Highlights:

• 😊 Happy, fun, warm, and safe environment
• 🤝 Strong connection among members
• 🧠 Happy learning with people always sharing blog posts, dev experiences, tips & tricks, POC demos, and funny projects
• 🚀 Great opportunity to kickstart startup projects and find teammates
• 🎉 Helpful practice for public presentations for potential speakers
• 🤩 Amazing, useful one-day workshop and immersive day
• 😊 Excellent, friendly, and warm meetups and after-parties

Super Secret weapon: Meetup experience

• 👋 Wonderful meetups and community days to get to know others, including startup founders, open-source developers, and international hackathon winners. 😆 One time, a member came dressed as a panda, and we all had a blast taking silly photos together!
• 🌐 Learn about specific industry domains (insurance, financial services) and the latest open-source projects started from China. 🤯 Did you know there's an AI-powered chatbot that can speak fluent Mandarin? Mind-blowing!
• 💻 Speakers share experiences on machine learning algorithms, training model infrastructure setup, and application integration. 🤓 I learned how to build a voice-controlled smart home system using AWS IoT Core - it's like living in the future!
• 🧠 Learn about reusable solutions for real-world problems, new open-source frameworks and packages, and the pros and cons of different tech stacks. 🤔 Discussions can get pretty heated, but it's all in the name of learning!
• 🚀 Learn about startup practices and pain points. 😅 One founder shared how they almost ran out of funding, but then landed a big client just in time - talk about a roller coaster ride!

Secret weapon 2: Combine online and offline

• 💬 Encourage meetup participants to join the membership WeChat group (Chinese Telegram - social app). 🤳 We're always sharing memes and celebrating each other's successes in the group chat!
• 📢 Always share useful and engaging information (tips and tricks for developers, proof-of-concept prototypes, and hands-on workflows). 🤩 The latest AI-powered code generation tool is a game-changer!
• 📅 Share future meetup activities. 😄 The community is so excited for the upcoming hackathon, we can't wait to see what innovative solutions the teams come up with!

Secret weapon 3: Achievements and Swag

• 🏆 How to get Swag: finish skill builder training, self-paced training, pass AWS certification exams, finish workshops, complete demo projects, or write blog posts that get reactions. 🎉 I got a free t-shirt for passing my AWS Solutions Architect exam - it's my favorite piece of swag!
• 👕 Example Swag: t-shirts, notebooks, travel bags, caps, and pins. 😎 The community pins are so cool, everyone wants to trade and collect them!
• 💰 We can afford to send out a lot of Swag since the delivery cost and product cost within China is not costly. 🤑 It's like Christmas every time a new batch of swag arrives!

Secret weapon 4: One-day Workshop Immersive Day

• 🧑‍💻 For developers, finished a few level 400 workshops on GenAI & machine learning topics. 🤖 I learned how to build a self-driving car using AWS DeepRacer - it was like being in a sci-fi movie!
• 😊 Happy, fun, warm, and safe environment to learn together. 🥳 We had dance breaks between sessions to keep the energy up!
• 👨‍🏫 Mentors and helpers guide through examples and provide assistance when needed. 🤓 The experts were so patient and helpful, even when I got stuck on a tricky problem.
• 🤝 Work together with other developers to solve extra questions and challenges. 👨‍💻👩‍💻 Teamwork makes the dream work!
• 💬 Immersive day WeChat group (Chinese Telegram - social app) for continuing the happy learning offline after the immersive day. 💬 We're still chatting and sharing what we learned - the learning never stops!

Secret weapon 5: User Group Leader

• 🚀 Encourage me to build startup projects and demos. 🤖 I'm working on FinTech that can handle all my daily tasks - watch out!
• 🤝 Help me to know the right people to contact (startup mentors, potential customers, partners). 👥 The community is like a built-in network of experts and advisors!
• 🧠 Help me to know the right technology to build proof-of-concept prototypes. 🤯 I learned about the latest serverless technologies that can help me build my project quickly and efficiently.

Editor

Danny Chan, AWS community builder (Hong Kong), specialty of FSI and Serverless

Kenny Chan, AWS community builder (Hong Kong), specialty of FSI and Machine Learning