Episode description

Andrew Shieh shares the thrilling story of SmugMug’s bold leap into AWS’s cloud technology, marking it as one of the pioneering companies to harness the cloud for digital photography storage. This episode offers a unique perspective into the type of strategy and groundbreaking tech advancements that catapulted SmugMug’s success. Listen to the full episode for a masterclass in innovation and adaptation!

Show highlights: 

(00:00) Corey introduces the show & Guest Andrew Shieh

(00:54)Andrew shares the story of how SmugMug became AWS's first enterprise customer. 

(02:17) Discussion on the evolution of AWS's customer service

(04:31) Reflections on the expansion of AWS services. 

(06:08) The critical role of Amazon S3 in SmugMug's operations

(12:24) AWS's interest in unique customer stories and feedback 

(09:32) SmugMug's cloud strategy and optimization

(13:50) Andrew discusses challenges and solutions in cloud adoption

(17:38) Andrew shares his experiences at AWS re:Invent, offering thoughts on the conference's evolution

(21:09) A look into AWS's pricing formulas and business insights 

(31:55) Closing thoughts

About Andrew

Andrew "shandrew" Shieh is a multidisciplinary engineer, focused today on making the AWS cloud do what it promises to. Andrew started as an environmental engineer, focused on energy efficiency and air pollution modeling, but quickly got dragged into tech after spending most of college at the help desk of the Unix computer cluster.

Andrew's current interests include sustainability, cost efficiency, and economics. Most AWS service teams are his friends and he enjoys (a bit too much) talking to his SmugMug and Flickr coworkers about AWS. He recently spoke at AWS re:Invent about how his children (9 and 11) helped to teach him the value of trivia as a means of learning backwards. He also wrote a keynote for re:Invent's pandemic year, and has rescued billions of precious photos from extinction.

Links Referenced:

• SmugMug: https://www.smugmug.com/
• S3 Intelligent Tiering blog post on Duckbill Group: https://www.duckbillgroup.com/blog/s3-intelligent-tiering-what-it-takes-to-actually-break-even/
• Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@shandrew
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shandrew/
• Flickr: https://flickr.com/photos/shandrew
• Andrew's talk on "Learning Backwards" at re:Invent 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od09dD7mc6k