I was privileged to attend AWS re:Invent for the first time, something that I had hoped to attend for the past five years but could not due to visa rejection.
I am from Nigeria and live in Nigeria; getting a US Visa here can be as difficult as a camel passing through the eye of a needle.
The initial difficulty in getting early appointment dates alone can be quite discouraging. So let me start from the beginning and take you through this journey.
My US Visa Experience
Back in 2019, I got a grant via the AWS All-Builders Grant to attend AWS re:Invent 2019. I was a community leader of a growing tech community back then, which we called DevOps User Group.
We were a group of enthusiastic DevOps engineers who loved what we were doing and wanted to share with our community and the world.
In collaboration with great minds like Adedayo Akinpelu, Idowu Emehinola, and Olakunle Abiola we organized various Meetups and a Conference where we, for the first time, invited an AWS Advocate from South Africa, in the person of Cobus Bernard, who attended the event and had an attendance of over 200 members.
With this pedigree and enthusiasm, I applied for a U.S. visa, which took months to get an appointment date. I also completed the long DS-160 form and was excited to ace the visa interview. I got there very early in the morning at about 6 am, and there was already a crowd with a very long queue for the interview. I went through the long queue and checks by the consulate officials to be sure the documents I had were correct and complete, they were all correct.
In the final stage of testing, to validate if you are eligible for the visa, a consulate officer will ask you some questions about your reason for traveling and other questions to solidify your claims.
Given a very short time to explain myself and the crowd that was there waiting. I tried to explain the grant I got from AWS, the community work I do, and all. But as I was about to explain deeper I was immediately interrupted and given a paper saying my visa was denied.
With tears in my eyes, I left the Consulate and walked for almost 30 minutes thinking about the disappointment, and pain this had caused me.
My hope to attend re:Invent 2019 was dashed. I swore never to apply for the visa again and took my mind off it and focused on more community work, personal development and strengthened my resolve to retry when I had recovered from this disappointment
Fast-forward to 2023, after discussing with a lot of people asking a lot of questions, and seeing other people get the same visa that I got denied 4 years back. I felt like it was time to try it again. My PTSD was telling me no, but I was determined to give it another shot. I had made some significant progress in the past 4 years, traveled to more countries, and spoken at more events, so I believed I had more confidence and exposure and was ready for whatever the response would be.
January 2024, I booked an appointment at the US Consulate in Abuja, Nigeria. The earliest date I could get was in August, aiming for re:Invent in December, August was a good time. I had to travel from Lagos to Abuja. I went there a night before, lodged at a hotel close to the US Consulate and did some work before retiring for the night.
I woke up early the next morning at about 6 am, pumped up and ready to go to the US Consulate and defend my reason to attend re:Invent. I double-checked that my document was complete and accurate. I had done a check the previous day and noticed one document was missing, and I had to go out and print it. Doing a check again in the morning was really important. When I confirmed everything was in order, I had my breakfast and left for the consulate. My appointment time was 9 am, but I wanted to get there earlier than the stipulated time in the appointment document. I took a cab to the consulate from my hotel, which was about a 10-minute drive. When I arrived, there were already people waiting because there were appointment times earlier than mine. The fear and confidence dichotomy started to overwhelm me when people started to go in and come out. I could see the sadness in the faces of people who were denied a visa, some with their passports in their transparent bags, visible. Seeing someone go in and come out minutes later with their passport means that they have been denied the visa.
“I have been denied this visa some years ago, will I get it this time? Do I have enough confidence, travel history and evidence to show the visa officer that I am eligible to travel ? If I don’t get this visa how will I feel? How will I handle this failure when it comes?” All these thoughts racing through my mind and as I was thinking about all these, the security official yelled “Those for 9am step forward”. With fear and confidence, I stepped forward, through the security checks, documentation checks and headed straight to the biometrics section for capture. After capture comes the interview. Still maintaining my steeze, I tried to rehearse the things I was going to say and continued to remind myself of all the work I had done in the AWS Community in Lagos, in the previous years, my travels, talks, supporting the growth of the community and my responsibilities as an AWS Hero. These were my firepowers against any question that was going to come.
