vBrownBag

Join us as Cobus Bernard takes us on a live tour of his sprawling homelab - and explains why Claude wrote most of the Terraform and Ansible running it.

Cobus walks through a Proxmox setup running Traefik, Vault, Nomad, Keycloak, and a three-node Kubernetes cluster that doesn't quite work yet, all built by handing infrastructure-as-code tasks to Claude and slowly deciding how much of it to trust with real commands. You will learn how Cobus structures Terraform state and variables so an AI agent can safely extend it, why he still won't let Claude run terraform apply unsupervised, how MCP servers control what an agent is allowed to touch, and why confabulation might be a better word than hallucination for what these models actually do.

Timestamps

0:00 Welcome & Introduction

8:50 What's Running in the Home Lab - Proxmox, Traefik, and Vault

• 13:48 A Kubernetes Cluster That Doesn't Work Yet

How to find Cobus:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cobusbernard/

Links from the show:

Join us as Faye Ellis breaks down what responsible AI actually looks like in practice on Amazon Bedrock - live demos included, straight from her prep for the AWS Generative AI Developer Professional certification.

Faye walks through the NIST AI risk framework's core characteristics of trustworthy systems, then demos two hands-on builds: a RAG pipeline using S3 Vectors as a low-cost knowledge base, and Bedrock Guardrails blocking financial advice, prompt injection attacks, and sensitive information in real time. You'll learn the difference between prompt engineering and guardrails, how contextual grounding checks catch hallucinations before they reach a user, why data cleaning and deduplication matter as much for cost and sustainability as for bias, and what Faye wishes she'd known going into one of AWS's hardest professional-level exams.

Timestamps

0:00 Welcome & Introduction

9:28 What Makes an AI System Trustworthy - The NIST Framework

• 15:19 Famous AI Failures - From ChatGPT Code Leaks to Biased Systems

How to find Faye:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/fayeellis/

https://app.pluralsight.com/profile/author/faye-ellis

Links from the show:

https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/

https://skillbuilder.aws/

https://aws.amazon.com/certification/

Join us as John Mark Troyer and Rakesh Gupta break down what AI observability actually means once agents leave the demo and hit production - and why the old playbook for monitoring doesn't cut it anymore.

John Mark and Rakesh walk through why errors and latency are just the starting point for agents, how quality became a much harder thing to measure once bots went from answering questions to taking autonomous action, and why token-based costs are creating a confusing new economics problem for engineering teams. You'll learn the difference between online and offline evals, why a new engineering role has emerged just to build testing harnesses for agents, how trace data works differently when every prompt is its own trace, and what teams are doing to catch prompt injection and other AI-specific failure modes before they become expensive mistakes.

Timestamps

0:00 Welcome & Introduction

3:20 Full Disclosure - Observe, Snowflake, and How This Conversation Started

7:07 From Developer Concerns to Boss's Boss's Boss - Spending Out of Control

8:29 What Actually Gets Measured - Errors, Latency, Quality, and Cost

• 10:30 The Casino Chip Problem - Confusing Token Pricing Models

How to find John Mark:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmarktroyer/

How to find Rakesh:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rg0/

Links from the show:

Join us as Bob Belderbos breaks down how to actually learn new skills and languages in a world where AI can write the code for you before you've even finished the thought.

Bob shares why he taught himself Rust the hard way, how keeping deliberate friction in your learning process protects you from skill atrophy, and why AI is incredible at explaining concepts but dangerous as a crutch for understanding them. You'll learn the difference between using AI to explain versus using it to do, how to structure a project-based learning path with tests as your guide, why coding autocomplete might be quietly hollowing out your skills, and how his Python and Rust cohorts are teaching professional engineers to use agents without losing ownership of their code.

Timestamps

0:00 Welcome & Introduction

1:09 Bob's Background - From VBA to Python to Rust

4:39 Why Learn Rust When Python Already Works

• 11:43 AI as a Learning Assistant vs. a Socratic Teacher

How to find Bob:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bbelderbos/

https://belderbos.dev/

Links from the show:

Join us as Du'An digs into the real mechanics of running AI locally and in production - from GPU memory math to multi-agent architectures, observability, and the economics of self-hosted inference.

Du'An walks through how model weights and KV cache compete for GPU memory, why continuous batching matters when you have more than a handful of users, and how agent architectures like single-agent, workflow, graph, swarm, and supervisor patterns each solve different problems. You will learn how to instrument your agents with Langfuse for observability and cost tracking, when to use Ollama versus vLLM, how prompt caching can cut provider costs by up to 75%, and why GPUs should never sit idle. Episode two of three - the next episode covers deploying at scale.

Timestamps

0:00 Welcome & Introduction

1:47 Du'An's New Role at Akamai Cloud

3:10 Data Privacy and the Case for Self-Hosted AI

7:21 Anthropic and OpenAI as the New Cloud Layer

• 12:48 Local Models for Specific Use Cases - Cancer Detection Example

How to find Du'An:

https://duanlightfoot.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/duanlightfoot/

Links from the show:

https://langfuse.com/

https://github.com/akamai-developers/akamai-workshop-solution-architect-agent

https://amzn.to/4bvHn1p

https://vllm.ai/

Join us as Thorsten breaks down how everyday people - small business owners, retirees, hobbyists, and anyone who isn't a developer - can use AI to get real things done without writing a single line of code.

