Category Archives: Bill gave a talk

Talk: Orlando Code Camp – Meet GitHub Copilot

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24-Feb-2024

Had a great time hanging out with the Orlando tech community at their annual Code Camp. I made the trip with Maura (she gave a talk on blockchain) and we met a lot of cool people and had a great time.

I spoke on GitHub Copilot. Much of my talk was demo and discussion – you have to see this in action (or use it) to appreciate what’s happening. I consider this a glimpse into the future – it will surely become then norm to have an AI assistant when programming.

One part of the demo showed using one AI (GitHub Copilot) to help program another AI (Azure OpenAI).

It is invigorating to engage with a vibrant community of technologists. Thank you Orlando Code Camp organizers, sponsors, and all those in the tech community!

The deck I used in the talk is both attached for download and available on slideshare.

orlando-codecamp-meet-copilot-24-feb-2024_pubDownload

Talk: Meet GitHub Copilot, your AI Coding Assistant at Granite State Code Camp 02-Dec-2024

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My talk description:

According to legend, programmers back in the stone age would write code without IntelliSense and refactoring tools. The next generation of developers will wonder how our generation got anything done without AI-powered assistants. If you don’t know what GitHub Copilot is all about then come on by to get a glimpse of the future.

In this fast-paced demo-heavy talk we will see how you can go faster, stay in flow, and maybe even do more (unit tests anyone?) with GitHub Copilot, which became commercially available during 2023. Along the way we’ll learn to talk like an AI nerd by explaining and examining terms like “prompt engineering” (how to get Copilot to do what we really want), prompts vs. suggestions, what is a “conversational AI”, what do you mean by “non-deterministic”, and how does this relate to ChatGPT (and its underlying LLM). And hallucinations. All will be explained.

The deck I used:

granitestate-codecamp-meet-copilot-02-dec-2023-2Download

Talk: Exploring DORA! at Boston Code Camp 35

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(I gave two talks at this event – the other one was on GitHub Copilot.)

Always great to engage with the OG Code Camp crew at Boston Code Camp. My talk description:

Haven’t heard about DORA yet? You will.

The annual DevOps Research and Assessment Report — affectionately known as the “DORA Report” — is a data-driven, research-backed set of practices and metrics that will make engineers happier and more productive while improving not just dev, ops, and security outcomes, but also business outcomes. DORA tends to also shine a light on practices that are common within teams that are measurably more effective than industry averages – examples will be drawn from cloud technologies, automation, and security outcomes.

In this talk we’ll explore the DORA report as a data-driven toolbox for helping you “get better at getting better” in the software delivery realm. We will give some historical context, then zoom in on findings from the recently published 2023 report. The goal is for you to leave this talk with an overall appreciation of the breadth of coverage and the impact of DORA as well as some specific metrics and capabilities you’ll want to focus on to level up your own teams.

The deck I used:

exploring-dora-bostoncodecamp-18-nov-2023Download

Talk: Meet GitHub Copilot! at Boston Code Camp 35

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(I gave two talks at this event – the other one was on DORA.)

Always great to engage with the OG Code Camp crew at Boston Code Camp. My talk description:

According to legend, programmers back in the stone age would write code without IntelliSense and refactoring tools. The next generation of developers will wonder how our generation got anything done without AI-powered assistants. If you don’t know what GitHub Copilot is all about then come on by to get a glimpse of the future.

In this fast-paced demo-heavy talk we will see how you can go faster, stay in flow, and maybe even do more (unit tests anyone?) with GitHub Copilot, which became commercially available during 2023. Along the way we’ll learn to talk like an AI nerd by explaining and examining terms like “prompt engineering” (how to get Copilot to do what we really want), prompts vs. suggestions, what is a “conversational AI”, what do you mean by “non-deterministic”, and how does this relate to ChatGPT (and its underlying LLM). And hallucinations. All will be explained.

The deck I used:

bostoncodecamp-meet-copilot-18-Nov-2023Download

Talk: GitHub Copilot is your AI Pair Programming Assistant

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08-Aug-2023

I gave an extended demo of GitHub Copilot at the Boston Azure AI event tonight. Most of the session was a demo, but I did also walk through some slides. Those slides are attached.

I also showed these links or services:

bostonazure-copilot-is-the-developers-ai-assistant-08-aug-2023Download

Talk: GitHub Copilot: Meet Your AI Pair Programming Assistant!

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On 27-June-2023 at our first back-from-the-pandemic in-person regularly scheduled Boston Azure monthly meeting, the main event featured Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez from Microsoft talking about Azure OpenAI ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers. Juan Pablo was kind enough to share his slides and code samples.

Keeping with the AI theme, I opened with a talk about GitHub Copilot where I gave a brief demo and explanation, then attempted to put it into context among other AI tools (including other Microsoft Copilot initiatives).

