Interviews - The Wit and Ramblings of David Giard
Demanding rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty

Episode 586

Jim Wooley on Entity Framework Performance

Jim Wooley describes the newest features of Entity Framework and factors to consider when increasing performance.

Episode 585

Angela Dugan on Team Dynamics

Angela Dugan describes shat she is doing to improve communication and dynamics within her team.

Episode 584

Phil Japikse on .NET Core Support Cycle

Most people are unaware when support expires for each version of .NET Core. Phil Japikse explains the rules and how you can protect yourself.

Episode 583

Edward Thomson on GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions is a new feature at github.com allowing users to run custom code on GitHub. Edward Thomson describes this feature and how to use it.

Episode 582

Jeremy Likness on Blazor

Blazor is a framework for building full-stack web apps in the browser using C#. Jeremy Likness describes how it works and how to use it.

Episode 581

Laurent Bugnion on the Ignite Tour

The Microsoft Ignite conference takes place in November in Orlando, FL; but not everyone can attend.

So, Laurent Bugnion and his team are organizing the Ignite Tour, bringing much of the content to 30 cities around the world in the months following the conference.

Laurent discusses what people can expect at these events.

Ignite Tour Home

Episode 580

Jason Bock on .NET Core 3

Jason Bock describes the most important new features in .NET Core 3

Episode 579

Laurent Ellerbach on Diversity and Inclusion Workshop

Laurent Ellerbach has developed a workshop to help people think about and talk about Diversity and Inclusion. In this workshop, attendees articulate their ideas visually using Lego bricks.

Episode 578

Raj Krishnan on Azure Data Explorer

Raj Krishnan describes Azure Data Explorer - a highly-scalable, very fast in-memory data store formerly known as Kusto.

Episode 577

Lorena Mesa on the Python Software Foundation

Lorena Mesa is a GitHub data engineer and a Director of the Python Software Foundation.

She describes the mission of the Foundation and how they assist Python developers and the Python community.

Links:

http://lorenamesa.com/
https://twitter.com/loooorenanicole
https://www.python.org/psf-landing/
https://www.python.org/psf/
https://github.com/psf/
https://pycon.org/

Episode 576

Dan Rey on Microsoft Surface

Dan Rey describes the different versions of Microsoft Surface and how you can use them to be more productive.

• Blog
• Videos: Tips and Tricks

Episode 575

Kevin Gates on Cloud Architecture

Cloud Solution Architect Kevin Gates walks us through the architecture of a sample application migrated from on-premise to Azure.

http://www.dreaddontdie.com/

Episode 574

Mercedes Bernard on Dev Together

Mercedes Bernard started Dev Together to connect new software developers with mentors that would help them learn valuable skills. Over a year later, it is popular and spreading to other cities.

Episode 573

Ruth Yakubu on Machine Learning tools in Azure

Cloud Developer Advocate Ruth Yakubu describes Machine Learning Services and other new ML tools available in Azure.

Episode 572

Whitney Griffith on Azure Blockchain as a Service

Whitney Griffith describes Blockchain, how it is implemented on Azure, and how her team used it to solve a transportation problem.

Episode 571

Jon Galloway on the .NET Foundation

The .NET Foundation recently expanded its board and its goals. Jon Galloway discusses what the Foundation does and what it strives to do.

Episode 570

Laurent Bugnion on Migrating Data to Azure

Laurent Bugnion describes how he migrated from on-premise MongoDB and SQL Server databases to CosmosDB and Azure SQL Database running in Microsoft Azure, using both native tools and the Database migration service.

• https://dev.to/ 
• https://github.com/microsoft 
• https://twitter.com/LBugnion

Episode 569

John Alexander on ML.NET

John Alexander describes how .NET developers can use ML.NET to build and consume Machine Learning solutions.

Episode 568

Heather Wilde on Anticipatory Design

Heather Wilde discusses how to machine learning with user interfaces and user experience to craft a more personalized experience between a person and the products and services they use.

https://twitter.com/heathriel

Episode 567

Elton Stoneman on Docker

Elton Stoneman describes how to manage containers using Docker on a local machine and in the cloud.

Episode 566

Hattan Shobokshi on TerraForm

Hattan Shobokshi describes how to use Terraform to implement Infrastructure As Code.

Episode 564

Eric Boyd on Microservices

Eric Boyd describes the principles of Microservices and how he uses these principles to build better software.

Links:

• https://twitter.com/ericdboyd
• http://ericdboyd.com/

Episode 564

David Makogon on Streaming Data

David Makogon talks about streaming data and the tools to help you make it happen.

