Johnathon Meichtry, Principal Solutions Architect for Amazon – Photo credit HB Today
EIT’s Hawke’s Bay campus was buzzing when the earth’s most customer-centric company came to visit.
Johnathon Meichtry, Principal Solutions Architect for Amazon’s AWS business, wowed students, business owners and managers, and EIT faculty during 48 hours of keynotes, deep dives, careers and skills sessions.
Lauded as a “huge success” by organiser Dr Thomas Hartley, EIT School of Computing Senior Lecturer, plans are already afoot to host another visit. And others from the likes of Microsoft Azure cloud computing are being mooted.
Topics covered at the lectures, hands on lab sessions, and a business round table included Amazon’s innovation culture, AI and machine learning, big data and modern data architectures, and security in the cloud. Johnathon also spent time sharing insights into Amazon’s hiring approach for students nearing the end of their Bachelor studies.
Meichtry led a two-hour, hands-on lab session with 24 computing students and five invited EIT High School Trades Academy students from Flaxmere, Napier Boys’, and Rudolf Steiner secondary schools.
With over 25 years’ technology industry experience across more than 40 countries, Meichtry joined Amazon Web Services in Singapore in 2014. There he worked with customers across Asia Pacific to design and deploy cloud solutions to solve business challenges, increase agility and drive innovation. Since 2016, he has been based in Wellington working closely with New Zealand customers.
“We try to inspire our students to push the envelope and strive for excellence,” says Hartley. “For them, to be able to see how innovation is essential to growth at Amazon was huge. Johnathon’s presentations reinforced that a culture of innovation isn’t an abstract theory, it’s a living, breathing process that drives success.”
The business roundtable discussion, hosted by EIT’s School of Computing’s Local Advisory Committee, focused on how local organisations could leverage ‘The Cloud’ to become better positioned in the national and global marketplace.
More of the Hawke’s Bay business community were able to benefit from Meichtry’s experience when he spoke at a Hawke’s Bay Chamber of Commerce event at the Hawke’s Bay Business Hub.
“It was an amazing 48 hours packed with incredible information and opportunities,” says Hartley. “Two of the key points that stood out for me – that every one of Amazon’s 535,000 employees are encouraged, if not expected, to have ideas, and 91 percent of new ideas and innovations come from customer feedback. For our students to hear those points and start to meld that mentality while at EIT will hopefully give them an edge as they move into their careers.”