Then it got to my turn to face the interview officer. A younger caucasian lady. She asked for my passport and I presented it to her. She flipped through the passport and saw it was a 10year valid passport. After that she went through the pages and saw I had a German visa and a 2-year UK Visa. Then she started typing on her computer and asked me if I had been to the US before. In my excitement to explain myself, I started answering the wrong question.. hahaha. She asked the second time, “Have you been to the US before” That was when I realized I was being nervous and overzealous. Then I answered “No”. She continued on her laptop and asked about my purpose for my travel. At this point, all the hairs on my skin stood, “it was time to defend the purpose for my visa”. I explained that I am an AWS Community Hero and I do voluntary work to grow the technology and cloud community here in Nigeria through community meetups, speaking engagements, and training for people who want to get into the Cloud Computing space. She was curious to know what an AWS Community Hero was. I further explained it is a special recognition from Amazon (AWS) for recognizing those who stand out in community development within a region in the world, and that this Conference is a direct invitation from AWS. She needed evidence for my claim, so she asked for my invitation letter. At this point, I became more confident because the AWS Community team and Hero Program team, comprising of; Thembile Martis (Community Manager at Amazon Web Services), Maria Encinar (AWS User Groups Global Program Manager at AWS), and Taylor Jacobsen (AWS Heroes Program Manager) (a big shoutout to you all for making this possible), had helped me get a letter of invitation from AWS stating the reason for my trip and all the details the visa officer needed to know. After going through the invitation letter and validating all the information in it. She further looked at my DS-160 form, where I had filled in all my personal information and asked about my work. After confirming that, she said, “You have been granted the visa”. She withheld my passport and gave me a paper that I’ll use to collect my passport when it’s ready for collection.
At this moment, I was filled with so much joy, I knew I’d be going to Las Vegas, finally. All the investments I had made had finally paid off. I came out of the consulate and called my wife and started yelling on the phone, with so much joy. It was one of the BEST things I had experienced. I have been an AWS Hero since 2020, and I have not been able to attend re:Invent since 2020 because of visa restrictions. I also got the AWS All Builders Grant, which was my first all-expense-paid access to re:Invent back then in 2019, which was when my visa application got denied. So this was a defining moment for me, my career, and for my community, my country, and for Africa at large to be able to represent us. We are only four AWS Heroes in Africa, and to be one of them representing the continent was a major honor. So this win was all-around.
With this joy, I practically walked to my hotel room and did not take a cab. I continued to call my loved ones to share my joy. I returned to Lagos and waited for about 2 weeks to collect my passport. I had some drama getting the passport from the DHL office in Lagos because the US Consulate had made some changes to passport delivery during the time of my visa interview. I had to take another trip back to Abuja to collect my passport and return the same day.
Now that I have gotten the visa, the next step was other travel arrangements, which were accommodation and flight. But the more interesting part was the flight from Lagos to Las Vegas.
My Travel
For the first time, my flight schedule felt different to me. Most times when I am traveling from Lagos to other countries, the flight usually leaves at night, say 10 pm or 11 pm. But for this itinerary, the first flight from Lagos to London was from 9 am. I live far from the airport, so I had to leave my home as early as 5 am so that I could beat the Lagos traffic and get to the airport at least 2 hours before the flight. It can take some time to go through the checks, verifications, immigration, and other government agencies, so it is always advised to get to the airport early enough to avoid any issues.
After going through all the airport checks in Lagos, I finally boarded the Virgin Atlantic flight outbound to London Heathrow, a journey I am quite familiar with. It’s roughly a 6-hour flight. Nothing really new to me or strange. I had done an 8-hour flight from Lagos to Dubai, so 6 hrs was not a problem. Landed in London Heathrow and headed straight to the boarding gate for the next flight, which was the scary one for me. It was going to be my longest flight yet. I will be in the sky for 12 hours, flying from London to Los Angeles. Wow. I was already trying to psyche my mind on how I will keep myself engaged, sleep, wake up, and sleep again, and all sorts of things I will do, stuck in a big mass of iron in the sky for half a day. So many emotions rushing through me, but I did not have so much time to think about these because the layover time was quite short, and the wait time to board the Virgin Atlantic airline for Los Angeles started boarding 10 minutes after I got to the boarding gate.
In a few minutes, boarding was complete, and a few minutes later, we got into the sky. I was confident in the first 8 hrs of the flight, then it got to the 9th hour, and I started feeling tired. Like I wanted the plane to stop at Ore, so that I can buy bole and groundnut hahahah). I realized there is no option of stopping and no way to take some fresh air outside. So I tried to watch some movies on the flight entertainment unit, thinking about the past year, soaking myself in the moment of how exciting Las Vegas and re:Invent will be, all the great minds I will get to see physically and connect with. I was able to use all these to distract my mind from the fact that I still had another 3 hours to go on the journey.
Finally, the captain announced our descent to Los Angeles, which means I have entered US airspace and I shall be landing on US soil soon. I prepared myself to step my foot in one of the greatest and richest cities in the world, Los Angeles. The city and the state of both rap music and Silicon Valley. But this excitement was going to be cut short in a few hours.
