AWS Cloud Quest: Ignite growth with hands-on skill building

I'm Curtis Port and I'm a senior product manager for the game based learning products team and I'm having a great re:Invent. I went to The Sphere last night. It was amazing. But I'm gonna show you something even more amazing than The Sphere. And that's AWS Cloud Quest.

So what is AWS Cloud Quest? And how does it ignite growth with hands on skill building? It is a game based product that teaches hands on solution building. First and foremost, it's for anyone who's seeking to learn about the cloud that has no prior experience.

So we're gonna get into Cloud Quest. I'm gonna show you, uh talk about a little bit more about what it can do for partners and then we're gonna do a live demo of Cloud Quest in action. You're gonna see it live. So let's begin.

Cloud Quest is available on AWS Skill Builder. We have a game based learning section that includes Cloud Quest. We have Industry Quest, we have Escape Room for exam prep, we have AWS Card Clash which is new, a card game and we have a recertification version of Cloud Quest as well. So we have lots of game based products that come with everything else that Skill Builder has. So you have lots of options about how you want to learn.

Now, let's talk about the value of training for certification, uh for, for AWS training partners. I'm not gonna go through all of the benefits of this, of training. We know that training benefits organizations, increases your growth and profitability, increases your ROI, you achieve better outcomes and you future proof your organization with knowledge about the cloud skills that you've acquired and deploying them. You have better conversations with your customers as well.

So that's the training is very important for your organization, but a lot of times there's pain points with assigning training. Sometimes you can't get employees to actually take the training, a learning admin will assign a training and check on the, on the progress and they'll find that they didn't complete the training. There's a lot of pain points with this, it helps employees translate training operations. And how do you validate the skills that employees have learned? How do you motivate employees to fully engage, engage in training and anticipate the types of cloud skills they're gonna learn. So there's all sorts of pain points that organizations have.

So how do you solve that? What if you could create a training that is easy to set up time, flexible, easy to deliver collaborative immersive and free. How could you do this? What could that solution be? And that's what we have AWS Cloud Quest. We have a free version of Cloud Quest called Cloud Quest Cloud Practitioner that's available right now on Skill Builder. It contains 12 solution building assignments and is designed to teach hands on solution building. You can develop a career in the cloud with no prior experience and you build real life solutions.

So what we try to do and and, and I know this is game based and i, and some of you are probably skeptical, skeptical about game based learning, but we designed Cloud Quests to simulate and experience. What is it like to be a Solutions Architect? What is it like to be a Service Developer? So you, you choose a role and you have to take on that role and that responsibility in a fictional city. So you have, you have fictional customers that you have to support so that creates a responsibility that creates engagement and it, it, it helps customers or learners fully invest in what they're learning because they have to deliver real life solutions to fictional customers if you will.

So this is the basic flow of Cloud Quest. You talked, you start off with a customer conversation, so you create an avatar, you can be, you can choose a Solutions Architect, you can choose a Service Developer, um whatever interests you, we have seven additional roles. And during that customer conversation, you are developing a skill that a solution architect has, which is translating a business problem into a technical solution. So throughout that conversation, you find out what the business problem is and what services and solutions you need to deploy to solve that problem.

Then after that conversation, you would move on to something called the Solution Center. And step two inside of inside of the Solution Center is a virtual place where you get the architecture diagram and we give you guidance through that. So we walk you through each step of the architecture in step two. And throughout that process, you can also watch videos about the services within the architecture if you're not familiar with them. So you get to learn about the solution you're about to build.

Then we move on to step three where you actually build a real solution from within Cloud Quest. So you're building on the AWS console using the same tools that a Solutions Architect would use and then you have image based guidance. So we give you the images and step by step instructions. This is really unique to solution building with labs where you get to see exactly what you're gonna do in the console.

And then you can launch the AWS console directly from Cloud Quest and it launches in this separate browser tab. And finally, in step four, you're gonna do one more thing after you build in step three, you build one part of a complete solution. But in step four, you're gonna add on to it and build a second part. But this time without guidance, so we remove some of that guidance and we force you to remember what you did in step three and then apply that knowledge.

So you have to pay attention in step three, you can't just walk through and click through steps. You have to pay attention because you're gonna apply what you learn in step four without the guidance and then you validate. So when customers validate a solution on their own and something we call do it yourself, that's where the fun is to be because that's very satisfying to customers. They solve something on their own, they can take that knowledge and apply it in the real world. They're not just following steps, they're doing things on their own, they're learning how to build real solutions. And that is the goal of Cloud Quest. It teaches you how to build.

