AWS JAM 2023

My first hackathon experience

I had an exciting experience last week that I would love to share — participated in first ever hackathon. I’d heard a lot about those, knew I’d participate in one at some point just didn’t know it’d be this soon! Let me tell you about it and I hope it inspires you. Remember how I pivoted my career earlier this year into the exciting world of machine learning engineering (MLE)? I started with an AWS course at that time but it turned out rather challenging as it felt more like engineering than ML so I put it on hold to get myself more grounded through some further reading, practice and mentoring. I’d randomly go back to the course to test my knowledge and see how far I had come and gradually I made it into a milestone in my adventure to gain mastery of topics, concepts, delivery and thrills of MLE.

Recently, my friend (big shout-out to Emilia!) having watched me go from basic to intermediate thought I would love the AWS Jam, so she sent me a link to register for the event—something completely new to me. Without flinching, I said why not? After all, there was nothing to lose, and so much to gain. With my decent knowledge of basic AWS services from the initial course I started, It should be a walk in the park. So, I signed up for the jam session, ready to apply all I had learnt to real-world scenarios. 

The jam lasted four hours, starting with an introductory session detailing the purpose and expectations of the hackathon. During the break-out session, I teamed up with three other participants who to my surprise were physically present in a classroom in Florida, while I was the lone virtual attendee. Nevertheless, we quickly agreed on one goal, which was to learn and win. A volunteer was assigned to each team to ensure things went smoothly and help with anything we needed except for give answers to challenging tasks.

One of the coolest aspects of this jam was the visible challenges displayed on the screen, ranging from easy to difficult. What made it even better was that we had the freedom to tackle them in any order we liked. No restrictions, no predetermined sequence—just pure flexibility and the opportunity to put our problem-solving skills to the test. Another exciting thing is that we didn’t have to pay for any of the AWS resources used during the event which I think was really cool, shout out to AWS JAM! All you had to do was sign up, and you'd be given access to some test environments where you could complete the challenges cost and hassle-free.

The hackathon used a point-based system with each challenge having its point value, with options ranging from 80, 150, to 200 points, depending on its complexity. The easy challenges typically involved basic AWS services like S3, Sagemaker, while the hard ones required a deeper understanding in multiple aspects like CloudWatch, EC2, Lambda, IAM, CodeCommit and more. It was indeed designed to test participants’ skills and knowledge AWS services. When faced with a challenge that brings participants to their wits end , there were hints available to provide some guidance. However, these hints came at a cost of about 15 points. We had to use that on our last challenge as we were running out of time leaving us with only 135 points out of the total 150 points allotted to that challenge. It was a difficult but unavoidable trade-off in that moment which impacted our chance of winning the competition.

Challenges that we tackled: 

Out of the twelve challenges we encountered, we successfully tackled six of them. See below what they were about and how we completed the tasks:

• Create an S3 bucket: We created an S3 bucket and enabled it for static website hosting. To ensure proper access control, we applied a bucket policy and made the bucket objects public.

• Configure S3 Versioning: We were to enable S3 versioning on the buckets, allowing us to retain previous versions of items and keep track of deleted objects.

•  Knocking items off the [S3] bucket list: This challenge involved creating a lifecycle policy for log retention. By configuring the policy, we could automatically transition logs to a different state and effectively manage the lifecycle of our S3 storage.

• Lambda: This challenge involved utilizing simple notification service (SNS) to send notifications to an account whenever an IAM user fails to log in. We also used Lambda function to trigger these notifications, providing an effective means of oversight.

• Securing your AWS Cloud resources and Configuring alarms: We utilized various AWS services, including CloudWatch, CloudTrail, SNS, and Lambda to bolster the security of our cloud resources. Together, they formed a robust system for monitoring and alerting.

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Participating in the Jam session and completing six challenges was an exhilarating 4-hour working, learning and fun experience. What made it more rousing for me was how fast time moved during the competition. Although I was nervous at first, I worked with my team to explore options and tackle each challenge, even those that seemed daunting. After all, jams exist to test capabilities and push your limits. And so, I dove in headfirst and my team came second place. How cool is that :)

"Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful." - Joshua J. Marine

If you have a basic understanding of cloud computing and limited experience with AWS services, I highly recommend giving the Jam a try. It's a fantastic opportunity to explore these services within real-world scenarios. If you're an enterprise looking to assess the capacity of your employees, this event offers great value as well.