Betatalks the podcast

In this episode, we talk to Frank Boucher, a Microsoft Azure professional whose expertise and bilingual service are called upon in many markets. Frank created the ‘Cloud 5 minute’ show on YouTube and writes about his experiences with Microsoft Azure on his blogs. We talk about the benefits of being bilingual in the development community, speaking French and English, and how this helps him share his technical knowledge with others. Also, we wonder what Azure services impressed him the most in recent months. What will the future bring? And what is his take on the fact that more and more new Azure products seem to be a combination of existing services with some extra sauce on top? Touching upon Container Apps, Static Web Apps, Azure Functions, and Logic Apps. And at last, we will talk a bit more about his goals with and his love for creating tech video content on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok, in both his languages, and his URL Shortener project.

About this episode, and Frank Boucher in particular: you can find @fboucheros on Twitter, and on his GitHub. Check out his blogs on 'Frankysnotes' or watch his 'Cloud 5 minute' show on YouTube. Don't forget to also check out his accounts on Twitch and TikTok.

About Betatalks: have a look at our videos and join us on our Betatalks Discord channel

00:00 - Introduction
02:53 - Friend of the day
03:58 - Being bilingual and creating content
08:09 - The role of Frank at Microsoft
10:43 - The future of events
13:30 - The biggest services Frank is using
23:26 - Totally random question
27:55 - More about the content Frank creates
37:16 - Closing

Introduction – 00:00

Rick
Hey there, welcome to Betatalks, the podcast in which we talk to friends from the development community. I'm Rick,

Oscar
And I am Oscar. Hey Rick, what have you been up to?

Rick
We're approaching summer. So ending a lot of projects. And then, as always, the problem in tech is there's so much new shiny stuff I would like to look at. So I'm actually trying to balance time between finishing projects for customers. But also, looking into a couple of new things. We already discussed a couple of times that there is now a few extra backend options for static web apps. And I would really like to at least, try and see how that integration goes as well, since I think the integration with functions is, quote, awesome. But also would like to see how that works with container apps or API management, since I'm seeing more and more customers make the transition towards API management. And potentially also because, well, non web browser traffic is growing exponentially on the internet. So that means that more and more systems are talking to each other, probably doing that through API's. And if you want to market to that API, then API Management is your go to tool, right?

Oscar
Yeah, it seems a couple of years ago, I'm talking about that felt for a lot of customers felt like a bit overkill and stuff. But now I think everyone understand its place, and that exposing your API's is is part of your product in a lot of ways.

Rick
Yeah. Probably, it also helps that they now have the serverless model in there as well. And of course, then you don't get the developer portal if I'm not mistaking. But still you have the power of API Management, which can really help you if you want to market an API as a product

Oscar
Definitely, I'm also looking forward those, those technologies, I think I'm going to just write an abstract for talk about container apps, and then deep dive in myself, you know, me.

Rick
That's how it works, right? You write an abstract.

Oscar
First, you need someone waiting for you with to actually get something because just clicking around, you will no get no further than hello world.

Rick
And then your talk gets picked. And then you need to dive into it.

Oscar
And then yeah, that's for me the best way to learn. It's like you told me once, like, I get those certifications, right? Like, yeah, but I need time to study now you just set a date, and then the rest will fill in itself. And that is the best way for me to enable myself to do stuff like that. So

Rick
then if you do your talk at an event, is that event driven learning or? It is? I'm sorry about that one.

Oscar
Especially if it's about messaging.

Friend of the day – 02:53

Rick
Who is our friend of the day?

Oscar
Our friend of the day is Frank Boucher. With more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry, Frank Boucher is a trusted Microsoft Azure professional whose expertise and bilingual service are relied upon in large Canadian markets, as well as internationally. You can follow him on his YouTube channel, cloud five minutes. Among his many accolades Frank has been awarded four times the Microsoft MVP award, and is also a Microsoft Azure Advisor. Seeking to explore a new medium, Frank created cloud five minute show, where every second week, a new episode that answers different technical question is published in both French and English. As a trusted voice on Microsoft Azure Frank has authored technical book review, and continues to write about his experiences with Microsoft Azure on his two blogs, frankiesnotes.com in English, and cloudenfrancais in French. Welcome, Frank.

Rick
Welcome.

Frank
Hello. Super happy to be here.

Being bilingual and creating content – 03:58

Rick
It's so great to have you. And that's actually quite a thing that you do everything bilingual. Is that a big thing? Is that something that you that you are really passionate about to share your information in both of those languages?

Frank
Yeah, well, for me, like, here in Canada, we have two official languages and in Quebec, the my province like it's a French Francophone, like a French area. So it is very important. But so when I did start, I was doing it in French also because my English was really bad. So I started in French, and very quickly, Microsoft reached out and say, hi, Frank, your video looks very awesome, but we don't understand. Could you could you had subtitles and I was like, not sure. So I did try to use services that was while back so I use services and was since even in French in my video. If I talk about a load balancer, I will say load balancer I won't say the word that it is in French because nobody say that. So any kind of transcriptor was very confused because I was mixing French and English. So that's why I decided, You know what, let's try to make every video in French and English. Did that for a while, but now I kind of changed my mind a little bit. I think the French content or like something non English is very, very important. But I kind of pivot a little bit my focus. So when it's a bigger audience or a quick fix, I will try to do that in English, because people tend to search for problem. And they will then found the videos, I could help them. But when it's time to learn, for example, to pass a certification or something like that, most of the people will prefer doing it in their native language. And that's how I did an experiment once where I was like just kind of sharing my thoughts about how to pass a certain the Azure fundamentals. But I did it in French. And that series of video is running since I did that two years ago, I think and it's still very active, I still receive messages and stuff like that I need to refresh it because the certs the exam changed since I did those recordings. So it is a passion of me because I think it's important that even if you are not fluent or comfortable in English, you should have access to information.

Rick
Yeah, well, I totally agree on that one. And then I think French is a relatively broad spoken language, right?

Frank
Yeah, it's kind of yeah, there's people and like, most major continental speak French, there's a lot in Africa, in America and in Europe also. So like, yeah, there's many people who, who do speak French.,

Oscar
Especially in Europe, there's one particular country where...

Rick
There's quite a few French people there.

Oscar
But also Belgium, right? It's yeah, bilingual. They're.

Rick
Also parts of Austria or maybe Switzerland. So yeah, there's the Dutch not so much. So we most of our content is English only.

Oscar
Yeah, yeah, definitely. But it is it is also a form of accessibility, and especially for one of those courses, like the essentials, which you want to reach a broader audience. And you see that in your stats, apparently, that you will get almost all of them while doing what once another English video, you, you drown into a lot off competition there. Yeah. So it's good. I think it's good. And I think we see that in multiple different countries around us where it's much more in Netherlands pretty, we get raised half in English, I think, here on schools and stuff. So for us, it's not a problem, but also in Germany, like my German friends is, they will prefer content in their own language.

The role of Frank at Microsoft – 08:09

Rick
Yeah. We already dove headfirst into this information about the bilingual. But let's first have a look at what you actually do for a living currently. So you're an advocate, right? Could you explain a bit more what your exact role is and what you do inside of Microsoft?

Frank
Yeah, so I am an employee of Microsoft. I am a cloud advocate, though, I'm a cloud advocate that might be a little bit different than let's say the regulars one. Usually a cloud advocate will be between the product team and the users. In this case, the user will be developer IT DevOps people. And when we have a new feature in a product, let's say they, they released the Azure static web app, then I will learn about it work with the product team, understand how it works, then make presentation, do some videos for the audience. And then get back that feedback. Say, ey, you know what, this feature is great, but it takes eight clicks to do it. Like would it be better if we could do it this way instead? So I will bring back the constructive feedback to the product team kind of filter that build a case and then bring that, that information. So that's a bit more a regular cloud advocate. And for my case, right now, I switched to a team when I was doing the like, prior to 2020. I was doing the Ignite the tour so I was really involved in events. So with COVID, and that hit and everything changed. My role changed also and I become more involved in the major events of Microsoft in the behind the scenes so we'll be building tools. I will be having a different show. Also I had, like I was the show owner and the host of hello world did many select these days, I'm more on the other side of the curtain or like, not in front of the camera directly I will do because I like that. But my role is more like, you know, building tools getting helping other presenter to get better in front of the camera, helping them to see the statistics. So we're leveraging different tools, different platforms to try to aggregate all those analytics in a special tools. So we can see it in, you know, one, one report, and we see all the views on all different platforms and stuff like that.

The future of events – 10:43

Rick
But what's your take on where we are moving now, since you mentioned COVID, and it has shifted the way we look at conferences or events. And of course, Microsoft has had a online only approach for the better part of two years, I think. Where do you think we're going with this? Are we going to go back fully in person? Are we going to go hybrid? Or is there a general idea of which route we're taking.

Frank
And that's hard.

Rick
It is.

