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 catalyst to drive massive improvements in our encoding technology, networks, and broadcast facilities.
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 catalyst to drive massive improvements in our encoding technology, networks, and broadcast facilities.
But what if we could also learn from success? That's why I appreciate this quote from Andy Jassy in his 2021 shareholder letter.
We're divinely discontented with customer experiences, whether they're our own or not. We believe these customer experiences can always be better, and we strive to make customers' lives better and easier every day.
This quote defines the shared mentality of the streaming business unit I lead at AWS Marketing. Even if we win, we ask how we improve the customer experience the next time. Our post-event retrospectives are always divided into wins, learnings, and actions. We start retro documents during the event and populate them proactively so our recollections stay fresh. But we never have a document with all wins and no learnings.
This year, we had successful live streams of re:Invent. A massive amount of work went on behind the scenes to ensure an impeccable customer experience, but it was a win for us and for customers.
I was privileged to be the Senior Technical Lead for the re:Invent live streaming operation. My deliverables included designing and building all the ground contribution, transmission, and distribution workflows on the first and second miles of the signal path, and any integrations for handoff to the OTT platform and campus returns. During the event, I monitored encoding performance, transport networks, video distribution, video quality, and system health.
We streamed five main-stage Keynotes and 17 Innovation Talks, all with live American Sign Language, simultaneous audio translations, AI English Captions, and 15 AI subtitled languages. The live stream feeds were encoded in Las Vegas and transmitted over our AWS cloud backbone network to our Seattle-based Broadcast Control, with monitoring stations in Las Vegas and Sydney, Australia.
Broadcast Control packaged the feeds for handoff to the streaming platform and workflows managed by our streaming partner Corrivium. Broadcast Control also distributed simulcast feeds to social media, return feeds of live sign language for the Keynote and Innovation Talks venue screens, and an alternate feed for hotel sleeping rooms at MGM properties and The Venetian, with a mix of playout and live sources.
With a wrap of a successful re:Invent in the books yesterday, our planning for an even more successful re:Invent in 2025 starts today. Even though it was a win for our team and our customers, we are divinely discontented with this year's results and plan to do better next time.
As Werner said in his Keynote yesterday, "Evolution is fundamental."
I want to express my appreciation to all our Producers, Broadcast Managers, Operators, Engineers, and Partners who worked tirelessly to produce an incredibly seamless live show. Your roles were instrumental in successfully executing the live-streaming delivery, and you should all be proud of your contributions and hard work.
Broadcast Engineering: Kenneth Scott