My Content List

What follows is a list of content where I am either featured or I simply had a small part to play. I hope that you find something that helps you in your journey.

PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2024

  • How to Safely “Detonate” Suspicious Content by Steven Judd. As IT professionals, especially if we either dabble or work full-time in Digital Security, there are times when you must check to see if suspicious content is legitimate or malicious. This presentation will discuss and demonstrate three approaches for how to safely check the content, how to implement each approach, and the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. This talk isn’t directly about PowerShell, but PowerShell will be used to speed up the setup and usage of the approaches.

  • Using PowerShell to be a Linux Administrator by Steven Judd Is Linux one of the operating systems you must use and support? (Azure Cloud Shell, anyone?) Or maybe you want to learn Linux. PowerShell will help you. This presentation will cover how to transition from being a Windows Administrator to surviving in an organization that has zero Windows Servers. Come learn about some of the key differences you need to be aware of using PowerShell on Linux vs. Windows. It will also cover some skills that you will need to develop to work with Linux. Finally, it will also show you how you can take your knowledge of PowerShell and apply that to Bash, or really any other scripting language.

  • Rapidly and securely manage your resources with Azure Cloud Shell Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive, authenticated, browser-accessible terminal for managing Azure resources. As a web-based environment, Cloud Shell provides immediate management access from any device with a network connection. Cloud Shell provides access to a range of shells/tools including bash, PowerShell, Azure PowerShell, and Azure CLI. Join Azure Cloud Shell PM Jason Helmick and Shell Expert Steven Judd to quickly manage resources in the cloud and on-premises with Cloud Shell’s “always-up-to-date” tools - and more!

  • Learning PowerShell Is Like Running a Marathon I delivered this career-oriented talk to the OnRamp attendees at the PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2024. Unfortunately, they don’t record these sessions, but I did reprise this talk for the NWA TechFest 2024 conference linked below.

NWA TechFest 2024

  • Learning Is Like Running a Marathon (video forthcoming) I gave this presentation to a group of technical professionals in the Northwest Arkansas area at the NWA TechFest 2024 Conference. Here is the synopsis of the talk:

You don’t become an experienced professional in one day. It takes training, a plan, repetition, setbacks, perseverance, and dedication. This presentation will draw similarities between the process of training for a marathon and the process of learning any skill. Plenty of people want to get better at a skill but don’t know how to do it. I will draw from my experience as a runner and a lifelong learner to show how anyone can improve their skills and career.

PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit 2023

  • Taking Automation to Task by Steven Judd. The Windows Task Scheduler is used to automate tasks. Some of these jobs are simple and short-running and some are not. Your tasks may be unreliable if you use the default settings for a task. With a bit of work and a bit of PowerShell, the Task Scheduler can be used as an enterprise-grade solution, complete with task status, runtime duration, and even a heatmap to show when your tasks are overlapping and where you may be running into a resource capacity issue. Join me as we delve into the details of the Task Manager and use PowerShell to manage, monitor, and map this automation engine.

  • Don’t Destroy Your Datacenter with Azure DevOps. Using Azure DevOps with your data center in the cloud is amazingly useful and powerful. This power can be good and bad. The key is to know where to put in the guardrails and/or the gatekeepers to keep you or someone else from destroying your infrastructure or your applications and potentially destroying your business. Hyperbole? Watch and find out for yourself.

User Groups on YouTube

  • PowerShell Case Sensitivity Training James Brundage and I presented this session to the Pacific PowerShell User Group on May 8th, 2024. In this presentation, we take a humorous look at some of the points where PowerShell did not handle case sensitivity in the way we were expecting or the way we were used to, specifically around cross-platform situations, but in other ways as well. If you have ever experienced some pain and/or frustration with case sensitivity, then join us for some Case Senitivity Training (and hopefully some laughs along with some knowledge).

  • PowerShell Progression: From One-Liners to Advanced Functions with Steven Judd. This is a presentation I gave to the Research Triangle PowerShell User Group (RTPSUG) about an example of the progression from a console command to a script, to a function, and finally an advanced function. I share some best practices to help you advance your PowerShell skills. This presentation is suitable for beginners and intermediate users.

  • April Fools Day: PowerShell Tips, Tricks and Dad Jokes with Steven Judd. This is a “lightning round” style presentation I gave to the RTPSUG where I give a number of what may seem like silly examples of what you can do with PowerShell. However, there are some solid tips and tricks amongst the foolishness. Also, in-between each demo is a custom, written by me, completely unique Dad Joke. So if you want to learn some PowerShell and hopefully either laugh or groan 10+ times, this is the presentation for you.

  • The Right Write Writes Right, Right?. This is a presentation I gave to the RTPSUG where I discuss the various Write-* cmdlets and how and when to use them. This talk is for beginners, intermediate, and advanced users, because we all should be using these cmdlets properly and in a consistent manner. You might just be surprised by what you learn in this presentation.

    UPDATE: I reprised this talk to the Gainesville PowerShell User Group on YouTube here. The reason I’m linking this same presentation is because I updated the Write-Debug section because I had a use case for this cmdlet that I hadn’t had in the previous presentation. Also, there is more interaction in the RTPSUG video, so if you want the chit chat version use the first link. If you want the updated content, use the second link.

    UPDATE2: I reprised this foundational talk for the SQL Saturday Baton Rouge 2024 conference. There isn’t a video of this talk, so click the links above. I recommend the Gainesville for the additional content and better dad joke delivery, but the RTPSUG presentation is more interactive, so pick the one that works best for you. In fact, watch them both. Since I need the watch counters to go up for my presentations, I thank you for your assistance (grin).

Podcasts

The PowerShell Podcast

  • The PowerShell Podcast E120 PowerShell on Linux and Beyond with Steven Judd In this celebration-themed episode of the PowerShell Podcast, Steven Judd makes his long-awaited return. We announce the first PowerShell Podcast MVP winner. We share tips about regex and URL encoding and dive deep into PowerShell on Linux, CloudShell, and becoming a lifelong learner. All this and more!

  • PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit - Steven Judd, PoshWolf (Anthony Howell), Phill Bossman, Dan Hill, and Geoff Schram. It is the last of the bar sessions from the PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit. We talk about everyone’s experiences at Summit 2023. Catch our final interviews from Summit. (I’m the first guest.)

  • RTFM with Steven Judd. In this episode, we have our first returning guest, Steven Judd! Steven gets things started off right by talking about the process of turning a command into a function and how PowerShell provides value each step of the way. Steven convinces Jordan that RegEx is powerful and shares some tips for using it more. We learn about living off the land, how solving a problem can help you understand the technology that you are creating a solution for, and the three most important PowerShell commands. All this, and more, in this wisdom-infused episode.

  • PowerShell and Global DevOps Summit 2022 - The Bar Sessions. This episode features several conversations we captured while at the Global Summit. Ryan Richter talked to us about his experiences attending the OnRamp. Steven Judd talked about helping to run the remote summit, dad jokes, and music. Lastly, we talk with Harjit and Mick from the PowerShell news podcast, where we talk about how our podcasts came about and things we have learned and improved on since we started. (I’m the first guest, again.)

The PowerShell News Podcast

Books

Written on August 26, 2024