Every so often, I get those AWS emails announcing upcoming webinars. If you’re like me, you probably scan them, maybe click through, and then forget. But this time, one caught my eye — a 3-hour session focused on Amazon Bedrock.
The session was structured into two parts: a set of lectures and then a hands-on lab. What made it more approachable was that AWS provided a pre-provisioned environment just for the day. No setup required, no worrying about IAM roles, billing alarms, or tearing things down afterward. The environment expired a few hours after the session, which was perfect for exploring without worrying about accidentally leaving resources running.
The Experience
It had been a while since I joined an AWS-sponsored event, and I’ll admit I went in with modest expectations. There were a few bumps—like not immediately knowing where to find the lab manual—but once I got settled, the experience was surprisingly solid.
The session covered quite a bit of ground in a short time:
- Amazon Bedrock basics: A quick overview of how Bedrock lets you integrate foundation models from providers like Anthropic, Meta, and Amazon’s own Titan family.
- Amazon Q and server-less Redshift: This part was interesting. The demo showed how you can use natural language to query structured data, no SQL required. I’ve been a Redshift user for quite a while – but I guess its easy to keep doing what you know – I had no idea about this. 🙁
- Using S3 as a vector store source: This was a practical walk through of storing unstructured data and using it in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows.
- Prompt engineering, guardrails, agents, and flows: We touched on safety, fine-tuning prompts for specific outputs, and chaining actions using agents.
While we only scratched the surface of each topic, the combination of lecture and lab helped reinforce the concepts. It also gave me a better mental model of how Bedrock can be stitched together with other AWS services to build LLM-powered apps.
Why It’s Worth Your Time
AWS is clearly investing heavily in GenAI and tools like Bedrock and Amazon Q. These webinars are a low-barrier way to get up to speed—especially if you learn best by doing.
The pre-provisioned environment is a game changer. No credit card stress. No cleanup worries. Just get in, follow the steps, and focus on learning.
If you see one of these pop up, I’d recommend carving out a few hours. Even if you don’t end up using Bedrock directly, the session gives you a clearer picture of how AWS is thinking about generative AI integration across its ecosystem.
Want to Explore on Your Own?
While I don’t know when the next Bedrock webinar will be, AWS has a growing library of hands-on workshops that cover similar content. Many are self-paced and work just fine on a free-tier account (though always double-check resource usage!).
There’s a lot of high-quality, practical material there — definitely worth browsing if you’re looking to level up your cloud skills.