Thorsten runs an AI roundtable for small and medium businesses in Germany and shares hands-on use cases from his own life and clients: a family recipe database built entirely on a mobile phone, 13 months of fitness data analyzed into actionable coaching, a personal AI project manager that reads his calendar and meeting transcripts, and real-world implementations for a dental practice and a tax advisory firm. You will learn how to think about AI as a team you never had, why prompts are the new apps, how to handle privacy and data regulations, and how to start this week with just one task.

Timestamps

0:00 Welcome & Introduction

5:17 Who Is Thorsten and What Is Normal People AI

8:51 The Recipe Database Use Case

• 16:46 Fitness Tracking and Personal Coaching

How to find Thorsten:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hoegertn/

Links from the show:

Join us as Dave walks through what it actually takes to build custom AI agents from scratch - not theory, but real projects he has shipped for his family, his work, and his community.

Dave shares how he used Kiro and Claude to solve real problems: normalizing flood-damaged library inventory data, automating AWS well-architected review collateral, building a room-cleaning task agent for his 12-year-old, planning family menus with Apple Calendar integration, and post-processing live concert recordings. You will learn how agents reason and take action, when to reach for a Kiro power versus a simpler automation, how MCP servers connect agents to real-world tools, and practical strategies for keeping agents accurate without burning through tokens.

Timestamps

0:00 Welcome & Introduction

7:57 Dave's Background and How He Got Started with Agents

• 13:00 The Library Flood Story - First Real-World Agent Use Case

How to find Dave:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-stauffacher/

Links from the show:

https://kiro.dev/

Join us as Dale Orders (AWS Community Builder, four-time All Builders Welcome participant from Australia) walks through everything you need to know about getting to AWS re:Invent completely free - flights, hotel, conference pass, and more.

Dale shares her personal journey from being rejected the first time to attending four AWS conferences through the All Builders Welcome grant program, including two as a mentor. You'll learn the exact eligibility criteria, what the grant actually covers (flights, accommodation, Uber vouchers, a prepaid Visa card, and a free AWS exam voucher), how to write an application that stands out, and the one thing that will get yours rejected immediately. Dale also covers what happens after you're accepted, how to handle the visa process if you're outside the US, and a full list of other tech conference grant programs beyond AWS. Applications typically open in late June - this episode is your head start.

Timestamps

0:00 Welcome & Introduction

4:11 What is the All Builders Welcome Program?

8:03 Dale's Journey: Rejected Once, Accepted Four Times

• 11:07 Eligibility Criteria & Who Should Apply

How to find Dale:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-orders/

Links from the show:

Join us as Dale Orders (AWS Community Builder, four-time All Builders Welcome participant from Australia) walks through everything you need to know about getting to AWS re:Invent completely free - flights, hotel, conference pass, and more.

Dale shares her personal journey from being rejected the first time to attending four AWS conferences through the All Builders Welcome grant program, including two as a mentor. You'll learn the exact eligibility criteria, what the grant actually covers (flights, accommodation, Uber vouchers, a prepaid Visa card, and a free AWS exam voucher), how to write an application that stands out, and the one thing that will get yours rejected immediately. Dale also covers what happens after you're accepted, how to handle the visa process if you're outside the US, and a full list of other tech conference grant programs beyond AWS. Applications typically open in late June - this episode is your head start.

Timestamps

0:00 Welcome & Introduction

4:11 What is the All Builders Welcome Program?

8:03 Dale's Journey: Rejected Once, Accepted Four Times

• 11:07 Eligibility Criteria & Who Should Apply

How to find Dale:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-orders/

Links from the show:

Join us as Mike Fiedler (AWS Hero, PyPI Safety & Security Engineer, Python Software Foundation) makes the case for eliminating long-lived credentials from your release workflow - before an attacker does it for you.

Mike walks through the real-world incidents that motivated Trusted Publishing, how OIDC-based short-lived tokens work under the hood, and the step-by-step process for setting it up in GitHub Actions. You'll learn how the 2024 Ultralytics compromise was forensically investigated thanks to Sigstore attestations, why that API token in your repo is just a password with a fancy hat, common pitfalls that will have you debugging for four hours, and why deleting your old token after setup is the step everyone forgets. PyPI went from 10% Trusted Publishing adoption in February 2024 to 36% today - this episode is how you become part of that number.

Timestamps

0:00 Welcome & Introduction

4:00 Mike's PyCon US World Tour Recap

8:00 The Scale of PyPI: 13B Requests/Day & 36% Adoption

• 12:09 Why Long-Lived Tokens Fail: Four Attack Models

How to find Mike:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/miketheman/

https://www.python.org/psf-landing/

Links from the show: