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Yogyakarta Students Win Big in AWS’ Jogja Cloud Innovation Day Competition
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n Feb. 14, Amazon Web Services (AWS) held a special event called Cloud Innovation Day at MAN 1 Yogyakarta school, which included an on cloud static webpage competition to celebrate the digital skills of the Indonesian youth community.
The main focus of this event was the AWS Laptop for Builders program, a free educational program that teaches cloud computing fundamentals and the basics of web static to Indonesian youth from diverse backgrounds. This program is one of AWS’ core enablement programs to upskill Indonesian learners.
Collaborating with local educational institutions, high schools, vocational schools (SMK), Madrasah (Islamic high schools) and special-needs schools (SLB) across Yogyakarta, AWS not only teaches students, they also train high school teachers and Laptop for Builders alumni about Internet of Things (IoT).
This program is a key driver in Indonesia’s digital development, which according to research by AlphaBeta is still severely lacking in comparison with neighboring countries. Only 19 percent of the workforce in Indonesia are properly digitally skilled, and to keep up with the world’s digital evolution the country needs to reach 110 million digital workers by 2025, making AWS’ programs an essential contributor to Indonesia’s growth.
The positive impact of this program can already be seen in the work created for the Cloud Innovation Day competition where an additional seven trainings took place concurrently. It is also worth noting that the event made inclusivity a primary focus, gathering students from all types of backgrounds to participate and learn.
“At AWS, we don’t want to see anyone left behind as the country digitally transforms. We hope that the cloud skills they learn through the Laptop for Builders program will embolden and equip them with the right skills to pursue higher education and /or rewarding careers in technology as well as non-technology sectors, which will require digital skills in today’s ever-changing world” said Andrew Sklar, Director of AWS Training and Certification for Asia Pacific and Japan, regarding the importance of inclusivity.
The first place winning team of the competition was from SLB N2 Bantul, a special-needs school from the greater region of Yogyakarta. The winning team, Ruang Cahaya N2Ba, consists of members Aurel Lintang Rizki Ardetya, Muhammad Ghifari Saefulloh Al Aziz and Winahyu Nisa Puspitanungrum, who designed a photography website meant to showcase the photographic work of their local community.
“At first, we were clueless about cloud computing and web design. We only learned about it through joining the AWS Laptop for Builders program. The whole process of designing the website took around three weeks, and it was such a fun and educational experience because we got to create a platform that showcases our favorite hobby, photography. We got to utilize our newly learned digital skills to channel our passion in a unique way,” Said Aurel Lintang, leader of the winning team from SLB N2 Bantul, when asked what the most valuable result from the program was.
He continued by adding “The whole experience was so much fun, and AWS was very accommodating and patient in teaching us, making sure that we gained the complete skill set necessary to create a proper portfolio that we can use to pursue a higher education or a career in the tech industry, something that I am now very interested in.”
Since 2019, AWS has made over 300 free digital training courses available in Indonesian, offered in varying levels of difficulty ranging from fundamentals to advanced, and has exceeded its goal of a few hundred thousand Indonesian learners trained by 2025 by reaching over 300,000 Indonesian individuals trained at the end of 2022.
When asked what AWS will do next to expand their operations, here is what Andrew Sklar remarked: “We currently have ongoing training in several provinces such as DKI Jakarta, West Java, Yogyakarta and Bali, with similar events and competitions underway. We still have a long way to go. We want and we will be expanding to other regions in Indonesia as well. Our research shows that in 2022, 98 percent of the Indonesian workforce believes that they need to improve their digital skills in order to stay ahead of the curve, and with this in mind we believe we need to continue collaborating with both the private industry and the government to help close the digital skills gap here.”
As the world becomes increasingly digitized, the need for people with the right skills to take on cloud computing and other technical roles continues to grow, and the cloud computing industry will continue to be a steady source of new jobs for many years to come. Over the next decade, we expect the adoption of cloud computing across every industry will fuel a vast number of new jobs. AWS wants to make it easy for anyone with a desire to learn about cloud computing to access our different ways of programs and tools to make that happen, whether they are totally new to the cloud computing industry or experienced professionals looking to advance their skills.