The first frustration was that the plane could not park. After circling around the airport for a few minutes, the captain explained how the space provided for our aircraft to park was occupied by another aircraft. After circling for almost 30 minutes, we finally packed and disembarked the plane. I hurried into the airport so that I could head to the next gate, but I learnt that I would have to pick up my luggage and check in for the next flight. So I took my luggage and moved on. Getting to immigration checks took more than 1 hour because there were already a lot of people on queue, plus the people on my flight. So the queue was really long. I rushed to the gate, which meant going outside the airport and getting in through a different entrance. But before getting to the boarding gate, I have to check in my luggage. On getting to the counter to check in I first noticed there was no queue. So I walked straight to the lady on the counter and presented my boarding pass. She checked through her computer and noticed I was coming through a connecting flight from London, and asked for my passport, which I presented. I noticed it was taking a while for her to revert and checkin my luggage. She eventually came back to me and told me I would not be able to check my back in because the gate is closed for check-in. At this moment, I became confused. I saw a guy just beside me being told the same thing, and when I started explaining, we heard each other explaining the same thing to the attendant, and BOOM, we were both going to re:Invent. He was a Briton and coming in from the UK too. So we were on the same flight that had delayed us for almost 30 minutes, and took us another 1 hour to go through immigration.
This was already 9 pm in Los Angeles, our first time in the city, we knew no one and did not know where else to go. But before that, we had to sort out our tickets. So we were offered an option a reschedule the next morning by 5 am. Luckily, we were not charged, the attendants reprinted another boarding pass for the next day and took it and left the counter. We analyzed the options that were available. Option 1: Get into Los Angeles at about 9.30pm and look for a hotel and sleep till the next morning and pay a premium for a night because we need somewhere closer to the hotel. Option 2: Find a place to crash in the airport and wait till boarding which starts by 3am.
With these options, one thing made it easier to choose, because he made a valid point. He said “Mate, if we go to a hotel and get a bed, we will sleep till 10am and miss this flight because I am so tired right now”. I could not agree less. Meanwhile, I had booked an AirBnB which I was supposed to checkin that night on getting to Las Vegas. So I automatically lost that night at the AirBnB. With the point he made, Option 1 was the best. So we found a spot not so far from the checkin counter, about 7-minute walk and sat at the airport seats to sleep. We took turns keeping watch over our luggage throughout the night. As I was about to get into a proper sleep, holding my laptop bag close to my chest, a cleaner came to tell us he needed to sweep the floors. We had to stand up and allow him to sweep the floors and rearrange the seats. At this point,s sleep had left my eyes, it was about 1 am. I took the time to do some writing and prepare some drafts for some content I was going to publish during re:Invent.
At about 3.30am we decided to head straight to the counter, we were able to checkin our bags, and went through security checks and boarded our final flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. It was roughly a 1-hour-and-30-minute flight. Landed in Las Vegas and got a cab straight to my AirBnB apartment to get some rest and prepare for the day. That same day I was to take a photo with Matt Garman the CEO of AWS and have a feel of what pre-event looks like. So after a few minutes of rest, I went straight to the venue which was The Venetian and found my way to the floor where I was to take the photo with him. I did take a photo, met with the DevRel team from AWS (amazon people), and take a mini-tour of the different halls for the event
After that I went back to my AirBnB because my checkin date was the next day at 3pm. But I checked in earlier to The Venetian the next day. So how did my hotel and Las Vegas experience go ?
Las Vegas and The Venetian
I have lodged in various hotels but The Venetian is unique and huge in its own way. I arrived at the Venetian earlier than the check-in time because my checkout time at my AirBnB apartment was closer. To my luck I was allowed in paid some money as a holding fee, then I was given a key card for my room. The hotel had the Northside and the Southside. I found my way through the buzzing alleys of The Venetian Hotel and Casino with buzzing machines and hundreds of people moving around with various destinations within the hotel. If you are not careful you could get lost because many places look similar.
I was able to follow the direction signs close to the roof and navigate to the gates that leads to the elevators that leads to the suites. I took the elevator and eventually got into my room. Getting into the beautiful suite I immediately jumped on the bed to take a little rest before exploring the facilities in the room. A mini-sitting room, work table, dinning table and two televisions to serve depending on where you are seating per time.
After resting for a while, I put my luggage in the wardrobe and freshened up a bit and went downstairs to see if I can attend any sessions. I had come the previous day to take a photo with the CEO of AWS, Matt Garman and a couple of other heroes.
