vBrownBag

Join us as Neel explores how observability is evolving beyond traditional logs, metrics, and traces into a predictive, AI-powered discipline. Neel walks through the evolution of Observability, demonstrating how OpenTelemetry, machine learning, and LLMs are transforming how we monitor and maintain modern applications. You'll learn about dynamic sampling techniques that reduce costs while maintainin...

Join us as Sam demonstrates how to teach AI to write Terraform configurations using Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. Sam introduces the Terraform MCP server and walks through practical demos showing how AI can understand and safely interact with your infrastructure. You'll see live examples of AI planning, generating, and evolving Terraform configurations - from creating landing zones to sett...

Join us as Gautam breaks down the evolution of tool use in generative AI and dives deep into MCP. Gautam walks through the progression from simple prompt engineering to function calling, structured outputs, and now MCP—explaining why MCP matters and how it's changing the way AI systems interact with external tools and data. You'll learn about the differences between MCP and traditional API integra...

Join the vBrownBag crew and AWS Hero Peter Sankauskas for the 2026 AWS Community Survey 🎯 – your chance to shape the conversation around AWS careers, cloud adoption trends, and emerging technologies. Peter breaks down this year's survey methodology, shares surprising insights from previous years, and explains how your responses help the entire AWS community understand compensation trends, service...

Join us for the final episode of 2025 as Mark Tinderholt (Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft Azure, HashiCorp Ambassador, and author of "Mastering Terraform") teaches us Infrastructure as Code through Minecraft! If you've ever wanted to learn Terraform in a fun, visual way, this is the episode for you. Mark demonstrates how to use the Minecraft Terraform provider to build infrastructure in-g...

Join Du'An Lightfoot, AI Developer at AWS, as he dives deep into building AI agents with the strands framework. In this technical walkthrough, Du'An demonstrates how to create custom AI coding assistants and multi-agent systems in just a few lines of code. Learn how agentic AI frameworks have evolved from basic function calling to sophisticated systems that can rival tools like Cursor and Cloud Co...

Dive into KubeVirt with the vBrownBag crew and guest Eric Shanks! 🎤 Discover how vSphere admins can bridge their virtualization skills into Kubernetes, exploring practical architecture, live migration, and what it really takes to blend VMs and containers. Perfect for anyone facing VMware changes or curious about next-gen infrastructure. 💡🐧 Chapters: 00:00:00 Welcome & Guest Intros 00:06:30 Why...

In this week’s vBrownBag, Principal Software Engineer Dominik Wosiński takes us on a deep dive into Amazon Nova Sonic — AWS’s latest speech-to-speech AI model. Dominik explores how unified voice models like Nova Sonic are reshaping customer experience, DevOps workflows, and real-time AI interaction, with live demos showing just how natural machine-generated speech can sound. We cover what makes sp...

Join the vBrownBag crew for an insightful session with guest (and host!) Damian Karlson as he breaks down OpenStack for VMware administrators. From Broadcom’s shake-up to cultural, operational, and technical migration differences, Damian offers a practical, grounded walk-through of what it means to move from VMware to OpenStack. ☕️ Chapters 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:07:10 – Why organizations are...

Luis is an AWS Community Builder, CTO, and game developer! In this session, you'll learn how to build a live FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV) channel using AWS Elemental MediaLive. We'll walk through the end-to-end process: from ingest and transcoding, to dynamic ad insertion with MediaTailor and VOD integration via MediaConvert. This talk is perfect for engineers, architects, or media professionals lo...

Join an epic panel of AWS Heroes as they dive into their experiences with Kiro, the AI-powered IDE shaking up development workflows. From spec-driven coding to pricing discussions and game demos, this conversation mixes deep tech insights with fun moments. Whether curious about AI's impact on coding or just looking for some cloud community vibes, this session offers laughs, honest feedback, and ex...

Ready to conquer DevOps fearlessly? Watch as Shala Werner walks through “DevOps Without the Oh, ****!” moments—sharing real-world stories, and her creative Terraproof sandbox for breaking things safely (without blowing up production)! Whether you're a seasoned engineer or just getting your feet wet, you’ll pick up new strategies and learn how to turn nerves into a superpower. Stick around for laug...

Unlock essential cloud security lessons with Rajeev Joshi and the vBrownBag team as they explore the most common AWS mistakes: misconfigured S3 buckets, over-permissive IAM, open ports, hard-coded secrets, and blind spots in logging. Hear real-world breach stories and learn practical best practices for safer cloud deployments, whether starting out or leveling up as a security engineer. #CloudSecur...