Frank
I think people are happy to go back to events. But for many different reasons. Those events are not always accessible for everyone. Because timing, because maybe you have kids or family, you cannot travel much. It's also very time consuming. So sometime like if you need to go on the other side of the ocean, then like your traveling is really impacting your work life and personal life also. So I feel like moving on, we'll see different kinds of hybrids. I don't think my like, it's hard to say, but I would say tomorrow, because we don't know what new tech will, you know, be spawn in like a month. But tomorrow, if you do an event, there's nothing like being on site. Though, the hybrid in the online, made fantastic progress in the last months, it's always better and better and better.

Oscar
You can not really take it away anymore. Like so many people are more able to well virtually visit some events that they normally have, from a different country from a different economy, not even be able to afford it to go cross continents and go to a big event like that. And they all opened up, we used to have .NET conf. That was the only one that was full online. Yeah. And things like Build and stuff had keynotes. But like it became much more of a show for everyone. I think so even though I really love to meet friends again. And like also a guest that we only know from this show, for instance, to see them now at events, it's wonderful. But for the ones not able to do that, like you cannot take that away and just say well, make sure you're there because some people cannot.

Rick
True. So true. What. So we talked about the fact that that you work more and more, let's say behind the scenes as far as the big events go. But still you probably still use tech, right?

Frank
Oh, yeah.

The biggest services Frank is using – 13:30

Rick
So what are the biggest services that you're using? Looking at what Azure has to offer? Or maybe a better question would be what's the service that has impressed you? Most? The, the last, let's say a couple of months?

Frank
That's a good question. The app service I really like. I didn't try yet the container app. Though, Anthony. I know Anthony. I was really happy when he was talking about that. The one that I use, you know, this morning, and yesterday, it was the static web app, the Azure function. I was looking into the API management, I was hearing you talking about it earlier. I use API Management very long time ago at the beginning, even I was working for Microsoft partner and we even kind of guide or help for a v2 of APM. But that's been a very long time. So I'm right now I would say the server less static web app logic apps big consumer of logic app I do a lot of things it's one of my favorite.

Rick
It's, it's so relatively easy to start doing stuff with Logic Apps.

Frank
Oh yeah. I've been doing Logic Apps for a very long time, really liked that. It's in my environment. I know recently, I also tried the on the office 365 side, or they call it M 360. I've forgotten the new name, but the power automate, yeah. Use that for during a hackathon. And I was very impressed. I was like, oh, it gets, it's good. Like, I can do many different things I feel at home, if I was in a kind of a different environment. So very happy. It's very easy to jump in and very powerful.

Rick
Yeah, yeah, it is. And I can also imagine that, looking at the future, we're going to see more and more of these types of services where either we're going low code, or maybe even no code. Also, if we look now at the fact that Microsoft has power pages in Preview under the power platform, but on the other hand, and you also already mentioned static web apps, more and more services within Azure seem to look like a combination of several services with some extra sauce on top that makes it a great new product. And I think static web apps is one of them. Is that something that's growing like this because of requests out of the market? Or is it because we are nearing a point where most of the past services have been thought up already?

Frank
And that's a good question. I would say that it is definitely because of people are asking that. Microsoft have been listening and trying to improve their services by providing what people want, like, you know, when I start Azure, it was only worker role and web role. Yeah, now there are so many services.

Rick
We know the old portal with only five or six services. And that was it.

Frank
So many different portals.

Oscar
That menu didn't scale.

Frank
Oh, yeah, we need to scroll for a long, long time. Yeah, so I feel that there's definitely new product that, that can be created. But we've been doing packages for a long time. And I think it's, it's a very great way to respond to some needs. Static webapp is a fantastic one. But there's many others where you develop an application on your mobile device. So you want you want like some services. So you have a back end database and stuff like that. So packaging services is wonderful, because it's a win, win. Everybody's happy after that. I think it's it's definitely something we'll see more though, like, I'm not in good secrets. But I think it makes sense that we grow that way. But just because that's what people need.

Rick
And of course, it's also about the, the level of control you have, right? I mean, the level the services, the more control you have, and the more let's say put together a services of several components.

Oscar
It's more of a scenario based service, right? You want to host your site with this for low cost, so they can really fine tune. You need these components for it, because everything underneath we already kind of knew. But those baggage services, which are for a scenario, and from there grow, like the way static web apps go got introduced really early with.

Rick
It was JavaScript only.

Oscar
Yeah, it was it was almost nothing yet. But everyone saw like, well, this is perfect thing that we don't have at the moment without, well, let's say that the static content hosting on storage accounts and stuff wasn't wasn't that great.

Rick
That was different. But probably, I mean, it was, as far as I'm concerned, at least relatively clear that static web apps initially was targeting JavaScript full stack developers, and no JS, JavaScript API's JavaScript front end. And now it's growing up and becoming more and more a developed or mature service. But somehow, I really still get the feeling like it was meant to be maybe somewhat of a Netlify killer not killer maybe but at least an answer to something that Netlify provided...

Oscar
In the first generation like everyone like you and me while I didn't do it was like you definitely but having some private websites or website for some. Some I don't know for your soccer club or for whatever, like you can host on that for peanuts and it was good enough and was actually more than you would normally expect. So, so real cool scenarios are also see now with container apps. It's finding the necessity, like enough of abstraction, just enough control for different scenario. And I think a lot of new services will fill in those gaps.

Frank
And container apps, though, like, like I mentioned, I didn't try it. But I think it also fill a gap where your app need more than one container, but not enough to justify Kubernetes or something like that. And

Rick
the management that goes together with hosting a Kubernetes service, right?

Frank
Yeah. So I feel like that fills a gap. So it's really again, responding to the demand. And of course, like, if you're building something huge, maybe eventually you will say, You know what, maybe static web app is not what we need. We need like, a full dedicated service with all the API's. And maybe we need containers are we like you, you know, you could migrate, but for maybe 80% of the needs? Are people trying to jump in and do a little website? Or even like a good website, static web app will be perfect, because it scales you have certificate that, that so many stuff in it. It's really, I'm always surprised,

Oscar
Why wouldn't it be enough for most big things, even, especially now with being able to plug in those alternative backends on the API side, like, everything is there and you'd like a couple of years ago, you needed like five, six different Azure components to set something up. And I think the budget would have been 1000 times as high to be able to host something similar.

Rick
Yeah. But the cool thing is, if you look at the option you had before static web apps, you would probably do front door or something with CD, and you will do maybe static website hosting on a storage account. But then also, you had a lot of control, which means you have a lot of responsibility to configure stuff the right way. While if you look now at a service, like static web app, you can have the enterprise grade edge, but you configure it in a JSON file. And that's because we're developers, and we know how that stuff works. So we have that static web config dot JSON. And that's where you define the rules for your for your edge. And I tested it out last last week. That works great as well,.

Frank
Without forgetting all the DevOps tools that are so easy integrated with a static web app. So like, now you could have a pipeline or like GitHub action, pushing your stuff running your test environment, like all those steps, those processes are very easy. Kind of, hey, you know what this is, you should use that and kind of already helping you guiding you to use them.

Oscar
You're almost forgetting about that.

Rick
True, my go to demo, if I want to convince anybody of static web apps is...

Oscar
Pull request, right?

Rick
It's create a pull request and see that there's a new environment with the result of the pull request just ready right there after the build is done. I mean, I mean, how we need this in every production environment we have right.

Frank
This is great. I love that part of it, too.

Rick
Yeah, I did too.

Totally random question – 23:26

Oscar
Hey, Rick. Do you know what time it is?

Rick
Is it Already Time for a totally random question? It's time for a totally random question. Frank?

Frank
Yes?

Rick
What is the weirdest meal you have ever eaten?

Oscar
That's random, Rick.

Rick
So well, while we give you a chance to think about this one, I don't want to say this is weird. I just the one thing I ever hear about food and Canada is poutine. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing this correctly. But after you answer our totally random question, I would like to know what that is. But, but first let's let's move to your to your answer.

Frank
I was about to say exactly that it's a for the rest of the world who would probably be poutine. But for me, that's not I don't know, I think I like to try different meals. So I don't think I ever found something really strange. Probably, you know, something that doesn't look good, like an oyster or something like that. But at the same time, it's not weird or anything it just like, you know, by yourself if someone else don't tell you yeah, it tastes great. You won't probably try it. So I like to try different foods.

Rick
And then sometimes you think what was the first person trying this thinking at the point?

Frank
Yeah, must be really, really hungry by then.

Rick
Probably. But please tell us a bit about it. We put in you said.

Frank
Yeah, yeah. Poutine is like the, it's okay. Okay, people are very sensitive on how you say it, but I think if you're close enough, so it's just french fries. And then you will have it say that cheese Curtin, like cheese. Yeah, cheese court, we call that cut du fromage in French. So it's like an inappropriate word in English. And then there's the sauce is kind of a gravy that you put on top of it. And it's just really comfort food is really good. I know for a lot of people doesn't look good or appealing. But it is very taste like french fries, good chees is good. So you mix those two. That's really nice.