David on Twitter

Episode 563

J Tower on .NET Standard

J Tower describes .NET Standard, .NET Core, and the .NET Framework and how developers can get different flavors of .NET to work together.

Episode 562

Mike Benkovich on Visual Studio 2019

Microsoft MVP Mike Benkovich discusses the important new features in Visual Studio 2019

Episode 561

Adam Hecktman on Civic Tech

Adam Hecktman describes Civic Tech and what Microsoft is doing to help the city and people of Chicago.

Episode 560

Frank Gill on Azure SQL Database Managed Instances

DBA Frank Gill discusses Azure SQL Database Managed Instances - a cloud-based managed database service. He describes what they are, how they differ from Azure SQL Databases, and when it is appropriate to consider them.

Links:

https://skreebydba.com/
https://twitter.com/skreebydba

Episode 559

Lwin Maung on IoT Hardware Options

Lwin Maung shows us various IoT devices and describes the differences between them and the uses for each.

Episode 558

Melanie Adcock on TechMonthChicago

Melanie Adcock has a passion for the Chicago tech community
She organizes TechMonth Chicago each October to shine a light on the numerous activities at meetups, startup incubators, public libraries, and schools in the city. This includes a website, a printed newspaper, and a semi-monthly radio show on Lumpen Radio 105.5 WLPN.

Links:

http://lumpenradio.com/techscene.html

http://techcopyauthority.com/

https://techmonthchicago.com/

Episode 557

Brent Stineman on the Evolution of Serverless

Brent Stineman describes Serverless cloud technologies and how they have evolved to make applications more flexible.

Episode 554

Bret Stateham on IoT Edge

Bret Stateham describes how to effectively use IoT Edge to move some of your processing and logic closer to your IoT devices.

Episode 554

Kevin Griffin on Whats New in SignalR

Kevin Griffin returns to the subject of SignalR, describing the advances in this push technology since we last spoke of it years ago.

Episode 554

Ondrej Balas on 2-Factor Authentication

Ondrej Balas discusses advances in 2-Factor Authentication and tells us how to add this security to our applications.

Episode 553

Jennifer Marsman on AI for Earth

Jennifer Marsman describes how Microsoft's AI for Earth team is using data to make the world a better place.

Episode 551

Jeremy Miller on Automated Testing in .NET Core

Jeremy Miller describes how testing ASP.NET applications is simpler with ASP.NET Core. He discusses the modularity of .NET, the lack of dependencies on IIS, and his open source testing project Alba.

Episode 550

Cassandra Faris on Personal Branding

Cassandra Faris talks about her involvement with the developer community and how she has managed her personal brand.

Episode 548

Jennifer Wadella on Gatsby

Jennifer Wadella describes how to use the Gatsby tool to quickly create static web sites.

Episode 547

Jon Skeet on Versioning

Versioning is more complex than most people believe. Jon Skeet describes the issues and how we can deal with the complexities to keep software libraries from breaking client applications.

Episode 547

Geisa Faustino on Teaching

Geisa Faustino loves to teach. She developed this love in her previous career as a university professor and continues to teach as a Software Engineer at Microsoft. She explains what she gains from teaching and how she helps others to learn.

Episode 546

Jackie Becker on Mixed Reality in the Real World

Jackie Becker describes how companies are using virtual reality and augmented reality to solve real-world problems.

Episode 545

Isaac Bayoh on How Technology Impacts Developing Countries

Isaac Bayoh grew up in west Africa and continues to work with NGOs in his home country of Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire). He has seen firsthand the effect that technology has on developing countries.

Episode 544

Elizabeth Graham on Azure Logic Apps

Microsoft Global Black Belt Elizabeth Graham describes Azure Logic Apps and how to use them to solve integration and workflow projects.

Episode 543

Alex Mang on Azure Durable Functions

Alex Mang describes Azure Durable Functions and some real-world examples of how he uses them.

Episode 542

Jim Wooley on Static Analyzers and Roslyn

Microsoft MVP Jim Wooley describes how to use Roslyn to create your own static analyzers to verify the quality of your code.

Episode 541

JD Marymee on Blockchain

JD Marymee describes the fundamentals of Blockchain and gives examples of how his customers are using it.

Episode 540

Bill Wagner on Nullable Reference Types

C# 8 will have support for Nullable reference types, which will allow you to know better when you need to check for null in your variables. Bill explains the syntax and implication of this upcoming language feature.

Episode 539

Brady Gaster on Marketing Azure

Brady Gaster helps to build and coordinate many of the Azure demos you see on stage at large technical conferences. He talks about how his team tells a story with tools and code.

