I will be co-presenting an AKS Learn Live this month with Microsoft Principal Cloud Advocate Steven Murawski on “Taking Your Intelligent App Global with AKS”!. It will be moderating by Principal Product Manager Brian Redmond!
We will touch on using Azure Front Door and Fleet Manager. Description of the session:
“Once we have our intelligent application running, it’s time to make it scale. Using globally-scalable services like Azure CosmosDB and Azure Front Door, along with AKS Fleet Manager, we can take bring our intelligent apps closer to their consumers, while providing a consistent operating experience for the developers and operations personnel responsible for the service.”
I am excited to be on another panel for the Come Cloud With Us folks!
This time this panel is focused on Platform Engineering. It will be at the end of February. You wont want to miss this panel! Here is more info about the panel:
When:
Thursday, February 29, 2024 at 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM CST
Where:
Online event
ThePanel: Steve Buchanan – Principal Program Manager at Microsoft Kaslin Fields – Developer Advocate at Google Marino Wijay – Cloud Native Solutions Engineering and Advocacy at Solo Michael Levan – Chief Engineer/Consultant, Content Creator, and Trainer Saim Safdar – Technical Leader and CNCF Ambassador Kat Morgan – Developer Advocate at Pulumi Whitney Lee – Staff Technical Advocate at VMware Robin Smorenburg – Lead Cloud Architect – Azure MVP & CNCF Ambassador
What to Expect: A comprehensive exploration of Kubernetes, including architecture, best practices, practical demonstrations of AKS deployment and management, insights into optimizing containerized applications, and valuable networking opportunities with industry professionals.
Who should attend: Whether you’re a developer, IT professional, Azure enthusiast, student, or learner, this event is designed for you.
Mark your calendars and RSVP now! See you there! 🚀
💡 Starting the new year with another event! We kicked things off with a “Career in Cloud Panel” hosted by the Azure Community Enthusiasts (ACE) user group. Based in the UK, ACE brings together passionate individuals diving into the world of Azure.
This user group aims to create a community of enthusiasts and professionals passionate about learning Microsoft Azure. Their meetups are both online AND in-person (London or Birmingham). ACE can be found on Twitter here:
I had a blast being part of this Career in Cloud Panel with fellow panelist and long time friend Sam Ernskine (@samerskine) from the UK! Big shoutout to the hosts, friend and Microsoft MVP Kevin Greene (@kgreeneit) from Ireland, and the up and coming Nicholas Chang(@nick_cloudops), also an MVP from the UK. 👩💻👩🏿💻 It felt like a tech reunion! 🎉
We dove into some cool topics such as: what got us hooked on tech, the building blocks of tech skills throughout our careers, staying flexible by not tying the knot with one technology, whether cloud certifications are the golden ticket to landing a job, and more. Being on this panel was a total blast – a mix of fun and insightful vibes! 🌐
For those who missed it, you can catch the recording here:
To kick off the new year I am trying something new. For the 1st time I will be speaking on a Twitter space. This Twitter space is about Platform Engineering. It was hosted by cloud native and open source champion SAIM SAFDAR (@cloudnativeboy).
On this twitter space we talked about how to prepare your journey of learning and navigating the Platform Engineering (PE) landscape, my latest PE course, the PE guide from Microsoft and emerging best practices, and taking question’s from folks on the space.
We even had special guest Kubernetes and Platform Engineering expert Michael Levan (@TheNJDevOpsGuy) show up on the space! He shared some great insight on PE as well.
If you missed the space you can watch a recording of the space here:
This week I will be co-hosting another Microsoft Learn Live session. This one is “Learn Live: Building Resilient Intelligent Apps On AKS” in the Intelligent apps series. It is going to be action-packed full of several Microsoft technologies, AI, and AKS.
It is a part of Microsoft Reactor.
Microsoft Reactor provides events, training, and community resources to help startups, entrepreneurs, and developers. More on Reactor here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor.
In this Learn Live, I will be co-hosting as Cloud Native Developer Advocate Paul Yu will be leading us through a workshop.
Many organizations have embraced DevOps and adopted technologies like Kubernetes, cloud computing, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform or Pulumi. Despite these efforts, they often face challenges in delivering on the promises of DevOps and cloud-native. Platform engineering has emerged as the next step in the evolution, breaking down barriers and empowering developers to bring software to the market faster and more efficiently.