Snigdha Joshi is a UI/UX Designer: In this session, we unravel how artificial intelligence is redefining the future of creative technology from intuitive UI/UX design to dynamic content creation, generative art, immersive storytelling, and beyond. Gain insight into how AI is unlocking new dimensions of expression, streamlining design processes, and giving rise to transformative career roles at the...

Janvi Bhagchandani is an AWS Community Builder and an AWS Cloud Captian! In this episode she talks about personal branding and self-marketing within the AWS ecosystem while covering aspects like credentials as social proof, visible expertise, community recognition, and other psychological marketing angles that tie these elements together in the AWS context. 00:00 - Intro 05:43 - Cloud Credibility...

In this episode we talk to AWS Hero Brian Hough: Vibe Coding with GenAI is fast and fun — until your app has to actually work in production. That’s when reality hits: fragile APIs, missing auth, surprise AWS bills, strict constraints, and no clear path to scale. In this Dev Chat, I’ll share what it takes to evolve from AI-generated MVPs to real-world, production-ready apps for millions of users. W...

In this episode we talk to Kat Cosgrove, Head of Developer Advocacy at Minimus! We get into a bunch of topics: Horror movies, cannibalism, contributing to open source, how we (sometimes) destroy the things we love😅 Join us for this wide ranging and very informative conversation❤️ 00:00 - Intro 12:20 - Cannibalism! 14:07 - List of great pro-cannibalism movies for your next Thanksgiving family dinn...

Join Josh Lee and the vBrownBag crew for a lively conversation about why DevOps feels like learning a new language, and the real reasons why there aren’t more junior SREs. Explore how layers of abstraction, culture, and tools make breaking in so tough, and hear how mentorship, networking, and a bit of career focus can make all the difference. Whether you’re new to tech or a seasoned engineer, this...

Join Jenn Bergstrom and the vBrownBag crew for a deep dive into chaos engineering for machine learning and AI models. Discover how deliberate failure injection can improve system resilience, explore real-world experiments on AI model vulnerabilities, and learn why testing for failure is critical in today’s fast-moving AI landscape. Whether you’re an engineer, data scientist, or tech leader, this c...

In this episode we talk to Rizel Scarlett - Tech Lead at Block. She talks about vibe coding, MCPs, how to do it right, and then a live demo! Join us for excellent insights & fun! 00:00 - Intro 07:05 - What is "vibe coding"? 13:34 - The Problem 15:22 - Enter MCPs 28:42 - Live Demo! 31:07 - The Dark Side 32:35 - How to be responsible How to find Rizel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rizel-bobb-semple/...

Unlock the power of generative AI for cloud architecture! In this vBrownBag episode, Alex Kearns demonstrates how to build a well-architected review crew using agentic AI, AWS Bedrock, and open-source tools. Learn to automate AWS Well-Architected Framework reviews, leverage knowledge bases, and see a live demo analyzing CloudFormation templates. Whether you're a cloud consultant or developer, disc...

In this episode we talk to Justin Garrison - Head of Product at Sidero Labs, the makers of Talos! The Talos distro is a reimagining of Linux for distributed systems like Kubernetes. Talos strips away everything unnecessary—no shell, no SSH, no package manager—leaving just what you need to run K8s clusters. All system management is done through a secure API, eliminating configuration drift and redu...

The tech landscape is evolving faster than ever! Even if you've been in a traditional Ops role, knowing "how developers do" is essential knowledge. In this talk Andrew Fawcett, Heroku VP of Developer Relations will talk with us about how YOU can evolve your career and your development game using AI the RIGHT way. 🔔 Subscribe to vBrownBag for more expert talks on AWS, AI, cloud computing, and care...

Mike Fiedler, PyPI Safety and Security Engineer for the Python Software Foundation, joins the vBrownBag to talk about risks of software supply chain insecurity, and the concrete actions that software consumers & producers can take to make their software safer. Chapters: 02:12 Introducing Mike 07:20 What is software supply chain security? 08:45 Recent examples of software supply chain compromises 1...

We’re excited to welcome Faye Ellis — Pluralsight instructor, AWS Hero, and one of my favorite people to learn from! In this session, Faye shares inexpensive and accessible ways you can start learning about Foundation Models (FMs), Large Language Models (LLMs), and AI. Whether you’re just starting your AI journey or looking for practical experiments without a huge investment, this episode is packe...