The week after AWS re:Invent builds on the excitement and energy of the event and is a good time to learn more and understand how the recent announcements can help you solve your challenges and unlock new opportunities. As usual, we have you covered with our top announcements of AWS re:Invent 2025 that you can learn all about here.

For me, one moment stood out above all the technical announcements: watching Rafi (Raphael Francis Quisumbing) from the Philippines receive the Now Go Build Award from Werner Vogels. Rafi has been an AWS Hero since 2015 and co-lead of AWS User Group Philippines since 2013. His dedication to building communities and empowering developers across the region embodies what this award represents. You can read more about Rafi on The Kernel. Congrats, Rafi!

The keynote recap: Agents, renaissance, and the developer’s role
This year’s AWS re:Invent keynotes painted a clear picture of where we’re headed.

Matt Garman emphasized that developers are “the heart of AWS” and that “freedom to invent” remains AWS’s core mission after 20 years. He focused on AI agents as the next inflection point: “AI assistants are starting to give way to AI agents that can perform tasks and automate on your behalf. This is where we’re starting to see material business returns from your AI investments.”

Swami Sivasubramanian highlighted the transformative moment we’re in: “For the first time in history, we can describe what we want to accomplish in natural language, and agents generate the plan. They write the code, call the necessary tools, and execute the complete solution.” AWS is building production-ready infrastructure that’s secure, reliable, and scalable—purpose-built for the non-deterministic nature of agents.

Peter DeSantis and Dave Brown reinforced that the core attributes AWS has obsessed over for 20 years—security, availability, performance, elasticity, cost, and agility—are more important than ever in the AI era. Dave Brown showcased Graviton and AWS’s custom silicon innovations that deliver these attributes at scale.

Werner Vogels delivered his final keynote after 14 years, introducing the concept of the “renaissance developer”—someone who is curious, thinks in systems, and communicates effectively. His message about AI and developer evolution resonated: “Will AI take my job? Maybe. Will AI make me obsolete? Absolutely not… if you evolve.” He emphasized that developers must be owners: “The work is yours, not that of the tools. You build it, you own it.”

You can also watch from keynotes, innovation talks to breakout sessions and more in the on-demand video page.

Innovations Talks

• Harnessing analytics for humans and AI (INV201)
• AI agents in action: Architecting the future of applications (INV202)
• The agent-enabled workplace: Transforming businesses with AI (INV203)
• Build and scale AI: from reliable agents to transformative systems (INV204)
• Reinventing software development with AI agents (INV205)
• Unlocking possibilities with AWS Compute (INV207)
• Databases made effortless so agents and developers can change the world (INV208)
• The next frontier: Building the agentic future of Financial Services (INV209)
• Infrastructure for the impossible: Turning public sector barriers into breakthroughs (INV210)
• Behind the curtain: How Amazon’s AI innovations are powered by AWS (INV211)
• Migrate, modernize, and move your business into the AI era (INV212)
• The power of cloud network innovation (INV213)
• Intelligent security: Protection at scale from development to production (INV214)
• AWS storage beyond data boundaries: Building the data foundation (INV215)

Breakout sessions — Topics	Breakout sessions — Segments
Analytics Application Integration Architecture Artificial Intelligence Business Applications Cloud Operations Compute Database Developer Tools End-User Computing Hybrid Cloud & Multi Cloud Industry Solutions Migration & Modernization Networking & Content Delivery Open Source Security & Identity Serverless & Containers Storage	Developer Community Digital Native Business Enterprise Independent Software Vendor New to AWS Partner Enablement Public Sector Senior Leaders Small & Medium Business Startup

Last week’s launches
Here are the launches that caught my attention not yet covered in our top announcements of AWS re:Invent 2025 post:

• Kiro Autonomous Agent – Building on Kiro’s general availability in November with team features, AWS introduced an autonomous agent that maintains awareness across sessions, learns from pull requests and feedback, and handles bug triage and code coverage improvements spanning multiple repositories. “Orders of magnitude more efficient” than first-generation AI coding tools, Matt Garman said. Kiro is now Amazon’s standard AI development environment company-wide.
• Multimodal Retrieval for Bedrock Knowledge Bases (GA) – Build AI-powered search and question-answering applications that work across text, images, audio, and video files. Developers can now ingest multimodal content with full control of parsing, chunking, embedding, and vector storage options, then send text or image queries to retrieve relevant segments across all media types.
• AWS Interconnect – Multicloud (Preview) – Quickly establish private, secure, high-speed network connections with dedicated bandwidth and built-in resiliency between Amazon VPCs and other cloud environments. Starting in preview with Google Cloud as the first launch partner, with Microsoft Azure support coming in 2026.

See AWS What’s New for more launch news that I haven’t covered here. That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

Happy building!

— Donnie

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

I heard from quite a few people who were excited about the Web Component Engineering course but missed the Thanksgiving sale window. So, as we wrap up the year and head into a new one, I’m running one more sale as a bit of year-end / new-year “good tidings.”

From now through the first week of the new year, you can get 25% off my Web Component Engineering course when you use the discount code GOODTIDINGS25 at checkout.

About the Course

Web Component Engineering is a self-paced, in-depth course on modern UI engineering through the lens of Web Components and core Web Standards. It’s designed to help you move beyond framework-only knowledge and really understand the Web Platform you’re building on.

You’ll get a deep dive into topics like:

• Using and authoring Web Components in real applications
• Working directly with DOM APIs instead of only through frameworks and abstractions
• Modern CSS for robust, scalable UI systems (including Shadow DOM styling, container queries, and more)
• Accessibility as a first-class concern in component design
• Form-associated custom elements and integrating components with real forms
• Design systems, tokens, and component libraries built on Web Components
• Application architecture, routing, and app shells with Web Components
• Tools and libraries like Storybook, Playwright, Lit, FAST, and others you’ll use in production

The course is trusted by engineers at top companies and is designed to be the “missing manual” for serious UI engineers who want to master the modern Web Platform.

