AWS Hero, CTO, & long time friend of the show Calvin stops in to help make developers lives easier! 🥰 In this episode he walks us through scaf a project he's created to build kubernetes based environments to enable django devs to (1) get up and running quickly (2) provide a similar environment across local, dev, and prod and much much more.

• 00:00 - Intro
• 04:15 - Six Feet Up???
• 07:55 - Why we started building this
• 17:17 - Why Kubernetes? ☸️
• 38:00 - Live Demo 🤞🤞🤞🤞🤣

Resources:

Calvin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/calvinhp/

scaf repo - https://github.com/sixfeetup/scaf

presentation - https://github.com/sixfeetup/2024_PyOhio_MasteringtheZenofDevExperience

Damien Burks joins the vBrownBag to demo a solution he architected & uses Terraform & GenAI to accelerate his content creation

• 01:10 Call to action! Who's hiring? Let us know and we'll promote 🚀
• 04:50 Introducing Damien Burks
• 08:05 Level set: What is Terraform and what's it used for?
• 11:55 Problem statement & Damien's solution, the Personal Blogging Assistant
• 26:00 Let's dive into the code! 🏊
• 32:30 Deploying the Personal Blogging Assistant & demo
• 38:40 Using the GCP console

Resources:

https://x.com/damienjburks

https://www.devsecblueprint.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@damienjburks

JJ Asghar shares his thoughts on IBM TechXchange & InstructLab with Chris Williams

Resources:

https://x.com/jjasghar

Keith Townsend (Futurum Group & The CTO Advisor) shares his thoughts on IBM TechXchange with Chris Williams

Resources:

https://x.com/CTOAdvisor

Microsoft technologist Kevin Evans explores the general trend of technology maturation, certifications for aspiring cloud solutions architects, his thoughts on near-future changes for existing cloud solution architects, and more.

• 00:00 Welcome and a detour into homelabs
• 05:33 Kevin's role at Microsoft and technology maturation
• 10:48 Damian's wife sets off the smoke alarms 🤣(sorry!)
• 14:10 What's next for cloud solution architects?
• 32:15 Certifications for aspiring cloud solution architects
• 46:30 Kevin's advice for existing cloud solution architects

Resources:

https://x.com/TheKevinEvans

https://www.youtube.com/@Code-To-Cloud

https://codetocloud.io/

AWS Hero Vivek Raja goes beyond the GenAI hype and explores AWS AI/ML offerings, AI ethics, and more.

• 04:05 Introducing Vivek 👋
• 11:54 Exploring the technology hype cycle
• 20:50 Considering computer vision, as an example of the hype cycle
• 25:06 Where is Gen AI in the hype cycle?
• 29:50 AWS & GenAI
• 32:29 Rediscovering AWS AI/ML services 🔍
• 55:44 AWS Sagemaker Studio demo
• 72:20 Navigating risks & ethical considerations with AI 🤔

Resources:

https://x.com/meetvivekraja

https://kaggle.com

Related videos:

https://youtu.be/eiEZ24-ztHY

https://youtu.be/o7u25U1swIs

Andrew Brown presents a roadmap for understanding generative AI that covers the learning journey from getting started with GenAI, to prompt engineering, learning through use cases, and more.

• 04:25 Starting the GenAI journey 🧑‍💻
• 08:15 Prompt engineering
• 10:00 Workbenches & playgrounds
• 14:50 Types of LLM models
• 35:00 Approaching AI learning with a use case 📋
• 42:44 Models as a service
• 47:45 LLM development tools 🧑‍🎓
• 53:00 Understanding GenAI hardware

Resources:

https://www.youtube.com/@ExamProChannel

https://www.exampro.co/

https://x.com/andrewbrown

https://github.com/omenking

Related videos:

https://youtu.be/zyphIEt55lE

https://youtu.be/zG2outSenlg

In this episode of the vBrownBag, Damian does a deep dive on getting started with PowerShell on AWS Lambda. He covers setting up a development environment, packaging & publishing PowerShell on Lambda, lessons learned, and more!

• 00:28 A quick overview of PowerShell & AWS Lambda 💪
• 01:07 Anatomy of a PowerShell Lambda function
• 01:35 Setting up a development environment
• 03:00 AWSLambdaPSCore modules
• 03:42 Packaging a PowerShell module
• 04:19 Handling the handler
• 05:14 Publishing your PowerShell Lambda function 🚀
• 05:42 Understanding the AWS Lambda filesystem

Resources:

https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/AWSLambdaPSCore

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/8.0

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/install/installing-powershell?view=powershell-7.4

https://code.visualstudio.com/download

https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell

In this episode of the vBrownBag, Shala demonstrates how & why she uses Hashicorp Terraform (for her day job!) to stand up proof of concept tests on AWS far faster than what is possible in the console.

• 00:00 Intro

1:37 Shala walks us through her GitLab repo 💪

5:23 We're discussing DevOps, y'all

• 10:52 Shala explains why she started using Terraform for proof of concept testing
• 13:00 Using Terraform to create AWS CloudWatch alerts
• 19:30 Creating specific error types in AWS CloudWatch
• 25:40 Using Terraform to create AWS S3 buckets & Lambda functions
• 27:20 Creating pipelines in GitLab to refresh & deploy AWS ECS environments 🚀

Resources:

https://registry.terraform.io/

In this episode of the vBrownBag, Damian does a deeper dive into the Meatgrinder, showing how the different AWS services interact, how the process logs to CloudWatch, and more!

• 00:00 Intro

1:20 The AWS Services that power the Meatgrinder 💪

1:51 AWS S3

2:18 AWS EventBridge

2:50 AWS Step Functions

4:10 PowerShell on Lambda & Step Functions interaction 🕺💃

7:05 Python Lamba function

7:33 Logging success in AWS CloudWatch 🚀

Resources:

https://vbrownbag.com

https://aws.amazon.com/serverless/

https://damiankarlson.com/2024/04/21/whats-in-the-bag-behind-the-scenes-at-vbrownbag-com/

In this episode of the vBrownBag, a host is a guest! Damian does a deep dive into the vBrownBag Meatgrinder, an event-driven automation solution built with AWS Serverless that powers the show behind the scenes. Meatgrinder uses AWS S3, Event Bridge, Step Functions, Lambda, and Cloud Watch and handles post-production automation of vBrownBag content. We'll talk about the design decisions made while architecting the solution, and lessons learned along the way.

• 00:00 Intro and so much banter!
• 10:14 We actually start talking about the topic 🤣
• 17:13 Orchestrating Meatgrinder with AWS Step Functions
• 30:00 Managing state in an event-driven architecture
• 31:40 Showing off the Lambda functions
• 36:00 Meatgrinder logging with Cloud Watch
• 40:33 Solving the biggest technical challenges 🔥

Resources:

https://vbrownbag.com

https://aws.amazon.com/serverless/

https://damiankarlson.com/2024/04/21/whats-in-the-bag-behind-the-scenes-at-vbrownbag-com/