Orlando Developers Meetup

We're joining forces with the Orlando AWS User Group to bring you two amazing talks on cloud and serverless topics at the Zymarium Meadery. Join us to network, learn, have some food and enjoy some drinks.

Sessions:

GraphQL 101 by Joanne Skiles
Tired of over-fetching or under-fetching data with REST APIs? In this beginner-friendly session, we’ll dive into the basics of GraphQL — what it is, why it’s different from REST, and how it can make working with APIs more flexible and efficient. You’ll learn how to write your first queries, understand schemas and resolvers, and see how GraphQL fits into modern app development.

About Joanne
Joanne Skiles is a Director of Engineering at Rad AI and AWS Community Builder with over 15 years of experience as a full-stack software engineer. She leads teams building scalable, cloud-native applications and is passionate about making tech accessible — especially for women and underrepresented groups. As a mom of two and organizer of all-girl coding camps, she brings a unique perspective to balancing innovation, leadership, and real life.

Build Modern Applications Using AWS AppSync by Kathy Huffstetler
In this session, we’ll explore AWS AppSync, Amazon’s fully managed service for building scalable, secure GraphQL and Pub/Sub APIs. Perfect for developers new to GraphQL or looking to modernize their API strategy, this talk introduces the key concepts of AppSync—schemas, resolvers, and data sources—while highlighting real-world use cases like real-time apps and event-driven workflows. You’ll learn how AppSync helps front-end teams move faster and back-end teams simplify operations, all within a serverless, scalable framework.

About Kathy
Kathy is a Sr Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services and is based in Orlando. She has been in IT for 25 years and provides guidance on architectural solutions with best practices in the cloud. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her family and being outdoors.