Powering education, state, and local leaders: Insights from the AWS IMAGINE keynote

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From July 23–24 in Austin, Texas, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) IMAGINE conference for education, state, and local leaders brought together hundreds of technologists, innovators, and learners to discover how technology, paired with human ingenuity, can change the world.

The no-cost conference featured some of the nation’s top thought leaders in education and state and local government. Attendees learned how cloud technology, particularly generative artificial intelligence (AI), is helping organizations modernize and deliver excellence for their communities.

photo shows the audience's vantage point of Kim Majerus on stage during the AWS IMAGINE conference keynote

Kim Majerus delivers the keynote at the AWS Imagine conference in Austin, Texas on July 23.

Kim Majerus, vice president of global education and US state and local government for worldwide public sector at AWS, led the keynote address. Majerus shared how AWS customers are innovating for their communities with the cloud and announced new public sector initiatives from AWS. Jamie Butler, director of solution architecture for education and state and local government at AWS, joined Majerus on stage to demonstrate the art of the possible with generative AI. Butler demonstrated how the industry can use Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet model on Amazon Bedrock to save time, make better decisions, and improve outcomes for students, citizens, and others. Two special customer guests also joined Majerus on stage to share how a culture of innovation is transforming the student and citizen experience at their organizations.

In this post, we share some of the highlights from the AWS IMAGINE conference keynote.

Announcements

Texas welcomes the AWS Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance

One year after the launch of the AWS Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance, AWS is expanding the program to include Houston and Dallas among its priority regions in the US. The Tech Alliance is a coalition of Fortune 500 companies, employers, government agencies, workforce development organizations, and education leaders, working together to help better prepare learners for much-needed careers in cloud support, software development, data analysis, and more. The Tech Alliance helps community colleges and universities align their curricula to in-demand jobs and integrate industry expertise and opportunities for hands-on support from tech professionals. Learn more about the Texas Tech Alliance.

AWS Champions program expands to EdTechs and GovTechs

The AWS Champions program recognizes influential institutions, agencies, programs, departments, and individuals who innovate for students and citizens around the world. The program has expanded to include education technology (EdTech) and government technology (GovTech) companies. During the keynote, Majerus announced the winners for this year’s cohort of EdTech/GovTech, education, and state and local government champions. Learn more about the 2024 AWS Champions.

Special guests

Heather Lyke: Transforming college athletics recruitment with generative AI

As the director of athletics at the University of Pittsburgh, Heather Lyke knows how important data is for the sports industry. Yet when she arrived at Pitt in 2017, the university’s data trove was largely underutilized. Lyke knew that building data infrastructure was the key to building competitive advantage. Under her leadership, the university formalized a data team in 2020 and integrated the athletics program’s data with the centralized Pitt IT team.

This foundation helped Lyke’s team completely transform the student-athlete recruitment process. Every year, more than 4,000 student-athletes enter Pitt’s “Transfer Portal” and must be evaluated in a matter of days. Last year, instead of spending limited resources on additional recruiting staff, Lyke’s team decided to try something new: generative AI. Working with AWS, Pitt built a generative AI-powered solution to evaluate thousands of student-athletes. The solution created a simple way for coaches to sift through mountains of data with a click of a button, allowing them to filter for specific requirements—like finding a left-handed quarterback who is also 6’4.” The same process would have required five staff members about 15 weeks to accomplish.

As college athletics undergo many unprecedented changes, Lyke told attendees she is confident that the university’s evolving data journey has strongly positioned Pitt for long-term success.

Amanda Crawford: Building an AI relationship across the Lone Star State

Amanda Crawford is the executive director of the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) and serves as the chief information officer (CIO) for the State of Texas. Crawford shared how DIR is working carefully to develop Texas’s relationship with generative AI across the state.

As one example, she shared how the Texas Department of Public Safety is working with AWS and an AWS Partner to create a predictive maintenance schedule for their fleet of officer cars. This solution aims to provide real-time maintenance alerts—that don’t rely on manual data-entry—to better support officer safety. Texas has also created an AI Advisory Council (of which Crawford is a member) to study how state agencies use AI. Crawford explained how state officials are being thoughtful and deliberate in nurturing a state-wide relationship with generative AI to make sure solutions center Texans’ livelihoods, privacy interests, and values.

Texas’ approach—offering education workshops, trainings, and innovation labs; connecting state agencies with reliable AI subject matter experts; and studying the human experience at the end of every AI solution—can serve as a model to other states wondering how they can bring AI to their state agencies in a responsible way.

Learn more

While the AWS IMAGINE conference for education, state, and local leaders may be over, there are more ways that organizations can nurture their generative AI and cloud journeys. The two-year AWS Public Sector Generative AI Impact Initiative, which provides up to $50 million in AWS Promotional Credits, training, and technical expertise to help public sector organizations accelerate innovation with AI, is now accepting interested applications. The Impact Initiative is open to new or existing AWS public sector customers and partners that are building generative AI solutions to help address society’s most pressing challenges.

If you want to follow up with an AWS Public Sector representative directly about how you and your organization can start or elevate your cloud journey, contact the AWS Public Sector team.

Learn more about how AWS supports more than 14,000 education institutions at the AWS for Education Hub. Discover how more than 7,500 state and local governments around the world are using AWS to provide for citizens at the AWS for State and Local hub.

AWS Public Sector Blog