Leadership: driving AI adoption and training

🚀 In this episode of Beginner’s Guide to AI, Dietmar Fischer speaks with Naga Santhosh Reddy Vootukuri (aka Sunny), a Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft working on Azure SQL deployment infrastructure. Sunny shares his personal journey into AI, from early ChatGPT experiments in late 2022 to using AI tools in production workflows, and what actually changed his day to day work.

💡 You’ll hear how he thinks about GitHub Copilot inside Visual Studio, where it saves time, and where engineers still need to slow down and verify outputs. The episode also goes beyond coding into leadership and adoption: how managers can help teams use AI responsibly, and why showing outcomes and numbers matters more than hype. Sunny also connects the dots to the broader industry shift toward AI agents and structured tooling like GitHub Models and Docker’s evolving AI ecosystem.

✅ Key takeaways you can use immediately

• Practical AI adoption for engineers and managers
• GitHub Copilot productivity in real workflows, not demos
• Why AI code can look correct and still be wrong, and how to respond
• The rise of AI agents and what it means for everyday teams
• How GitHub Models lowers friction for evaluating models and prompts
• Why Docker is leaning into agent workflows and developer productivity

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About Dietmar Fischer:

Dietmar is a podcaster and AI marketer from Berlin. If you want to know how to get your AI or your digital marketing going, just contact him at argoberlin.com

🎬 Chapters

00:00 Welcome and Sunny’s background at Microsoft and Azure SQL deployment

00:53 What pulled him into AI from ChatGPT experiments to real workflows

07:50 AI tools and jobs, building websites faster and empowering non devs

10:56 GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio, how it changes daily coding

19:40 The AI adoption gap, why many still do not use AI and the rise of agents

38:45 Docker Captain, GitHub Models, and building agent workflows without heavy setup

42:22 Trust, privacy, and the future facing questions to close the episode

💬 Quotes from the Episode

1. “I recently wrote an article also on Business Insider… how I can save, like, 60% to 70% of my time doing… repetitive tasks.”
2. “Lead by example and lead with numbers… show the actual data… this is how it really improved my productivity.”
3. “Earlier, AI also doing a lot of hallucination… it was generating all crappy code… you have to go and iterate multiple times.”

🔎 Where to find the Guest

• Docker profile: docker.com/contributors/naga-santhosh-reddy-vootukuri/
• GitHub: github.com/sunnynagavo
• Speaker profile: sessionize.com/naga-santhosh-reddy-vootukuri/
• Redgate community ambassador profile: red-gate.com/hub/community/ambassadors/ambassador/Naga-Vootukuri/
• And of course LinkedIn 😉: linkedin.com/in/naga-santhosh-reddy-vootukuri-5a67a133/

Music credit: "Modern Situations" by Unicorn Heads

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