How I Got the AWS All Builders Welcome Grant for re:Invent 2025

December 2025

Introduction

Attending AWS re:Invent is something a lot of cloud engineers dream about. But if you live outside the US, the cost of flights, hotels, and a conference pass can quickly turn that dream into a “maybe someday” situation. In December 2025, I finally made it to re:Invent in Las Vegas, and the best part is that everything was fully covered through the AWS All Builders Welcome (ABW) Grant.

This post is basically the story of how it happened. I want to walk through how I read the announcement, how I prepared, what I wrote, what the timeline looked like, how I sorted out travel, and what I would tell anyone thinking about applying next year.

If you are an early-career builder sitting on the fence about applying, my honest answer is just go for it. Hopefully this guide makes that decision a little easier.

Why the ABW Grant Matters

The ABW Grant exists for one simple reason: to remove the financial and logistical walls that stop early-career technologists from getting to re:Invent. For someone like me, working out of Kathmandu, Nepal, that is the difference between “maybe one day” and “okay, I am actually going this year.”

What the Grant Covers

Eligibility Criteria

Before I wrote a single word of the application, I went through the official details to make sure I actually qualified. The points that mattered most for me were:

• Being in the first five years of a cloud technology career.
• Being at least 21 years old by the event date.
• Being able to travel to Las Vegas and handle the US visa process on my own.
• Not having received the ABW Grant for re:Invent before.

Once I confirmed all of that, I quickly mapped my own background against the requirements:

• Working as a DevOps and AWS engineer with hands-on time on EC2, networking, automation workflows, and cloud governance.
• Real production experience, plus community contributions through blogs, documentation, and knowledge sharing.
• A genuine interest in cloud governance, automation, and cost optimization, all of which get serious airtime at re:Invent.

My Application Strategy

The ABW application is not a place to dump your CV. It is closer to a storytelling exercise about what you build, who you serve, and how this opportunity will multiply your impact. To stay focused, I broke my prep into three layers.

1. Foundation

• Updated my LinkedIn and GitHub so they actually reflected what I was working on.
• Pulled together concrete examples: infrastructure I had designed, automation I had written, and blog posts I had already published.

2. Narrative

• Got clear on my “why”: why AWS, why re:Invent, and why now in my career.
• Mapped out my journey from self-taught AWS learner to running production workloads, so reviewers could see real progression and persistence.

3. Impact

• Thought about how attending re:Invent would help my team, my local community, and the people I want to mentor, not just me.
• Listed specific tracks I cared about (DevOps, serverless, AI, security, FinOps) and tied each one back to my day-to-day work.

Doing this groundwork early made the actual application feel like answering questions I had already thought about, instead of writing from scratch under pressure.

Writing the Application

The ABW application has a few open-ended questions about your background, challenges, impact, and motivation. Here is how I approached the main ones.

1. Background and Interest in Cloud and AWS

For this part, I focused on:

• The transition from learning cloud fundamentals to running real workloads on AWS.
• The specific services and patterns I had worked with: EC2, IAM, SSL/TLS, automation pipelines, and cost visibility tooling.
• The way I keep learning, through certifications, hands-on projects, and writing blogs in public.

My goal was to come across as a builder who is already using AWS, not someone who is passively interested in “learning cloud someday.”

2. A Challenge You Faced and How You Overcame It

For this one, I picked a real technical challenge from work and structured the answer like this:

• Context and constraints, kept short.
• My thought process and what I actually did.
• The measurable outcome, like fewer outages, faster deployments, or lower costs.

Reviewers go through a lot of applications. Concrete, measurable results are what stick.

3. How re:Invent Will Help You and Your Community

I answered this in three layers:

• For my career, going deeper into DevOps, automation, AI/ML on AWS, and cost optimization through 300 to 400 level sessions.
• For my team and company, bringing back patterns and tools, running internal brown-bag sessions, and identifying cost and reliability wins.
• For my wider community, sharing what I learned through blogs, talks, and workshops aimed at early-career engineers in Nepal and the wider region.

I tried to write in plain, direct language and stay away from buzzwords. Authenticity does more for you than polish.

