Austria
What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas? That is definitely not true when selected colleagues from technology and business are attending the re:Invent conference taking place this week in Las Vegas. It is the first time that colleagues from business teams are joining. Colleagues were nominated or applied themselves to spend a week at the conference and bring back news, knowledge and insights that will help our tech and business teams to build even better products, increase sustainability standards across IT and stay ahead in the global innovation competition. The final list of attendees reflects different skills (with a focus on artificial intelligence and innovations) and balanced representation from various teams and departments.
"re:Invent is more than a product conference by Amazon Web Services, one of our main partners in technology. It is a unique opportunity to learn and network. Sending colleagues to attend this event is not only an invest in their individual development, but is also strengthening our position as innovation leader in the travel industry. I wish all our colleagues a great time at the conference and look forward to the insights they bring back to our teams,” says Pieter Jordaan, member of the Group Executive Committee and CIO of TUI.
re:Invent is considered one of the largest IT conferences globally and organized by Amazon Web Services (AWS), TUI´s cloud partner. Tens of thousands of cloud computing experts, builders, customers, partners, and technology fans will attend. One focus will be artificial intelligence. There are more than 250 generative AI sessions listed in the re:Invent catalog, including building secure generative AI applications, optimizing generative AI workloads for sustainability, and exploring generative AI for life sciences, travel, and education.
The conference offers attendees a plethora of opportunities to learn more about AWS technologies and to broaden their skill set. The 12th annual event features keynotes, innovation talks, builder labs, workshops, certification and training opportunities, technical sessions, after-hours social events and more.
Two TUI colleagues will not only attend the conference, but will also represent TUI Technology on stage. Marc Jennings (Master Domain Owner Analytics & AI) will offer a breakout session about the evolution of TUI´s data strategy and the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Yasin Quareshy (Head of Technology, Enablers Cloud & On-Premise) is part of the conference program with another two breakout sessions – on operational excellence through the use of a solution called PagerDuty, and about TUI´s experience with a cloud-based tool that helps saving money and increasing value. You will hear more about these topics soon. For every breakout session, a thorough application and alignment process with the organizers had to be passed. So it is a great recognition for the TUI Tech teams to be invited for such presentations.
Our colleagues attending re:Invent have spent quite some time and effort to prepare for this event. With hundreds of presentations and workshops, good planning is key to make the most of this conference. The group has aligned their daily schedules with their personal interests and the topics that are most relevant to TUI. In addition, summaries and reports will be produced by all participants that will be shared with teams. An internal podcast series will summarize some of the key take aways (to be published in January).
“Over the years, we have developed our approach how to make the most of this conference. It is a unique chance to connect with the international tech community and get first hand insights about some of the technologies we are using every day from the people actually building them. This is a huge learning opportunity for our team – not only for the colleagues who are attending, but for everyone at TUI,” says João Vieira Santos (Head of Technology, Enablers Cloud & On-Premise) who is one of the participants.
And Frans Leenaars (CMO Western Region and Group CX Director) representing TUI business teams at re:Invent adds: "It is absolutely a privilege to be here at re:Invent which such a broad group of IT colleagues from all over the business. At the start it was a bit overwhelming as a non-techie to find your way through all the rich content that is offered here. With help of our AWS account team and our TUI specialists we are being guided through all that is being developed to improve the service interactions with our customers. We can’t wait to let both our customers and TUI benefit from all these exciting developments!”
For the geeks among us: You can find ten memorable moments from previous re:Invent conferences, including companies like Siemens, GE, BP and Netflix here.