Now, we have seven roles total. The Cloud Practitioner role is free on Skill Builder. You go to Skill Builder dot AWS and you can go start and try with the Cloud Practitioner role. But if you have a specific knowledge area, if you have some experience, you can choose Solutions Architect, you can choose Service Developer, you can choose Machine Learning and you can start down that path. And we have curated assignments specific to those learning domains.

So it's not just for new learners. If you have experience, you can do these roles and you earn a real AWS credential, a certified badge that you can share with your customers and colleagues on Cred.com. So you earn a badge for completing all of the assignments in each of these roles.

Now, here's where I was talking about something that's easy to, easy to set up and easy to deliver. We have something called Cloud Quest Tournaments that's within Cloud Quest. So even with the free version, you can create a time based event within Cloud Quest where you would create a sort of a game day. And it would create a leaderboard and you can share this publicly with a event code that people would join.

So the people that join your event, anything that they do in Cloud Quest would be scored on this leaderboard and it takes about five minutes to set this up and you can do this on the free version of Cloud Quest right now. So if you have customers or partners that want to create an event and want to learn about cloud, you can do a Cloud Quest tournament, set it up, share out the code, everyone joins and they learn together, collaborate in teams or individually and have a fun event where you can award prizes, gift cards and make it something that's really special as they learn together.

So if we have time, I'm gonna show you how to do this live. Now, we also have additional game based learning products for industries. We have Industry Quests for Financial Services. We have Industry Quests for Health Care and we just released Industry Quests for Manufacturing and Automotive. So these learning experiences are specific to these industries. We have specific solution building assignments for them.

If you have partners in a specific industry, I would recommend you show them this because they can use these industry, these industry solutions to practice implementing them to see if how they would work and then implement them later at their own organization. So definitely check out Industry Quest. This is great for partners in a specific industry.

Now, why do we do game based learning? Because we found with studies that they consume more content and this study was done by the Technology Services Industry Association and it showed that learners that are immersed in a game based learning environment consume 3 to 4 times more content.

Now, why do they consume more content? It's because they have an assignment, they have a responsibility, right? So they're more engaged, more invested and that's why they consume more content with Cloud Quest.

Yes. Now this is from a quote from an AWS partner. They were talking about how the hands on skill building in AWS Cloud Quest gave them a chance to put this into practice. So following the Cloud Practitioner track, they were able to gain more hands on skills with Cloud Quest, with a Solutions Architect role, they can. Many of the partners use Cloud Quest to advance in the Solutions Architect Associate exam. So they felt it was a great way to learn while they were in a program for Solutions Architect.

Here's what some other partners are saying. It's a fun and engaging tool for interactive learning and it allows engineers and partners to practice and gain confidence and experimentation in the AWS cloud environment. It also helps Zalora drive experimentation and innovation with their projects with AWS Cloud Quest.

Now, one of the things, one of the things that we do is we, we provide more than just a simple lab. We don't just give you lab steps that you follow blindly. We give you a solution center, we give you a business problem, we give you videos, we give you a do it yourself process. We, you quizzes service cards challenges. So it's not just following lab steps, it's more about a system of learning that surrounds the lab.

So when you pick a specific role in Cloud Quest, the quizzes the videos, the challenges they're all related to that learning domain. So you're not just getting a lab, you're getting much more, we call it a game based solution lab. So that's one of the benefits of using Cloud Quest, you get much more.

And we also have generative AI solutions within Cloud Quest inside of the Machine Learning role. So we have an introduction of generative AI. Another one about fine tuning LLM's. And we also have a solution for building apps faster with CodeWhisperer. So we try to cover all of the solution areas, whether it's generative AI or whether service, whether it's security, everything that you can find in other solutions, you'll find it in Cloud Quest as well.

Now, I've already talked about a lot of these benefits. Augmenting cert preparation, we have a risk free console environment, increased engagement. We've talked about that. But the curated learning paths, all of the things that I showed you, the roles that I showed you the role for Solutions Architect for serve for Machine Learning. They were created by experts at AWS architects, developers, TAMs, these are the people that curated these special learning paths that you can follow along and have specific assignments that follow a specific path all the way down when you go from a foundational level of knowledge, all the way to an intermediate and up to advanced level of knowledge as you go down these learning paths.

