Betatalks the podcast

In this episode, we talk with Joe Carlyle, a Microsoft MVP and head of Azure at eir evo in Dublin. He has a passion for creating Azure content, from blogs and new feature commentaries to deployment guides and troubleshooting help. We discuss the key role of communication for developers, especially in roles that need to bring customers and tech together. The simplification of deep technical knowledge, explaining a complex solution in a way that will get business case buy-in, is essential. Your ability to communicate nearly outweighs your technical capabilities, because it doesn't matter how good you are in terms of implementation or design, if you can't explain yourself, it doesn’t help anyone. And we dive into the fact that sharing your knowledge, at conferences or online, helps you simplify deep technical knowledge. Because you show extra diligence about putting all the right details there to help someone, and yourself. Furthermore, we talk about GitHub Copilot and especially ChatGPT, how it’s being used (and tricked), its use cases, its limits, and how it's able to take multiple queries, put them together, and give you an answer that can be quite comprehensive and beneficial. Is it inspiring and an advancement, or does it threaten your ability to retain information because you lose the experience of writing code? We conclude with a discussion about Azure PaaS, networking, VMS and serverless. He really likes Azure networking, because everyone is involved in one way or another. And how it is impossible to be an expert in all areas; jack of all trades, master of none. About this episode, and Joe Carlyle in particular:  you can find Joe @wedoAzure and read his blogs here on wedoazure.ie.About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we talk to Stephan van Rooij, an MVP in security, who writes stuff on Azure AD application security, mainly focused on multi-tenant applications. He founded Roostersync, the most popular product for synchronizing millions of items from different school timetable applications with Microsoft 365 calendars on a weekly basis. He likes to tinker with home automation devices and created several open source projects on this topic. We discuss sonos2mqtt, his most successful project with over 235,000 pulls from Docker Hub, and how you can use this in your home automation. We dive into the security side of home automation and the precautions he takes, such as splitting up his home network and monitoring DNS traffic to block tracking. This led to his discovery that his “smart” oven was sending requests to three domains every five minutes, namely; google.com, yandex.ru, and baidu.cn. Apparently, the manufacturer uses global infrastructure to test internet connectivity. Strange, to say the least. We continue with Stephan’s reasons for always using local control for his home automation devices. And his enthusiasm for Home Assistant, an open source home automation and privacy-oriented platform, which he runs on his Raspberry Pi. Furthermore, we discuss using Microsoft Teams’ local API too, for example, show your availability status via a light at your home office door, or even turn off your camera when someone opens your door. We conclude with a discussion about security, using Key Vault in a multi-tenant application, Azure Active Directory, SSO (Single Sign-On), and going passwordless. About this episode, and Stephan van Rooij in particular:  you can find Stephan on Twitter @svrooij & GitHub. You can read all his blogs on his website you can also find his blog there about, protection against certificate extraction. And, visit the website of FIRST the Tech Challenge. About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we talk to Jonah Andersson. She is a Filipina, Swedish full stack .NET software engineer, a Microsoft Azure MVP and certified trainer, the founder of Azure User Group Sweden, and an advocate for gender equality in the tech industry. We dive into minimal web API’s in .NET, what they actually do, the benefits of using them and some use cases. For example, when combining them with Azure API Management. And the difference from a full blown MVC project. We discuss how she became a public speaker, got involved with the Extend Women in Tech Podcast and even became the co-host. And what it is like to be a mentor, a role model, and how she became one. We talk about the fast-paced (digital) world, being present in the moment, and taking time for yourself. Jonah loves taking time to write and even wrote the book "Learning Microsoft Azure". She explains why she wrote it, who should read it, and how the writing process went. How she learned to write neutrally, which is not as easy as you might think, and how this also applies to public speaking.About this episode, and Jonah Andersson in particular:  you can find Jonah on Twitter at @cjkodare & GitHub. You can read all her interesting blogs on her website. Find out more about the book Learning Microsoft Azure. And, listen to her in the Extend Women in Tech podcast.About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we talk to Morten Christensen. He works at Umbraco HQ where he helps build Umbraco Cloud and the Headless cloud offering. Morten is also an Azure MVP, Azure Lover, and community addict. First, of course, we dive into Umbraco, an open source content management system based in .NET. We talk about the headless offering and the benefits for both Umbraco and its users. And we discuss a big project at Umbraco in recent years: Morten and his team needed to modernize their cloud platform. From running on virtual machines to a platform as a service. They had to rebuild everything from scratch on Azure App Service in gradually transition customers to the new platform. And in part, the goal was also to modernize their own service infrastructure, updating all their own services to the latest .NET Core and Linux-based containers. And Morten talks about the considerations and choices they made regarding infrastructure as code, for example, choosing between ARM or Terraform. Another thing we talk about is the fact that Morten does a lot for the tech community, organizing user group meetups and conferences. Furthermore, we dive a bit deeper into his love for Azure. We discuss the Azure ecosystem, the service he is most impressed with, Azure Service Bus, and the fact that Azure has become so big that it is (almost) impossible to know everything about Azure. And finally, how does Umbraco monitor their platform and respond to scaling issues or outages? Morten explains how his team uses Application Insights and what they do with the insights. And how they use the practices from Team Topologies, his favorite book, to structure their development teams.  About this episode, and Morten Christensen in particular:  you can find Morten on Twitter at @sitereactor & GitHub. You can read all his interesting blogs on his website. Find out more about the book Team Topologies here.  And, watch his talk from Cloudburst about the challenges they have been through via YouTube. About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we talk to Eduard Keilholz. He is a Cloud Solution Architect and a Microsoft Azure MVP, who focuses mainly on C# and Azure, and has a strong affinity for Angular. We talk about how to become a Microsoft MVP and the importance of intrinsic motivation to share knowledge. We discuss how people are afraid to fail, but you should never fear failure; whatever knowledge you share there is always someone for whom it is valuable. Next, we talk about a demo and polling app he uses in his talks, and how he created it using microservices and Azure Container Apps. Container Apps is a new service that sits in the middle between Container Instances on one hand and Azure Kubernetes Service on the other. Eduard explains why he believes that this service is really amazing. And we dive more into KEDA, Kubernetes, and Event-Driven Autoscaling. Furthermore, we discuss Infrastructure as Code. A topic Eduard has even written a book on. He believes that if you say you are doing DevOps but not Infrastructure as Code, you are not truly doing DevOps. We talk about the many options you have to do Infrastructure as Code. In his book, he focuses on everything concerning ARM, Azure Resource Manager, and its features, usage, and benefits. And we conclude with some advice about Bicep.About this episode, and Eduard Keilholz in particular:  you can find @ed_dotnet on Twitter & GitHub. Check out his blogs on his website. And, you can find his book: Infrastructure as code here on GitHub or order the book here.About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we talk to Femke Cornelissen, a Technical Evangelist at Wortell and co-founder and Community Manager of Dutch Women in Tech. Femke is the host of Microsoft talks on Twitter Spaces, where they discuss Microsoft solutions, and a Microsoft 365 blogger with only Dutch content. We talk about her role as Technical Evangelist, where she spreads the word about Microsoft Modern Workplace; its solutions, what’s new and everything about it. For example, Microsoft Viva, which is a productivity tool for a better employer and employee experience. We dive into the features and benefits of Viva. We talk about the Dutch Women in Tech initiative, which aims to get more women involved and interested in IT, and how they try to do that. She also explains that she hosts talks on Twitter Spaces to share knowledge, talk to different people with different perspectives, and enable discussions on specific topics. Last but not least, we talk about Microsoft Ignite and the announcements there about Microsoft 365. In particular, about Microsoft Loop and Teams Premium. About this episode, and Femke Cornelissen in particular:  you can find @Femkedebruin on Twitter & GitHub. Check out her website and read the blogs. Here you can find her community 'Dutch women in tech'. And, listen en join 'Cloud Conversations' on Twitter. About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we talk with two very special guests, Rick & Oscar themselves. We look back on a very exciting podcast year for us. And we dive into our favorite podcast moments. Rick & Oscar also share what they think were the most memorable tech developments this year. Furthermore, Rick makes a new year announcement you would not want to miss, they take a look into the future and discuss what they think is coming next year in tech. In short, this is an episode you do not want to miss!We want to thank all our guests for an amazing year, and we hope to see you in 2023. We wish you a happy new year!About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel

