RunAs Radio

Nik Charlebois-Laprade, creator of Microsoft365DSC and leader of Microsoft 365 configuration-as-code work. He discusses fighting configuration drift with tenant snapshots and desired-state tooling. He explains managing many tenants, promoting changes from sandboxes, and the new Graph-based Unified Tenant Configuration preview. Conversation covers APIs, performance gains, supported workloads, and roadmap plans.

Darshna Shah, Chief AI Officer and former neuroscientist who builds ML at scale, talks sustainable AI. She covers how big model experiments strain power grids. She explores designing for efficiency, measuring consumption and lifecycle emissions. The conversation looks at evaluations, safety in retrieval systems, and innovations to shrink data center impact.

Bob Ward, principal architect on SQL Server and long-time author, walks through SQL Server 2025 and what comes next. He highlights built-in AI features like vector search and engine-hosted agents. He describes secure on-prem AI, renewed SSMS with Copilot, developer features such as JSON indexing and regex, Fabric integration, and the next-gen managed instance.

Suzi Edwards-Alexander, recruiter and coach who builds people-first hiring and psychologically safe teams. She explores shorter, job-relevant interview designs and realistic work samples. She discusses power imbalances in hiring and reframing CVs as forward-looking trailers. She promotes neurodiversity-friendly processes, targeted networking, and hiring for future fit and collaboration.

Steve Buchanan, a cloud engineering lead and startup advisor focused on Azure, AKS, and multi-cloud Kubernetes. He talks about moving an Apple-focused SaaS from AWS to Azure and why Kubernetes and infrastructure-as-code matter. He covers choosing cloud-agnostic tooling, telemetry and identity parity, networking and tenancy tradeoffs, and practical ways to apply AI to platform engineering.

Erica Burgess, an AI cybersecurity architect and former red team software engineer known for bug bounties and conference talks. She explores how LLMs spark unconventional exploit ideas and speed up coding and research. They discuss multi-agent orchestration, how AI lowers the bar for attackers, and implications for defenses and ethical prompting.

Ron Arestia, a senior security researcher specializing in ADCS and PKI at Microsoft DART. He discusses how neglected ADCS setups enable lateral attacks. He explains PKI tiers, offline root importance, revocation and CRL practices. He compares running enterprise PKI versus cloud options and outlines common misconfigurations attackers exploit.

Erica Toelle, senior product manager on Microsoft’s data and AI security team with 20+ years in information governance. She explains Purview as a unified toolkit for tagging and protecting sensitive data. Short, practical guidance on bootstrapping M365 Copilot readiness. Tips on scans, labeling, DLP, DSPM, and spotting shadow AI are highlighted.

Ian Cooper, polyglot coding architect from London and founder of LDNug, describes how he turns paper workflows into repeatable, source-controlled automations. He talks about messaging with Kafka, orchestration tools like Temporal and GitHub Actions, telemetry for debugging, and platform patterns that let teams self-serve while hiding multi-cloud complexity.

Amber Vandenberg, a multi-award-winning business leader and founder of The Pathways Group, shares her insights on transforming ideas into action. She discusses the importance of clear definitions of starting, finish, and deadlines to avoid project paralysis. Amber highlights the challenge of aligning organizational priorities and emphasizes the need for effective communication with stakeholders. By breaking down goals and celebrating small wins, she advocates for building momentum and fostering a culture of accountability to ensure successful implementations.