Posts from March 2026

Richmond AWS User Group: An Evening of AI-Powered Development The Richmond AWS User Group hosted another successful meetup on March 5th, featuring a fascinating presentation on Kiro, AWS’s cutting-edge agentic coding tool. The event brought together local cloud enthusiasts, developers, and students for an evening of learning, networking, and pizza. Kiro: Revolutionizing Software Development Dinesh Balaaji Prabakaran from Amazon Web Services delivered an impressive talk on Kiro, showcasing how this innovative tool is transforming the software development landscape. Kiro represents a significant advancement in AI-assisted development, helping developers bridge the gap between ideas and implementation through intelligent code generation, problem reasoning, and accelerated development workflows. ...

I had the privilege of speaking at the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Commonwealth University’s College of Engineering on March 3rd, presenting “Cracking the Cloud: How AWS Certifications Can Launch Your Career” to a group of engaged Computer Science seniors. The Presentation My talk focused on how early-career technologists can differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive field. Three themes anchored the session: strategic certifications — particularly AWS certifications as a way to validate cloud skills before you have the job title to back them up — self-directed projects that demonstrate practical problem-solving, and building genuine relationships in the industry. That last one always gets a laugh because I tell students it sometimes means getting away from the keyboard entirely and, as I like to say, “doing a little grass touching.” ...