Betatalks the podcast

In this episode, we talk with Sander ten Brinke. He is a Lead Software Engineer at Arcady and Microsoft MVP for the Developer Technologies Category. He loves working with .NET, Azure, and DevOps and is passionate about HATEOAS. HATEOAS is an acronym for Hypermedia As The Engine Of Application State and Sander will explain what it does and how it works. We also discuss how he started with HATEOAS and how it helps evolve server functionalities. Sander works on a lot of different development platforms like web and cloud, but also mobile and game development. We also look back on him becoming an MVP in December 2022. He loves to share knowledge via speaking, meetups, and blogging. About this episode, and Sander ten Brinke in particular:  you can find Sander on Twitter at @sandertenbrinke & GitHub. Visit his website and read all his interesting blogs. Here you can also find the links to the library of Risk First.HATEOAS, the Arcady IT GitHub repository. About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we talk with Bram de Buyser, he is a freelance technical architect and developer, primarily in data engineering and scalable platforms. Bram talks about his adventures building Drabble.social, how do you start a Twitter alternative? We talk about the key features of Drabble and concepts like how to design a timeline for the user. Bram explains how Azure PaaS services are helping him to build a seriously scalable architecture on a starter budget and how not having to invest upfront keeps options open to redesign when needed. We also talk about the influence of AI and Large Language Models and where Bram expects this to be most useful for a social network.About this episode, and Bram de Buyser in particular:  you can find Bram on Twitter at @chton & GitHub. Visit his website and also take a look at his drabble.social which is now in public preview.About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we talk with Erwin Staal. As an Azure Architect and DevOps consultant he loves helping companies deliver their software to customers using DevOps practices and cloud-native architectures. He believes in the power of both the monolith and microservices and prefers to run his workload on the Azure cloud and/or Kubernetes. We talk about Azure Landing Zones; what they are, why you want them, and the cloud adaption framework. An Azure Landing Zone is the output of a multi-subscription Azure environment that accounts for scale, security governance, networking, and identity. It enables application migration, modernization, and innovation at enterprise scale in Azure. Erwin has been involved in building and reviewing various Azure Landing Zones over the last couple of years. And he sees them as one of the pillars underneath a proper cloud adoption. Microsoft makes a distinction between two types of Landing Zones, which we will dive into. It’s a whole architecture, a structure of subscriptions, that allows you to host your workloads in a scalable, manageable way. We discuss the pros and cons of Azure Landing zones and how to get the proper permissions. We also dive into Infrastructure as code, which he wrote a book about. The book focuses on how to deliver your resources on Azure using infrastructure as code and then specifically Bicep. Erwin is in the process of writing an article and creating a new session on ‘Infrastructure as Code on Azure: Bicep vs. Pulumi vs. Terraform’. He found that a lot of people were asking which tool he prefers and when to use which, so he thought ‘why not’ write that down? Next to all this, we talk about which book changed his life and his participation in the Marathon of Rotterdam.About this episode, and Erwin Staal in particular:  you can find Erwin on Twitter at @erwin_staal & GitHub. And, visit his website and read all his interesting blogs. You can also find his book here.About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

In this episode, we talk with Daniel Paulus. He is a serial conference organizer and meetup runner, a principal consultant at Bryte Blue, a Microsoft Azure focused consultancy company, and a Microsoft Azure MVP. He is helping companies succeed with Cloud Native technologies and DevOps practices. We talk about Bryte Blue, what it is, and what he does there. We dive into his love for Containers and where his interest in containers came from. He once started as an engineer at a firm using mainly Apple. After that, he worked at a consultancy where he worked with Red Hat and Open Source Linux. Here he came in contact with virtualization and sandboxed applications, in the pre-container time. After that, Docker came around and he saw the landscape shift. He also saw Microsoft investing in Open Source and moving to embracing Linux and containers. From the beginning, he was on top of the Container technology. We talk about his thoughts on the adoption of AKS by consumers and Windows Containers. He also tells his story about his burnout and what he did to overcome it. The advice he got was to go out into nature and be active. That is what helped him. And, he still makes sure that he is walking outside every morning and evening. Being surrounded by technology is good, but always take good care of yourself and go out. About this episode, and Daniel Paulus in particular:  you can find Daniel on Twitter at @PaulusTM & GitHub. And, visit his website and read all his interesting blogs. Or, visit his meetups Go Azure and AKS MeetupAbout Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel 

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