The deck I used is attached to this post:

bostonazure-copilotlightningoverview-27-june-2023Download

Talk: Exploring DORA at Boston Code Camp #34

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Today at the 34th edition of Boston Code Camp (#boscc) I presented (in person – yahoo!) my talk “Exploring DORA – Using data to drive better outcomes” which introduced the DORA project.

DORA is short for the DevOps Report Assessment and provides a research-backed assessment of how your technical, process, and cultural practices impact business outcomes. DORA can be used as a guide for choosing how to improve.

This topic is important because I predict research-backed practices (e.g., DORA) will become pervasive/routine in 2024.

This important work helps inform many aspects of software development (and DevX), including many ways it is applicable to cloud computing, including Microsoft Azure, and futures like where is AI on the adoption curve and how impactful is it appearing to be on productivity (inclding for SPACE metrics). So much to talk about.

The deck is here, followed by the published description of the talk:

exploring-dora-bostoncodecamp-29-apr-2023_finalDownload

Haven’t heard about DORA yet? You will. 

The annual DevOps Research and Assessment Report — affectionately known as the “DORA Report” — is a data-driven, research-backed set of practices and metrics that will make engineers really happy while improving not just dev, ops, and security outcomes, but also business outcomes. 

In this talk we’ll explore the DORA report – the background, the talent behind it, the current state, the famous 4 (or is it 5?) DORA metrics, where it is going, and how you and your team can leverage it today to make effective investment decisions for improving your software development and delivery processes.

Talk: Running #Azure Robustly – Granite State Code Camp #GSCC2022 – Fail and Retry

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I had the opportunity to speak at the 2022 Granite State Code Camp in Manchester, NH.

The last couple of years I was more focused on Security and Compliance-enablement in Microsoft Azure. This year I focused on Robustness. When running in Azure – like other distributed system environments – failures are real and retries are a common remedy to support robust applications. In the session I discussed the need and the mechanisms, with many examples in Azure.

Here is the talk description:

Fail and Retry

Does your application reach out to services or databases over a network. Do you assume that these calls always succeed? In this talk we will cover different reasons for failures and organize them into those that make sense to retry (e.g., “transient” failures) and those that don’t. Where retrying makes sense, we’ll cover some tools and techniques to handle retries automatically, sort out how to select appropriate retry parameters depending on the scenario (e.g., batch job vs. interactive UI with a user waiting), and consider how to test such scenarios (hint: there are some tools to help force transient errors). Planned examples will include C# in Azure, but open to demonstrating other languages and platforms. You can hit me up on Twitter to request a specific scenario (https://twitter.com/codingoutloud/status/1574138969134088192), though the concepts and patterns are generic.

If you want to experience MORE AZURE please check out https://meetup.com/bostonazure (currently operating as part of “Virtual Boston Azure”).

If you are someone who would like to SPEAK at Virtual Boston Azure, please get in touch. (Twitter is a good way to reach me – I am @codingoutloud – or you can address it to @bostonazure.)

Talk: Running #Azure Securely and Compliantly – Granite State Code Camp #GSCC2021 – aka Compliance for Lazy People

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Today I had the opportunity to speak at the Granite State Code Camp (#GSCC2021) in Manchester, NH. This was the first time I’ve given an in-person talk since the start of COVID and it was great to see so many smiling facing (even when partially obscured by a mask!).

Last year my focus was a more in-the-weeds talk called Running Azure Securely – which of these Azure security features are for me?. This year I stepped back a level and focused on Compliance. In the session I discussed security vs. compliance, the shared responsibility model, and touched on a few other features, but spent a good bit of time focused on what I am thinking about as the “Policy stack” where one can gather lots of insight about your workload’s compliance with technology controls indicated by various compliance standards – based on the Azure Policy capabilities, a pillar of governance, and rolled up and available from Azure Security Center Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

Azure Security Center as a brand is no more – it is part of a rebranding to Microsoft Defender for Cloud. I assume this renaming, announced at Ignite, is because it is a feature set that can span beyond Azure – for example, keeping an on on-premises resources and resources in non-Azure clouds like AWS.

The session was interactive (as preferred!) and many thanks to Kevin and Vishwas and the nice lady whose name I didn’t catch who I think worked for the college for help in overcoming technical limitations in the room I was speaking from.

If you want to experience MORE AZURE please check out https://meetup.com/bostonazure (currently operating as part of “Virtual Boston Azure”).

If you are someone who would like to SPEAK at Virtual Boston Azure, please get in touch. (Twitter is a good way to reach me – I am @codingoutloud – or you can address it to @bostonazure.)

Slide deck is attached.

Talk: Running #Azure Securely – Turning on the WAF

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Tonight I had the opportunity to speak at #VirtualBostonAzure to talk about raising the visibility of security signals in your environment by turning on your WAF. In demos the WAF available in Azure Front Door was used.

Slides:

virtualbostonazure-billwilder-2020-dec-02.underattackandunaware-thewaf-1Download

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWXTtCUNmes&feature=youtu.be