Recently I have been working on content to help educate and share my knowledge in this space. I am happy to announce two new pieces of content on Platform Engineering including a new course and a new blog.
Course: Platform Engineering: The Big Picture
Last week my 22nd course was published on Pluralsight! I am really excited about this course because it covers something that has been really hot in tech lately. It is about Platform Engineering. Platform Engineering has emerged as the next step in the evolution, breaking down barriers and empowering teams. Being someone that works with Kubernetes and cloud native this course was right up my alley because I work directly in this space.
The course is titled “Platform Engineering: The Big Picture“. This course will help you explore platform engineering and discover how it can elevate cloud-native development, making developers’ lives easier while achieving new heights in software delivery. Platform Engineering unifies and centralizes toolchains & workflows for self-service making developers’ lives easier while achieving new heights in software delivery.
In this course, you will gain an understanding about Platform Engineering, its benefits, architecture, tooling, workflow and how to adopt it.
Some of the major topics covered in the course include:
A Platform Engineering overview and why it’s needed, how Platforms enhance DevOps and streamline cloud native.
A comparison of DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering.
You will learn about Platform Engineering Architecture, its tooling landscape, and Internal Developer Platforms.
Check out the “Platform Engineering: The Big Picture“ course here:
I hope you find value in this new Platform Engineering course. Be sure to follow my profile on Pluralsight so you will be notified as I release new courses!
Here is the link to my Pluralsight profile to follow me:
Blog: 8 tools every platform engineer should know about
I am also excited to announce my second Platform Engineering-related blog post on Pluralsight. This one is titled: “8 tools every platform engineer should know about”. In Platform Engineering there are a lot of tools that can make up a platform. It can be confusing and hard to know what tools to focus on in the Platform Engineering space. In this blog post, I list 8 tools that are a must-know when you are in the Platform Engineering space.
I am excited to announce my second ever blog on Pluralsight.com. This blog is about Platform Engineering. In this post I break down what platform engineering is, the business problems it solves, and how to know if your organization is ready to roll it out yet.
In the blog post, we explore why there is so much hype around platform engineering, if Platform Engineering is a replacement for DevOps, how Internal Developer Platforms help resolve the infrastructure gaps, and more. Be sure to check it out!
I recently had the honor to film an episode of Spotlight at the Pluralsight headquarters.
It was an awesome experience and fun talking with Adam Gunn.
In the episode, we talked about:
Tech skills you need to master for the future, including hybrid and multi-cloud, Kubernetes, AI, and more. We also touched on how I landed in tech and how to overcome impostor syndrome to become a successful professional.
I was a guest on a very popular cloud podcast. This is one of the longest-running cloud podcasts around starting in 2011. It is the Cloudcast Podcast.
I was on episode #714 titled “Combining Kubernetes Community and Careers”. In this episode, I had a great time chatting with Aaron Delp about my journey in the Kubernetes community, building a personal brand through education and sharing, content creation, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
Here are the show notes breaking down the topics:
Topic 1 – Today we are going to be talking about careers and Kubernetes. Steve, welcome to the show! You have a super fascinating career journey, can you give everyone a quick introduction?
Topic 2 – I heard you over on the Kubernetes Unpacked podcast. First off, it’s hard to keep up with everything you are doing in the community these days. What is your current focus and passion? Have you reached 20 courses on Pluralsight yet?!
Topic 3 – How do you balance the day job (Program Manager for AKS) and the nights and weekends (PluralSight courses, blogging, podcasts, etc.)? Besides learning and sharing, what benefits are you seeing with this approach?
Topic 4 – I believe your journey parallels our journey here. We started the podcast to learn and give back to the community. Prior to the podcast, blogging was the big thing (we are completely aging ourselves I know) but I think it is safe to say blogging isn’t a primary source today. How would you recommend folks new to the industry get started sharing their journey? Where is the most “bang for your buck” these days?
Topic 5 – Let’s talk about Kubernetes and specifically AKS, what are customers finding new and interesting? What are the leading solutions and integrations you see combined with AKS? How do you create a “stack” in AKS (GitHub Actions, Azure Container Registry, etc.)
