay events featuring such scenarios, participants are provided with both an AWS and Confluent Cloud account they will use to solve complex problems and build real-time data streams.

Participants also have the chance to interact with many of Confluent features such as:

• Schema Registry: A centralized repository for managing and validating schemas for topic message data, and for serialization and deserialization of the data over the network.

• Flink: The industry’s only cloud-native, serverless Apache Flink® service, fully integrated with Apache Kafka® on Confluent Cloud that enables developers to build high-quality, reusable data streams.

• Fully managed connectors: The fastest and easiest way to stream your data into and out of Kafka.

What does an AWS GameDay event look like?

An AWS GameDay event can be hosted in person, virtually, or even as a hybrid. Regardless of the format, the event will follow the below agenda:

1. Event kickoff: Start with an intro that sets the stage and onboards teams to the AWS GameDay platform.

2. Interactive problem solving: Race against the clock to complete tasks—like getting data from an application into Confluent Cloud—as you rack up points.

3. Award ceremony: Real-time progress is tracked, and the top teams are awarded prizes at the end of the event.

Real voices from AWS GameDay—what participants love

Here’s what past participants had to say about their AWS GameDay with Confluent experience:

• “I left with the feeling that I can now work with Confluent Cloud, in particular how to use connectors to integrate with AWS services.”

• “This exercise made a fairly daunting task easy to accomplish.”

• “I liked that some core infrastructure was already set up, so we could focus our time on implementing solutions, which made our learning more effective. I liked that the challenges were broken down into logical steps, well-illustrated on the architecture diagram. I think this really helped my understanding of the end-to-end process and was engaging without being overwhelming.”

Tips for success at an AWS GameDay

Make the most out of your AWS GameDay experience with these tips:

• Prepare in advance: Familiarize yourself with AWS and Confluent Cloud services.

• Collaborate effectively: Team communication is key—share insights and ideas to solve challenges faster.

• Stay focused: Prioritize tasks based on their difficulty and point value.

• Ask questions: The support staff is there to help—don’t hesitate to seek guidance when needed.

Experience it

Are you ready for AWS GameDay? Challenge yourself, sharpen your skills, and gain hands-on experience you can apply right away. Sign up now for our next virtual event, Build a Kafka-RAG Generative AI Pipeline: AWS GameDay with Confluent and Amazon Bedrock, happening on November 7.

Join us for Confluent-integrated AWS GameDay. You can also try out Confluent Cloud by visiting our AWS Marketplace listing.