In this episode, we talk to Maria-Anastasia Moustaka, a software engineer and robotics trainer and mentor. She is a Gold Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador, Microsoft IoT MVP and has won many international robotics competitions with her robotics club ULP. We dive into what her first steps were with IoT and robotics, which started when she saw that her university had a robotics team. She bought her own robotics kit, practiced building robotics for a year, and gained knowledge about Arduino before joining the team. And we talk about robotics competitions, their requirements, and challenges. She explains that the languages she used in these competitions were mostly C++ and Java, but now she prefers .NET. Furthermore, we talk about her being a Gold Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador, a community for students who want to learn all about Microsoft technologies. She gives presentations and she does Twitch live streams in which she tries to inspire and motivate students to learn more about tech, development, and robotics. As a robotics teacher, she loves to help kids and also women and girls to do more in this tech (robotics) field.About this episode, and Maria-Anastasia in particular: you can find @mariamou_7 on Twitter & GitHub. Check out her 'All about Azure IoT' presentation she gave as a Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador. And, visit her website where you can read her blogs about IoT.About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel

In this episode, we talk to Debbie O'Brien, a senior program manager at Microsoft. Where she is in charge of advocating Playwright End-to-End Testing. Debbie has over 10 years of experience in front-end development. We dive straight into why Playwright is becoming increasingly popular. A lot of developers don’t like to write tests; they think it’s boring, takes too much time, or is hard to learn. Debbie explains that one of Playwright’s features is codegen, which generates the tests for you and helps you write better code. What problems do Playwright and codegen solve? And what’s coming in the near future? Moreover, we elaborate on what Playwright exactly is; its best features and benefits, what it does differently, and how easily it integrates. For example, it works in VS Code, you literally only have to press the green triangle to run it. Ultimately, the goal is to make testing a lot easier for people so that we have more people testing. We discuss how the testing world is shifting and how Debbie thinks that we’re moving more towards an end-to-end world rather than unit testing. Because your code changes. You're constantly modifying it. And what this means for the testing community and a company’s testing culture. Furthermore, we talk about the work Debbie’s team has done, and is doing to further advance Playwright. So, if you haven’t tried Playwright yet, give it a try, you won't regret it. About this episode, and Debbie O'Brien in particular: you can find @debs_obrien on Twitter & GitHub. And, don't forget to check out her website where you can find all her blogs and videos with all her courses. About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel

In this episode, we talk to Rik Hepworth. As Microsoft Azure MVP, member of the Microsoft Regional Director program, and Chief Consulting Officer at Black Marble, he helps organizations make better use of the cloud. We talk about his role at Black Marble and how it is a development shop at heart; helping customers reach a higher level of maturity in terms of Application Lifecycle Management or DevOps, and helping them with app modernization, cloud adoption and migration. And we dive into the entire process of getting an on-premises solution ready for migration to the cloud in small baby steps. Talking about the reasons their customers need to move to the cloud, the difficulties and challenges they face with migration projects, and how to deal with them; he has broken this down into five stages of app migration. Subsequent, he explains that organizations need to be aware of two great things: business value and risk. And business value has got to be the principal driver for pushing you to the cloud, but in doing so, you need to minimize risk. That might mean foregoing a full cloud migration, opting for a hybrid solution and experimenting with an agile model of migration. Because a big plus of cloud computing is experimentation, trying out cloud services and solutions, just to switch it off if it doesn’t work. Which is more difficult with hardware. And as Rik explains, most businesses don’t realize how big of a deal this is; they need to start their migration project years before they decommission their database (licenses) and hardware. You need to look forward, because businesses and IT are evolving rapidly, especially in the last 10 years. Thus, are you ready for cloud migration?About this episode, and Rik Hepworth in particular: you can find @rikhepworth on Twitter and GitHub. Check out his website and read his blogs. About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel