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Back by Popular Demand, Amazon Web Services (re)Opens AWS Pop-up Loft for Startups in San Francisco
[September 19, 2014]

Back by Popular Demand, Amazon Web Services (re)Opens AWS Pop-up Loft for Startups in San Francisco


(ENP Newswire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) ENP Newswire - 19 September 2014 Release date- 18092014 - SEATTLE - After a short sojourn to further build out its wildly popular AWS Pop-up Loft in San Francisco, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced it is reopening the Loft on Oct. 1 and inviting startups to come by to get in-person time with AWS technical experts, take free training courses and self-paced labs, hear how other startups are using AWS, network with other AWS users, or hang out and work.



The AWS Pop-up Loft will be open Monday through Friday, and visitors can go online starting today to make a one-on-one appointment with an AWS expert, register for bootcamps and technical sessions, and see what's happening at the AWS Loft. To learn more about the AWS Pop-up Loft, visit http://aws.amazon.com/start-ups/loft/.

'We heard from our customers and the startup community that they wanted more access to technical resources and expertise to get started and continue growing with AWS, so we opened a temporary Pop-up Loft in San Francisco for the month of June,' said Ariel Kelman, Vice President, Worldwide Marketing, AWS. 'During that month, thousands of people visited the AWS Loft for hundreds of hours of appointments, sessions, training, and hands-on labs to gain a deeper understanding of AWS. The customer feedback was extremely positive and we're excited to be able to bring the Pop-up Loft back for an extended period of time.' The AWS Pop-up Loft will be open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT, with extended hours when there are evening events, at 925 Market Street, San Francisco, Calif. beginning on Oct. 1, 2014. The AWS Loft will feature: Ask an Architect: Customers can make an appointment or just drop in to meet one-on-one with an AWS solutions architect to discuss technical questions about their AWS architecture, AWS services and features, cost optimization, and more.


Free AWS Technical Bootcamps: These one-day training sessions taught by experienced AWS instructors and solutions architects give customers hands-on experience using a live environment with the AWS Management Console.

Free Self-paced Hands-on Labs: For beginners through advanced users, these labs help sharpen AWS technical skills at a personal pace and are available for free in the Loft during operating hours.

Technical Sessions: AWS solution architects, product managers, and evangelists will cover tech topics on AWS services for mobile and gaming, databases, big data, compute and networking, architecture, operations, and security. AWS customers, partners, and industry thought leaders will host evening sessions at least once a week to share their insights and experiences.

AWS Customer Presentations: AWS customers including CircleCI, Coin, CoTap, Lyft, and more are already scheduled to speak.

CircleCI is a continuous delivery platform for web application developers to help them easily test and deploy code. 'Back in June we attended the AWS Pop-up Loft and got a lot of value out of chatting to other developers that are also using AWS,' said Paul Biggar, Founder, CircleCI. 'We're so happy that the AWS Loft is reopening again for a longer period of time. This time we're presenting our own AWS story so developers can see what's possible.' Coin is a connected device that can hold up to eight cards at a time and be used like the cards that you carry in your wallet. 'AWS has made it so much easier to build systems, which allowed us to focus more time and energy on creating Coin,' said Russell Taga, COO, Coin. 'Being able to talk to AWS technical experts in-person at a cool space like the Pop-up Loft was extremely helpful. At the AWS Loft, we also had the opportunity to talk about some of our experiences thus far with fellow startup companies and connect about the journey of Coin and how we tackled some of our most challenging hurdles.' Twilio is a communications platform that enables developers and businesses to use standard web languages to build voice, VoIP, and SMS applications via a web API. 'We were excited to participate in the AWS Pop-up Loft as a presenter back in June and are happy to see that it's returning. As more businesses look to take advantage of cloud-based technologies, access to AWS developers helps us expand our knowledge of AWS and better serve our customers,' said Patrick Malatack, Vice President of Product Management, Twilio. 'Being able to meet face-to-face with peers and AWS experts is a unique and valuable opportunity and we plan to visit the AWS Loft again.' The AWS Pop-up Loft is sponsored by Intel and Chef.

AWS and Intel share a passion for innovation, and have a history of helping startups be successful. At the AWS Pop-up Loft Intel will demonstrate the latest Intel technologies, such as the Internet of Things products, recent advancements with Intel Xeon processors, as well as hosting talks. 'The reopening of the AWS Pop-up Loft in San Francisco will provide a great opportunity for startups to receive deep technical guidance and hands-on experience working with the latest Intel and AWS technologies,' said Raejeanne Skillern, General Manager, Cloud Service Provider Business, Intel. 'The startup community is a fundamental driver of technology innovations fueling the rapid growth of the digital services economy. Intel is excited to be working closely with AWS on the AWS Loft to help enable an environment where users have access to the tools and expert guidance they need to bring new ideas and innovations to market.' Chef, an IT automation platform for configuring and deploying IT infrastructure and applications in the data center and the cloud, is joining forces with the AWS Pop-up Loft and will be bringing its DevOps expertise to the AWS Loft through hosted sessions and training curriculum. 'AWS broke new ground with the first Pop-up Loft. Chef participated in the inaugural run and spoke to a standing-room only crowd of practitioners, underscoring the insatiable demand for new IT skills in the era of the cloud,' said Jay Wampold, Vice President, Marketing, Chef. 'Chef and AWS are helping redefine how the next generation of businesses operate and we are thrilled to help empower developers and IT professionals to thrive in this new world.' To learn more about the AWS Pop-up Loft, visit http://aws.amazon.com/start-ups/loft/.

About Amazon Web Services Launched in 2006, Amazon Web Services, Inc. began exposing key infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services-now widely known as cloud computing. The ultimate benefit of cloud computing, and AWS, is the ability to leverage a new business model and turn capital infrastructure expenses into variable costs. Businesses no longer need to plan and procure servers and other IT resources weeks or months in advance. Using AWS, businesses can take advantage of Amazon's expertise and economies of scale to access resources when their business needs them, delivering results faster and at a lower cost. Today, Amazon Web Services provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of enterprise, government and startup customers businesses in 190 countries around the world. Amazon Web Services offers over 30 different services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). AWS Cloud services are available to customers from data center locations in the U.S., Brazil, Europe, Japan, Singapore, Australia and China.

About Amazon Amazon.com opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995. The company is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire phone, Fire tablets, and Fire TV are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon.

Source: Amazon Web Services, Inc.

Amazon.com, Inc.

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