In this talk, we present tips and best practices for scaling a large workshop for 1,000's of simultaneous attendees - both online and in-person. While our workshop is focused on AI and machine learning on AWS, we generalize our learnings for any domain or specialization.

1. 15 Tips to Scale a
Large Workshop
Chris Fregly (US)
@cfregly
Antje Barth (DE)
@anbarth
AI and Machine Learning
Specialists
https://datascienceonaws.com

2. No. 1
Find a trust worthy buddy.
Alternate between speaking & live question-answering.

3. No. 2
Create your own fly wheel.
Books +
Online Trainings
1-hr
Webinar
Meetups +
Conferences
8-hr
Workshop
Don’t rely solely on marketing team. Find your own channels.
Plus 50,000+ Members
Across Many Meetups
Worldwide
Millions of Members
Across the Globe
Reuse
Content!

4. No. 3
Minimize the Q&A Channels.
Stick with a single channel for Q&A during an event.

5. No. 4
Keep everything “on rails.”
Minimize degrees of freedom and maintain sanity.

6. No. 5
“Always Be Testing”
“Hook people on random rewards.” --Nir Eyal
“We never play the same show twice” --Grateful Dead

7. No. 6
“If you can’t measure, you can’t
improve.” --Peter Drucker
“See where people walk, then build the sidewalk.” --Chris’ Dad

8. No. 7
Don’t let negative feedback
discourage you.
At scale, you will always get negative feedback.
Aggregate, evaluate, and improve if consistent.

9. No. 8
Take control of the sandbox.
Use clean-room environments, always provision extras.
Do not run on attendee’s laptop or cloud account.

10. No. 9
Know the cost of the sandbox.
Everyone will ask. Stay under $25 for full-day events.

11. No. 10
Test in all regions.
Total capacity, different instance types/limits, API bugs.
Chris’ actual shirt
from reInvent 2019

12. No. 11
Have a backup plan.
git pull
Make it easy to fix bugs on the fly, if needed.

13. No. 12
Attendees miss instructions.
Use programatic safeguards vs. text instructions.

14. No. 13
Update the workshop
immediately after delivery.
git push
Fix whatever was non-optimal ... before you forget.

15. No. 14
Share and maximize ripple effect.
Our content has enabled 5 new community workshops.
We created over 30 Github issues to improve SageMaker.
Chris’ actual ukulele
and Grateful Dead
song book.

16. No. 15
Use FAQ chatbot to handle
commonly-repeated questions.
Focus on high-value questions, automate the rest.
Will this session be
recorded?
Recordings are posted to
our YouTube channel.
Where?
Yes, this is recorded.
Our actual FAQ chatbot
with Amazon Lex + Kendra

17. Summary
Maintain Control and Minimize Degrees of Freedom
Maximize Impact and Increase Ripple Effect
Hook People with New Content
Create Your Own Flywheel
Chris Fregly
Developer Advocate
AI and Machine Learning Specialist
San Francisco, USA
@cfregly
https://linkedin.com/in/cfregly
Antje Barth
Developer Advocate
AI and Machine Learning Specialist
Dusseldorf, Germany
@anbarth
https://linkedin.com/in/antje-barthhttps://datascienceonaws.com