AI DevOps Podcast

James World, a Microsoft‑certified Azure architect and seasoned .NET polyglot, talks about practical generative AI adoption and cloud‑native platform work. He covers which AI capabilities are ready today. He explains spec‑driven coding, combining probabilistic models with deterministic tooling, repo and tooling prep, and strategies for testing, context management, and AI‑first project setups.

Daniel Ward, a Microsoft .NET MVP and consultant focused on CI/CD, testing, AI adoption, and product management. He explains AI agents as LLM-driven actors that take actions, shows practical patterns for verify-and-iterate workflows, contrasts Copilot SDK orchestration with inline prompts, and explores agent use cases like PR analyzers, log-driven fixes, and personal research agents.

Richard Lander, Principal Program Manager on the .NET team at Microsoft with decades shaping runtime and tooling. He traces .NET’s evolution to native AOT and explores inspect-style tooling inspired by Docker/kubectl. He unveils .NET Inspect, its markdown-first outputs, API diffing, LLM-friendly formats, SourceLink-driven source retrieval, and how CLI-first, pipeable tools enable AI-enabled developer workflows.

Savino Carlone, a 25-year backend developer and educator from Turin who leads the web-based ERP Fattuto and co-leads Torino .NET, discusses ERP fundamentals and modeling company processes. He talks about architecting one product for many companies. He covers testing strategies, UX shifts toward mobile, and using retrieval-augmented generation to let AI surface and act on ERP data.

Paul Duvall, award-winning author and longtime DevOps leader who helped pioneer continuous integration. He talks about how AI reshapes engineering practices and the need for solid CI habits. He outlines spec-driven workflows, evolving code review with AI, and tools for generating implementations from specs. He also covers observability, cost expectations for AI tooling, and how teams and careers adapt.

Damian Brady, Staff Developer Advocate at GitHub with decades in software, AI, DevOps and community leadership. He discusses expanding Copilot beyond autocompletion to reviews, fixes, and lifecycle help. He talks TDD with AI, assigning work to Copilot, Copilot SDK/CLI and SpecKit for structured AI-driven specs. He also covers documentation living with code and integrating lifecycle tools.

David Starr, President and founder of Cumulus26 and former Microsoft and GoDaddy technologist, shares his journey building Marketplace tools. He discusses founding Cumulus26 to simplify Azure Marketplace onboarding. He explains AmpUp, offer types like SaaS and VM, CI/CD pipeline practices, testing strategies, and telemetry for cloud products.

Kevin Griffin, CTO at Shows On Sale and longtime .NET community leader, speaker, and former .NET Foundation president. He talks about building for system uptime with structured logging, realistic health checks, and handling third-party failures. Conversation also covers synthetic tests, pragmatic Azure adoption, and using AI to find test coverage gaps.

Maddy Montaquila, Senior Product Manager who’s worked on .NET MAUI, Xamarin, and developer tooling since 2018. She discusses .NET 10 and AI-focused features. She explains rebranding Aspire and its vision as a VS Code–like AI-assisted dev tool. She also covers onboarding with standardized environments, Aspire deployments and pipeline customization, and how coding agents integrate into workflows.

Graham McMillan, CTO at Redgate Software and a savvy leader with decades of tech experience, shares his journey from curious consultant to Database DevOps expert. He reveals how round-the-world sailing instilled crucial leadership lessons. Graham emphasizes the evolving role of DBAs in ensuring data integrity and performance. He discusses the impact of AI on SQL tooling, advocating for developer empowerment while maintaining safety. He also highlights the need for clean data as AI initiatives rise, emphasizing innovative Redgate products designed for modern data challenges.