Episode 538

Jeff Fritz on Live Streaming Coding

Jeff Fritz uses twitch.tv to live stream while he codes with others. He talks about how, why, and when he does it.

Episode 537

Robert Greene on DevOps

Robert Greene defines DevOps, discusses its advantages, and describes how to accomplish it with Microsoft tooling.

Episode 536

Hao Luo on Rust

Hao Luo talks about the Rust programming language, how it works, and how he is using it.

Episode 535

Rajasa Savant on Serverless Azure

Microsoft Engineer Rajasa Savant describes the "Serverless" technologies available in Microsoft Azure

Episode 534

Raymond Comvalius on Transitioning to the Modern Workplace with Windows 10

Episode 532

Christos Matskas on Visual Studio for Mac

Episode 531

Walt Ritscher on LinkedIn Learning

Episode 530

Chris Woodruff on HTTP and REST

Episode 529

Dan Rey on What's New In Windows 10

Episode 528

Hamayal Choudhry and Samin Khan on SmartArm

Episode 527

Douglas Crockford on Clutter in Programming Languages

Episode 526

Heather Downing and Spencer Schneidenback on the HelloWorld Show

Episode 525

Jayson Street on Patching Humans

Episode 524

Jon Skeet on Making StackOverflow More Inclusive

Episode 523

Erwin Derksen on Office Click To Run

Episode 522

Silviu Niculita on Chatbots

Episode 521

Brandon Satrom on Ed Gets His Power Back

Episode 520

Venkat Subramaniam on JavaScript - the Cute Parts

Episode 519

John Azariah on Quantum Computing

Episode 518

Tobiasz Koprowski on Securing SQL Server

Episode 517

Tim Reilly on Blockchain

Episode 516

Angie Byron on Drupal

Episode 514

Zach Miller on Data Science Myths

Episode 513

Atley Hunter on UI Simplicity

Episode 512

Christine Matheney on Imagine Cup

Episode 511

Kevin Ashley on AI and basketball

Episode 510

Raffaele Rialdi on GDPR

Episode 508

Fabian Fernandez on .NETConf Global

Episode 507

Guillermo Bellman on Azure Service Fabric

Episode 503

Jim Christopher on Data Science

Episode 503

Carolina Banales on Woman Tech Entrepreneurs

Episode 503

Robert Martin on Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming

Episode 502

Michael and Alana Blumenthal on an IoT project

Episode 500

A Celebration of Friends!

Episode 499

Keith Casey on The Tech Events Network

Episode 498

Cecil Phillip on Away From the Keyboard

Episode 497

Doris Chen on Performance Tuning

Episode 496

Oren Eini on RavenDB

Episode 495

Kevin Grossnicklaus on API Design

Episode 494

Richard Taylor on Web Development to Xamarin Development

Episode 493

Merwan Hade on Microsoft Flow

Episode 492

Pratap Ladhani on PowerApps

Episode 491

Jay Harris on Web Development Tools

Episode 490

Jeremy Clark on Social Developers

Episode 489

Scott Addie on Migrating to ASP.NET Core

Episode 487

Adam Freymiller on Interviewing for a Tech Job

Episode 486

Gael Fraiteur on PostSharp 5.0

Episode 484

Jimmy Bogard on AutoMapper

Episode 483

Riccardo Bennett-Lovsey on Digital Transformations

Episode 482

Kent Alstad on Leadership

Episode 481

Matthew Renze on Data Science

Episode 480

Jonathan Mills on Angular CLI

Episode 479

Nancy Gaines on Productivity

Episode 478

Peter Leeson on Quality

Episode 477

Florin Loghiade on Testing PowerShell wit Pester

Episode 476

Boris Hristov on Technical Presentations

Episode 475

Radu Vunvulea on Surviving in the IoT World

Episode 474

Ben Armstrong on Containers and Virtualization

Episode 473

Bob Waltenspiel and Dave Phillips on IT In The D

Agolo is using Machine Learning to match employers with the right candidates for their open jobs. I spoke with CEO Sage Wohns when I was in New York City last week.

The interview is available on DevRadio at https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/DevRadio/DR1730.

Episode 472

Jef King on The Missing Children Society of Canada

Episode 471

Chris Heilmann on Progressive Web Apps

Episode 470

J Tower on Communication Skills for Engineers

Episode 469

Anne Bougie on Azure Storage Options

Episode 468

David Washington on Home Automation

Episode 467

Matt Soucoup on What's New in Xamarin

Episode 465

Jaidev Kunjur on Enterprise Integration

Episode 464

Ed Charbeneau on Machine Learning and the Full Stack Developer

I spoke recently with CVP Erich Andersen and Director of Marketing for Azure Tanuj Bansal about the Microsoft Azure IP Advantage program, that assists companies with patent issues.

Watch below or click here.

Episode 463

Vibhu Bhutani on IoT Projects

Episode 461

Chris Woodruff on Electron

Last week, Ed Charbeneau interviewed me for his Eat Sleep Dev podcast. The topic was Cognitive Services – a technology I’m passionate about.

You can listen to that interview below.

Episode 458

Bryan Soltis on Azure Search

Episode 457

Jeff Strauss on ECMAScript 6

Here is an interview I conducted recently with Victor Cintron of DimDrop – a startup that uses location-based services to improve communication. They are deploying a number of open source technologies to Microsoft Azure.

Startup Stories: An Interview with Victor Cintron, CEO of DimDrop

A couple weeks ago, I was in Knoxville, TN talking with Microsoft Senior Program Manager Jeff Fritz. He agreed to record an interview with me about the awesome new features of this upcoming framework. My plan was to release it as an episode of Technology and Friends. Unfortunately, technical issues left me with excellent audio but no useable video.

Jeff did a great job and the topic is very interesting. So, given the release of Visual Studio 2015 last week and Windows 10 today, I decided to make the audio interview available here.

Enjoy: Jeff Fritz talks about ASP.NET 5

Episode 106

J Wynia on Spark View Engine

Episode 105

Nathan Blevins on Lego Mindstorm

Episode 103

Steve Andrews on GeekGive

Episode 102

Phil Japikse on Automated Testing

Episode 101

Brian Sherwin on Refactoring

Episode 100

This is a very special 100th episode of Technology and Friends - a show I have been creating for over 18 months. Thank you to all who participated.

Thank you for watching Technology and Friends

Episode 94

In this show, Joe Wirtley discusses how he addressed the challenges in building an e-commerce site.

Episode 93

In this interview, Dr David Truxall describes the features of Microsoft Team Foundation Server

Episode 92

At the 2010 ann arbor Day of .Net, I hosted a panel discussion in front of a live audience.

Michael Eaton, Jay Harris, Patrick Steele, Jim Holmes and Jason Follas described how they cope with the information overload of keeping up with technologies.

Episode 91

Matt Van Horn and I began by talking about Expression Blend and the conversation moved toward collaborations between developers and designers

Episode 90

BizSpark and WebsiteSpark are low-cost software options that Microsoft offers to startup companies. In this interview, Microsoft Partner Evangelist John McClelland describes these programs.

Episode 89

In this interview, Dane Morgridege describes the Entity Framework - an object relational mapping tool from Microsoft.

Episode 88

In this interview, Microsoft Product Unit Manager Cameron Skinner describes the architecture tools that his team built into Visual Studio 2010

Episode 87

In this interview, Day of .Net organizers John Hopkins and Jason Follas describe what went into planning this event and what were the results.

Episode 86

In this episode, David Hoerster describes how he uses jQuery and WCF to create rich, interactive applications.

Episode 85

In this show, David Isbitski and Matt Van Horn describe Behaviors, a feature that allows you to easily enhance the user interface of your Silverlight applications.

Episode 84

In this interview, John Petersen describes how to use jQuery, JSON and Ajax to enhance an ASP.Net MVC application.

Episode 83

In this interview, Eric Greene describes the advantages of using a Content Management System to rapidly build a flexible web site

Episode 82

Episode 81

In this interview, Jennifer Marsman describes some of the new features of Windows 7 and how a developer can use those features to build more powerful applications.

Episode 80

Episode 79

In this interview, Brian Genisio describes the Prism documentation and library and explains how he uses it to build applications.

Episode 78

In this interview, Jim Holmes discusses the importance of unit testing in writing high-quality, maintainable code.

I have been recording and producing the online TV show Technology and Friends for over a year. After over 70 episodes, I have found things that work well for me. This series is a detailed account of how I put together each episode.

Part 1: Preparation

Part 2: The Interview

Part 3: Equipment

Part 4: Post-Production

Part 5: Sharing with the world

In the last article, I explained how to edit a video and export it to a single MPG file. In this article, I will discuss how I share this video with the world.

Export

After I finish editing the video in Adobe Premiere Elements, I export it to a single MPG file. This is done by selecting the "Share" tab in the top right section of the editor. On the Share tab, I use the following settings: Personal Computer |MPG | NTSC DVD Standard. I enter a file name and select a directory and click the [Save] button to create a single MPG file containing my complete show.

Once I have a single MPG file, I can easily share it with others.