People were still arriving and swags where already being given by AWS. All I needed to do was to locate the swags hall and present my badge and you get a nice sweater as swag from AWS. There were so many people moving around trying to navigate the different halls within The Venetian that has been dedicated for the AWS re:Invent sessions. Banners of AWS were all over the place. Ushers were always available at various points to help you navigate through the sessions of the event because there were so many sessions going on at The Venetian. The next day was the Keynote by Matt Garman but I was not planning to attend the Keynote, instead I wanted to attend more of the breakout sessions. The only Keynote I planned to attend was the one by the CTO of Amazon Werner Vogels.
I also visited the AWS Community lounge which was an area dedicated to AWS Heroes, Community Builders and User Group Leaders. The spot gave a wonderful outside view of the Las Vegas strip and The Palazo which was another hotel and casino just beside The Venetian. It was a wonderful spot to rest and relax after walking round the maze of The Venetian. Though it was a long walk from my room and from the main event but it was a good spot to rest, refresh and go in again to get drowned in the buzzing activities of re:Invent.
The next day was the keynote by Matt Garman and that was also going to be the day for AWS Sponsors and Partners to dish out swags to attendees. So I quickly went back into my room after gathering enough information about the next day. During my sojourn of exploring the different areas dedicated to re:Invent in The Venetian I found two important places that I knew I would come back to the next day. The first was the meal hall. It was a huge hall where meals were served, as at the time I found it, meals were not served. In a bid to explore the meal area, I stumbled on a stair wheel and followed it up and voila I found myself in a large hall with so many businesses setting up with so many swags. It was like I had stumbled on the right place. It was amazing to see many businesses and organizations I admire. From Cloudflare, to Redhat, to Github, Gitlab, Datadog and so many other startups. I wanted to visit stands and take swags, but I found out that it was not yet time, after the keynote by Matt, I took the time to explore while people had not arrived. It was a huge hall and it was quick fascinating. I found my way back to the swag hall, through the keynote hall and back to my hotel room to rest a while.
re:Invent 2024 through my eyes
It was my first time attending re:Invent. I was overwhelmed by a lot of things. So many sessions I was not very sure which of them to attend. Venues separated from each other because some of the sessions were held in hotels other than The Venetian. The hotels were large and navigating through to get to a particular session was a problem and it took me about two days to know my ways inside The Venetian; at least the important route for me, which is from anywhere to my hotel room. The event had over 70,000 people from across the world attending. I met some of my social media followers and it was exciting to see that my work is recognized by people from all over the world. I was also able to connect with Heroes from the US, Japan, Cameroon and other Community leaders from Kenya.
But in all I got a little bit of everything. I was able to attend the keynote session I wanted, which was Werner’s keynote, I was the first in the queue on that day because I got information that there will be a crowd, not a miss a moment, I was there as early as 6am for a keynote that was going to begin at 8.30am. I was able to get in and as a Hero I had a privilege of the front row seat to watch Werner’s presentation. Werner’s keynote is usually the last keynote to round up the event. There was re:Play that night which is a party that runs into the night but I could not attend because I was not feeling too well. After Werner’s keynote I went to get brunch and headed straight to my hotel room to get some rest.
re:Invent for me was a little stressful because it was my first time. There were too many things to do at the same time and I decided to soak it all in and just enjoy the event and the glamour. I was fascinated by the planning, organisation, and coordination of an event at such a massive scale. I was able to attend only one event at MGM Grand, which I did not regret because it was the only session I selected that I wanted to attend in the AWS Events app. It was a workshop, but I did not come with my laptop. So I listened in and took notes in the session.
Conclusion
If you plan to go for re:Invent 2025, now is the time to start planning it. Whether you are going from a country that does not require a visa, or you are paying for the whole event by yourself, now is the time to start preparing. Start planning to book early flight tickets as tickets are cheaper now than later. Then, plan to pay for the event later in the year when tickets are available for sale. Plan your hotel stays too early to avoid rush and increase in prices during the re:Invent period. Las Vegas is not a cheap city, mostly around the casino area and strip, so it will be good to start planning your finances from now. For a first-time,r get insights from people who have attended the event before and learn the best way to navigate the event to avoid burning out like I most hard. Plan the sessions you want to attend, the sessions that fit exactly into your role, or a part of your skillset you want to improve on.
If you are coming from a time difference place, get ready for the jetlag and time adjustments your mind and body will have to make, because it is inevitable. My advice for you is to come way earlier, like a day to two, so that you can adjust properly before re:Invent proper.