What You Get

When you enroll, you get access to:

• 13 modules with over 170 lessons, fully self-paced
• A custom interactive learning app that lets you follow along, run demos, and experiment in the browser with no setup
• Runnable examples, downloadable notes, and reference materials
• A Certificate of Completion you can share with your team or manager

Whether you’re building a design system, maintaining a complex front-end, or just want to understand what’s really possible with modern Web Standards, this is designed to meet you where you are and push you to the next level.

Sale Details

• Discount: 25% off
• Code: GOODTIDINGS25
• Valid through: The end of the first week of the new year
• Course: https://bluespire.com/course/web-component-engineering/

If you missed the Thanksgiving window, or you’ve been on the fence, this is another chance to invest in your skills and deepen your understanding of the Web Platform.

Thanks for being part of the Web community, and here’s to a great year of building better UIs with Web Standards.

A deep, objective comparison of design philosophy, performance, extensibility, and migration strategies for teams transitioning from Bootstrap Blazor or MudBlazor to Blazorise.

Matan Yungman is our special host for today, who came especially to talk about his special project called "Rapido", which is capable of automatically tuning SQL queries at scale.

Perhaps there is some inspiration in it for us?

Relevant links:

Download audio: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/madeirasqlserverradio/SQLServerRadio_Show182.mp3?dest-id=213904

Scott and CJ go live from JS Nation NYC to talk about how developers can actually stay current without drowning in the constant churn of new tools and trends. They break down how to see through the fluff, focus on why tech exists before adopting it, and build a healthier, curiosity-driven approach to learning in 2025 and beyond.

Show Notes

• 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
• 00:39 Scott delivering a non-technical talk at JS Nation.
• 03:24 Lamenting the frequency of change as developers.
• 03:46 Understanding why things exist before deciding to learn them.
• 05:11 Learning styles are a myth?
• 07:41 First dates and psychology exams.
• 10:39 Discovering is step one, playing is step two.
• 13:32 Learn with a project that you actually want.
• 18:16 Brought to you by Sentry.io.
• 18:34 Cutting through the noise of new tech.
• 21:40 Using AI as a learning tool
• 25:12 Sick Picks & Shameless Plugs.

Sick Picks

• Scott: dbrand Ghost Case 2.0
• CJ: analog watches

Hit us up on Socials!

Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads

Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads

Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads

Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads

Download audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/FSI7948226652.mp3

BONUS: Impact Engineering—Finding Agile's Lost North Star With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

The Clarity Problem: Why Organizations Start with "Fuzzy B*S*!"

"Everybody seems to start from a position of fuzzy b*s*. Nice-sounding words. Management does it, professors do it, politicians do it. And they don't even feel very guilty about it."

 

Tom Gilb doesn't mince words when describing how most organizations define their objectives. The fundamental problem isn't a lack of ambition—it's a lack of clarity. When leaders are asked about their critical values like "extremely high security" or "employee happiness," they typically respond with circular definitions that provide no actionable direction. Tom's approach starts by exposing this gap and then demonstrating that any value—no matter how "soft" or intangible it seems—can be quantified. Using AI tools, he's shown clients over 1,400 different ways to measure human happiness alone.

Why Agile Lost Its North Star

"Agile's lost its North Star because the economic problems it was trying to solve within the organization are now mismatched with the digital world."

 

Simon Holzapfel offers a structural analysis: Agile developed primarily to allay the concerns of pre-digital capital—investors who needed reassurance that their money wouldn't disappear into failed projects. But today's digital economy operates differently. Capital now moves like a service (SaaS model), and innovation is fundamentally stochastic—you can't predict when breakthroughs will happen. Organizations using flow-focused tools when the real problem is value creation are applying yesterday's solutions to today's challenges.

The First Step: Quantify Your Critical Values

"If you ask AI to quantify employee happiness a hundred different ways, it will do it in one minute for free. So you can no longer be in denial."

 

The path forward starts with brutal honesty about what your organization actually cares about. Tom's approach involves:

 

• Identifying the top 10 critical stakeholder values

• Defining clear scales of measure for each

• Establishing where you are now (status)

• Setting where you need to be to survive (tolerable level)

• Defining what success looks like (target/goal level)

 

This isn't about adding bureaucracy—it's about creating shared clarity that enables everyone to row in the same direction.

 

About Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

 

Tom Gilb, born in the US, lived in London, and then moved to Norway in 1958. An independent teacher, consultant, and writer, he has worked in software engineering, corporate top management, and large-scale systems engineering. As the saying goes, Tom was writing about Agile before Agile was named. In 1976, Tom introduced the term "evolutionary" in his book Software Metrics, advocating for development in small, measurable steps. Today, we talk about Evo, the name Tom uses to describe his approach. Tom has worked with Dr. Deming and holds a certificate personally signed by him.

You can listen to Tom Gilb's previous episodes here. 

 

You can link with Tom Gilb on LinkedIn 

 

Simon Holzapfel is an educator, coach, and learning innovator who helps teams work with greater clarity, speed, and purpose. He specializes in separating strategy from tactics, enabling short-cycle decision-making and higher-value workflows. Simon has spent his career coaching individuals and teams to achieve performance with deeper meaning and joy. Simon is also the author of the Equonomist newsletter on Substack.

And you can listen to Simon's previous episodes on the podcast here. 

 

You can link with Simon Holzapfel on LinkedIn.

Download audio: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/scrummastertoolbox/20251208_Simon_Tom_M.mp3?dest-id=246429