Upload

I upload the exported WMA file to a video-sharing site. I use Viddler because it is free and provides reasonably high-quality playback.

Viddler provides the ability to upload a file directly from their web site. I add metadata, such as a name and a description to each video.

Share

I link these videos from both DavidGiard.com and TechnologyAndFriends.com.

Viddler provides a button ("Embed This") that generates the HTML necessary to embed a video into a web page. I copy this HTML and paste it into a post on my two sites. Above the embedded video, I add some text to describe the video and any relevant links, such as the guest’s blog. I release both posts on the same day.

After releasing a new episode, I promote it via Twitter. I also send an e-mail to my guest, telling him or her that the interview is now available. Often my guest will link to the show from a blog or tweet, driving more traffic. If we are discussing someone else in the video, I often will e-mail that person or organization. After interviewing Jamie Wright about 37 Signals last year, I e-mailed 37 Signals to tell them about it. They linked to the video, which drove over 10,000 viewers to watch it.

My goal is to release at least one video every week, so I usually have a backlog of videos recorded, produced and ready to release.

Final Thoughts

On average, it takes me approximately 2 hours to produce a 20-30 minute show. This is in addition to the hour or so it takes to set up, prepare and record a show. So far, I’ve done this almost 80 times.

Episode 77

In this interview, Mike Amundsen explains the concept of REST and how a developer can use this pattern to build web applications.

Episode 76

In this interview, DevExpress evangelist Gary Short discusses technical debt and its effects on a software project.

Episode 75

Sam Corder is the founder of the MongoDB-CSharp open source project In this interview, he describes the use of MongoDB and other document database

Episode 74

Debbie Must describes the unique challenges of deploying her software and how she attacked these challenges.

Episode 73

In this interview, Corey Haines talks about software craftsmanship, what it means to him and his plan to improve the quality of coding in our industry.

Episode 72

C# MVP Darrell Hawley spends a lot of his time programming in Python these days. In this interview, Darrell describes the Django framework for developing web applications in Python.

Episode 71

In this interview, Tim Wingfield describes the Kanban system and how he uses it.

Episode 70

Dave Bost, the host of the popular Thirsty Developer podcast discusses what goes into each episode and some of the technology he uses to record and produce the show.

Episode 69

Shortly after CodeMash, chief cat herder Jim Holmes discusses what went into the planning and what makes this conference different.

Episode 68

James Bender, Mike Wood and Chris Woodruff created NPlus1.org to assist software architects, lead developers and those aspiring to these roles. In this interview, James and Mike discuss the goals and accomplishments of NPlus1.

Episode 67

In this interview, Steven "Doc" List discusses the concepts behind Open Spaces and Community Courtyards and his role in facilitating these events.

Episode 66

In this interview, Mary and Tom Poppendieck define competency, describe the importance of leadership and define the factors that make up these qualities.

Episode 65

Wrox just released a new book 'Testing ASP.Net web applications' by Jeff McWherter and Ben Hall. In this interview, Jeff and Ben discuss the importance of testing, the different types of tests and how to effectively test your web application.

Episode 64

In this interview, author and developer Bill Wagner discusses the dynamic features in the upcoming C# 4.0.

Monday evening, my show - Technology and Friends - appeared on Channel 17 (CTN) in Washtenaw County, Michigan.

I'm happy to announce that more episodes of Technology and Friends will be available on Comcast cable in my area. If you have Comcast cable in Washtenaw County, you can watch the show on Channel 17 at the following times.

Four episodes are scheduled to air over the next two weeks. The times are listed below.

The three episodes (Episode 48: Phil Japikse on HopeMongers.org; Episode 57: David Truxall on Debugging; and Episode 60: Stephen Toub on Parallel Computing) will air back-to-back-to-back at the following times.

Episode 58: Sai Naik on the benefits of SharePoint will air at the following times.

As always, you can still view episodes on this site.

Episode 63

In this conversation, independent consultant Michael Eaton describes the challenges developers face estimating software projects. He then describes approaches to these challenges, based on his experience.

Episode 62

In this episode, Jay Harris discusses the challenges integration code from different team members and how Continuous Integration can help solve these challenges.

Episode 61

Chris Woodruff organized the 2009 Grand Rapids Give Camp which helped dozens of charities with software projects. On the final day of the Give Camp, Chris sat down with us to describe what went into the camp and what was accomplished.

Episode 60

Stephen Toub, lead Program Manager on the Microsoft Parallel Computing Platform team, sat down with us to discuss the reasons why parallel computing is important, the challenges in writing code to take advantage of multiple cores, and what Microsoft is doing to make it easier for developers to write this code.