Now, if you don't want to follow these paths, you can do something on your own. If you have a team subscription, you can customize and create your own learning path using our Learning Path creator. So instead of following one of those seven roles, you can take all of the assignments available in Cloud Quest and rearrange them with our customized learning path tool in any order that you want.

So if you're onboarding employees for security, you can take all of the security related assignments, put them together in one specific learning path and then assign that to just those employees. This is great for onboarding for a specific knowledge area and they can take that training together and you can track their progress. You can do that within Cloud Quest. If you have a team subscription, a very powerful tool, a customized learning path.

Yes. Now let's get into a demo to see how it works. I'm gonna show you maybe we can create a tournament really quickly. Okay? Yeah.

Alright. So I'm in Cloud Quest. This is my character. I've already chosen a role. With Cloud Quest you can control in different ways. There's a camera, you can move around with a unicorn. This is the fun elements, but you don't have to do this. There's different play styles. You do not have to be a gamer. Actually, most of the people that use Cloud Quest are not gamers.

You can use something called the XR device at the bottom, right? When I click on the XR device, I get a list of the assignments that I have deploying RESTful APIs, DNS, backing up data. And I also have all of the other features. So the XR device is kind of like the main conduit to everything in Cloud Quest. If I click on the Roles Map, it'll show me all of the roles in Cloud Quest. The Solutions Architect was what I chose.

If I click on an assignment, it shows the learning objectives, the business problem, the services I'm gonna interface with. If I click on another area, okay? Do that real quickly? Click on Machine Learning, I can go and check out the generative AI solutions as well. You can see the learning objectives and all of that. So this is based on real training, you're gonna actually build these solutions within Cloud Quest.

So what do I do next? When I get an assignment, one of the fictional characters in Cloud Quest is gonna give me an assignment and I'm gonna go back to my XR device. So in my XR device, I can click on an assignment and I can just hit continue and it's gonna take me to the Solution Center.

So before you build a solution, you have to learn about a solution, right? So this solution diagram gives you guidance on how this architecture works. So as I cycle through, we explain how this works, how the services interconnect, how the data is flowing. And then if I go to video concepts, I can watch a video about the services within the solution. And this is like a white board style video based on what a Solutions Architect would do when he white boards on a whiteboard to diagram a solution. And these are optional, you can watch them at any time.

Now in the planning section, I'm going to see all of the tasks that I have to do. What I'm gonna do in the practice and what I'm gonna do in a do it yourself. And then in the practice section, this is where I'm gonna build so I can launch the AWS console right from within Cloud Quest. If I click the Start Lab button, I'm gonna get an Open AWS Console button.

So when I click that it launches in a separate browser tab and logs me in automatically, you never ever have to use your own personal account even with the free version. So this will log you in. And it has an AWS Labs account and it will shut down automatically at the end of the session.

So now I'm gonna use the image based instructions and it's gonna show me exactly what I need to do. So I follow along and I'm gonna build one part of the solution with guidance. So this is the guidance that we give you on every single solution lab in Cloud Quest. So you're gonna know exactly what to do.

Now, when you built that first part, you're going to move over to the, do it yourself section. And here we're gonna say, hey, you need to do a little bit more. You're gonna have to add an additional component to this using these do it yourself activities here and we're gonna check to make sure that you did it. So you must validate that you built it using the same environment.

So what you did in practice here, you're also gonna do, do the same thing and do it yourself. So if I put in a fake url, and I click validate, it's gonna check to see if I actually built the API at Gateway url, which I didn't do anything. But as you can see the validation failed because it's actually gonna have APIs. We have APIs that go out and check in the console to make sure that you did it.

And that's the basic premise of Cloud Quest when you validate this, this is where the gratification happened. This is where customers are very satisfied that they were able to solve this on their own.

Now, really quickly in the last 20 seconds, I'm gonna show you about Cloud Quest tournaments. Okay? So I created this tournament yesterday and this is the tournament code. So I did this in five minutes and you can share this with your customers and partners when you create a tournament you share the code they join, they'll be added to this leaderboard and then you can compete together because whatever you earn in Cloud Quest would be counted on this tournament score.

And that's all I have today. That's my time. Thank you for attending and I appreciate your support. You can, I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna go to the end slide. If you, if you wanna contact me, I'm on LinkedIn. If you have any questions, please come up and happy to answer any of them.