AWS Turns To Twitch To Teach Cloud Skills

‘AWS Power Hour: Cloud Practitioner’ and ‘AWS Power Hour: Q&A’ are two new interactive Twitch series from AWS Training and Certification that start next week.

Amazon Web Services is turning to sister company Twitch’s live streaming platform to help partners and customers build their foundational AWS cloud knowledge and prepare for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam.

“AWS Power Hour: Cloud Practitioner” and “AWS Power Hour: Q&A” are two new interactive Twitch series from AWS Training and Certification that start next week.

AWS is billing them as an informal way to learn with others who have similar cloud goals.

“We are always looking for new ways to help customers develop cloud skills, and we’re really excited by the potential that Twitch offers in communicating and interacting with our customers,” said Scott Barneson, director of learning products for AWS Training and Certification. “We think this is a great medium to make it easy and fun for customers to build fundamental cloud fluency.”

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner credential is designed for candidates with at least six months of experience with the AWS Cloud in any role, including technical, managerial, sales, purchasing or financial roles. It’s recommended that candidates have a basic understanding of IT services and their uses on the AWS cloud platform.

The “AWS Power Hour: Cloud Practitioner” Twitch livestream will run as one-hour sessions for six weeks. AWS experts will serve as hosts who’ll guide participants through the cloud content with demonstrations and real-world examples. The content will start with cloud basics and key AWS services, followed by deep dives into topics such as the AWS Well-Architected Framework, building and securing applications in the cloud, pricing and support, and how to innovate. Participants will get resources and exercises to help them prepare for AWS cloud certification. Each episode will livestream twice a week with different hosts, and participants can access recorded episodes right after they stream.

The first episode focuses on six benefits of cloud computing, common cloud adoption strategies and cloud storage. Participants will explore object and block storage, and AWS storage services including Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon S3 Glacier.

“We’ve created ‘AWS Power Hour: Cloud Practitioner’ to align with the topics on the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam and to help build the recommended knowledge for the exam,” Barneson said, noting additional exam prep resources, including suggested technical documentation and practice exams, are available from AWS Training and Certification.

“AWS Power Hour: Q&A” also will run twice-weekly as a 30-minute, open forum livestream, during which participants can interact with the AWS hosts and their fellow learners and ask questions.

This is the second Twitch series for AWS, which launched a seven week “AWS Power Hour: Machine Learning” series in July.