Gabriel Spence

For a while, I managed the global streaming program for AWS Marketing Events, where I built a team and $6M in network and streaming infrastructure. I was briefly a Principal Engineer elsewhere in the Jeff Bezos universe, and now I work for a startup called Leo with a mission to provide high-speed, low-latency satellite internet worldwide. Views my own.

Pinned post from December 21, 2025

Hello, world!

I've decided to move my periodic posting to the Hey platform. Archives are prefixed with FTA. Not that everything I've written is a banger, but in some ways my writing tracks with the progression of my career. It's a little piece of history I want to preserve even if someday I leave the hellscape that is LinkedIn. You can subscribe via...

December 21, 2025

Amazon Leo presentations from re:Invent 2025

These presentations are well worth your time if you're interested in learning more about what is going on with Amazon Leo and the integrations with AWS. Architecting resilient global networks with Amazon Leo (YouTube) Amazon Leo: Building a Low Earth Orbit Satellite Network on AWS (YouTube)

December 21, 2025

FTA: Technical Debt

This post is part of a From The Archives series I am doing to move my posts over from LinkedIn. This was originally posted on November 7, 2025. Technical debt has been on my mind a lot lately, and I'm beginning to realize its very real impact. After years of neglect, the interest rate is high and the balance is coming due. There are on...

December 21, 2025

FTA: Leadership or the lack thereof

This post is part of a From The Archives series I am doing to move my posts over from LinkedIn. This was originally posted on October 10, 2025. Over two decades working for organizations ranging from small non-profits to several Fortune 50 companies (including 7.5 years at Amazon), one truth keeps revealing itself: team culture is the ...

December 21, 2025

FTA: re:Invent streaming recap 2024

This post is part of a From The Archives series I am doing to move my posts over from LinkedIn. This was originally posted on December 6, 2024. I partially agree with the quote, "You cannot learn anything from success; you only learn from failure." Back in 2021, when we had a customer-facing livestream failure, that failure was a catal...

December 21, 2025

FTA: The Bigger Picture

This post is part of a From The Archives series I am doing to move my posts over from LinkedIn. This was originally posted on February 7, 2024. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the next steps I want to take in my life and career. Not anything crazy like becoming the next TikTok influencer or trying out for Squid Games: The Challe...

December 21, 2025

FTA: Micro Predictions for 2024

This post is part of a From The Archives series I am doing to move my posts over from LinkedIn. This was originally posted on January 13, 2024. If you read my previous posts, you know that 2023 was a reasonably productive year. It's hard to believe that we kept our event delivery operations rolling, completed construction and systems i...

December 21, 2025

FTA: AWS Broadcast Control - Part 3

This post is part of a From The Archives series I am doing to move my posts over from LinkedIn. This was originally posted on December 9, 2023. ICYMI In Part 1 of this series, I described the early state of our live-stream program at Amazon Web Services (AWS). In Part 2, I explained where we are today. Part 3 is more philosophical. It ...

December 21, 2025

FTA: AWS Broadcast Control - Part 2

This post is part of a From The Archives (FTA) series I am doing to move my posts over from LinkedIn. This was originally posted on December 2, 2023. In the first post of this series, I briefly discussed where the AWS Broadcast Control idea came from. It started with a goal to reduce costs, increase production values, scale our program...

December 21, 2025

FTA: AWS Broadcast Control - Part 1

This post is part of a From The Archives series I am doing to move my posts over from LinkedIn. This was originally posted on December 1, 2023. I was the second employee hired when I joined the AWS Event Livestream team in 2021. The livestream infrastructure we owned could fit in a single carry-on pelican case: a collection of Elementa...