Application Timeline

While I was waiting, I used the time to read re:Invent first-timer guides, go through past ABW grantee experiences, and shortlist the tracks I most wanted to attend: DevOps, automation, governance, and cost optimization.

Visa, Travel, and Logistics

As an international attendee from Nepal, the US visa process is on you. The grant covers your travel and hotel, but not your visa fees or the time it takes to actually get one.

What I did:

• Booked the visa appointment as early as possible, since wait times in Kathmandu can be long.
• Got my documents ready: AWS support letter, proof of employment, and a travel itinerary.
• Sorted out health and travel insurance, international roaming, and US-friendly payment methods.

On the conference side:

• Installed the official AWS Events app to keep track of sessions, maps, and notifications.
• Built a flexible schedule that mixed talks, workshops, and expo time, but still left room for hallway conversations.
• Packed for long days: comfortable shoes, a light backpack, chargers, and a notebook.

The re:Invent Experience as an ABW Grantee

Being an ABW grantee turned re:Invent from overwhelming into something that felt genuinely supported. The program adds structure and community on top of the regular conference.

A few highlights from the week:

• Welcome and orientation, with a dedicated ABW welcome event and lounge where I met other grantees and mentors early on.
• Reserved keynote seating, which meant no multi-hour queues and full focus on the announcements and the vision.
• Mentoring and meetups, with curated 1:1 conversations with AWS experts and community leaders.
• New connections in general. The ABW pin was a great conversation starter, and I met engineers, architects, and community builders I am still in touch with.

From a learning point of view, re:Invent lived up to its reputation:

• More than 1,000 sessions covering AI, serverless, DevOps, data, security, and more, at different depth levels.
• Hands-on labs, builders’ sessions, and chalk talks that go beyond slides.
• An expo floor full of partners working in observability, security, and DevOps automation.

For someone already working with AWS every day, the week felt like compressing months of learning, networking, and inspiration into seven days.

How the Grant Changed My Direction

The value of the grant did not really end when the conference closed.

• Sharper focus on what I want to specialize in next, especially advanced automation, cloud governance, and FinOps.
• More strategic framing of my work, where architecture, cost, and long-term maintainability matter as much as just “getting it running.”
• A global network of builders, mentors, and potential collaborators that I could not have built through online courses alone.
• Community impact at home, through structured notes for my team, internal sessions on key talks, and more open writing about my journey so others from Nepal can see re:Invent as something real and reachable.

Kathmandu’s tech ecosystem is moving fast right now, with digital wallets, e-government, and growing cloud adoption. Events like re:Invent give engineers from our region access to the kind of knowledge and connections that quietly raise the bar of what we end up building.

Tips for Future ABW Applicants

1. Start Early

• Keep an eye on when applications open. ABW 2025 closed around mid-July.
• Do not leave the application for the last week. Give yourself time to write, step away, and come back to it.

2. Build Your Story Now

• Work on one or two meaningful AWS projects that solve real problems.
• Document them publicly through blogs, GitHub repos, or LinkedIn posts so reviewers can see a trajectory, not just a snapshot.

3. Sharpen the Application

• Write in your own voice, not generic or AI-generated boilerplate.
• Show specific impact: what you have already done and what you plan to do after re:Invent.
• Stay aligned with the ABW mission of removing barriers, elevating diverse voices, and growing as a builder.

4. Prepare Logistics Early

• Check visa wait times for your country.
• This is especially important for South Asian applicants, since appointment slots can book months in advance.

Conclusion

The AWS All Builders Welcome Grant turned something that felt out of reach into one of the most formative weeks of my early career. Standing in front of that Las Vegas sign, walking the expo floor, sitting in the keynote hall, and meeting builders from all over the world: none of that would have happened without ABW.

If you are an early-career cloud engineer anywhere in the world, especially from a region where opportunities like this feel out of reach, I want you to know that this is possible for you too. Apply. Tell your real story. Show your work. AWS built this grant exactly so that geography and budget do not decide who gets a seat at the table.

I will be sharing more detailed session notes and technical takeaways from re:Invent 2025 in upcoming posts.

Stay tuned for more. Let’s connect on LinkedIn and explore my GitHub for future insights.

• AWS re:Invent
• ABW Grant
• AWS
• DevOps
• Career
• Cloud Computing