Rick
Double good, right?

Frank
And then the gravy is just to have a bit of fat on, on, on everything and kind of bound those two flavor togethers. So yeah.

Rick
I'm not really sure...

Frank
I prefer my poutine with not too much gravy. Definitely with, with the sauce.

Rick
I'm not really sure if Oscars thinking the same thing with this sounds a lot like kapsalon.

Oscar
Like I was, my brain was going there. Indeed. I love these kinds of meals everywhere.

Rick
Just, just so you know, we have kapsalon, which is actually a hairdresser salon translated in Dutch.

Oscar
Yeah, there's a whole story around. Like basically, it's also French fries. Stack kebab on top of it. Then melt cheese into it.

Rick
And then a little bit of a lettuce.

Oscar
No, well first to have the sauces like really hot sauce and garlic sauce and then on top of the lettuce and tomato cucumbers to make it look like salad but it's absolutely enough calories for a week. I love those. Like it's so...

Frank
See you're, you're they're pretty close. They do variation. So once I went to a restaurant who did like a menu, and you had one with like, fancy meat or something like that, sometimes they put hotdog sausages inside. You have plenty of variation of the putting, but the classic one that's you know, and everybody's saying they made the best one. So there's always that little fight yada. We created the poutine. And...

Rick
That's exactly the same with kapsalon over here because I think there's this big rivalry between, between Rotterdam and...

Oscar
It's only Rotterdam.

Rick
But everybody thinks that they created it. So.

Oscar
There's only one place that started it.

Rick
You, you're a bit biased.

Oscar
But it's no it's actually but no, that's that's everywhere the same. But it's, it's fun. I still never tried it. I always wanted to but.

Rick
You haven't?!

Oscar
Well the kapsalon I did of course. No not the putain.

More about the content Frank creates - 27:55

Rick
Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's switch back a little bit again into into the tech content since you do a lot of videos. But you don't only do them on YouTube. I seen you go Twitch. And I've seen I think I've seen you on TikTok as well. So what, what's your main goal? Is that because different groups of developers are on different media? Are you just wanting to spread the word as as broadly as you can?

Frank
It's definitely not because I want to become famous.

Rick
You don't want to be TikTok famous.

Frank
Oh, no.

Rick
Are you sure? You should do a dance that probably helps.

Oscar
The dances work I heard.

Frank
Oh, I'm not sure. I'm not sure guys. No like, like, I do video content on many different platforms, even one that learn TV or like that are Microsoft properties. Like I mentioned, like I was the host of hello world. So different platform because different audience. I started using YouTube. Just because when I was telling something to one of my clients, it's okay to deploy this you should do this way. They didn't listen to me. So I did a video on YouTube and then shared a video and then now oh, it's on YouTube. So it must be true. So they were following that. So that's how I kind of start this. And eventually, some people notice and some video got many views. And it was harder and harder for me to do that. Because I know I'm a cloud advocate and I did many presentations and many videos but I'm shy. So doing videos is really hard. So I'm always pushing myself. And the thing that I found hard when I was doing YouTube videos well hard and not hard is I'm alone. I do that I talk only to my camera so it's easy because I'm alone. I have no spectators. But also you don't have any feedback.

Rick
That's the problem as well with with doing a session from home on a conference, right? You throw all your energy at the camera, and it just stands there, blinking black or doing nothing.

Oscar
Yeah, I remember we doing some webinars together, and we were in different locations, staring at a black hole and talking and hoping the other side will see it. And there was even a delay. So awkward comparing to other things we do.

Frank
Yeah. So that's one thing I did try to break when I was doing Hello, world, the show. But that's also why I started live coding on Twitch. That was really to okay, I want to talk to the audience. I want to see, am I doing it right? Should I focus more on that part that I think it's easy? Like, yeah, just do .NET new to start a new application in .NET. And for me, it's, it's trivial, but maybe for the audience. Hey, well, what? What did you just do now? So like doing it on Twitch, there's the chat over there. So I did start doing that. And for me, I'm always kind of pushing myself. Very, as far as I can out of my comfort zone. So many times, that's okay. You know what, I have no idea how to code in JavaScript. Last time I code in JavaScript was like, 19 years ago, let's try to make a chatbot in JavaScript. So.

Oscar
Javascript changed by then.

Frank
Yeah. jQuery to something was very famous back then. And now I was like, Okay, let's try to use different framework and things like that. And, and my point was really, because some when you look videos, and like, I was really doing it also for the audience, because my goal was not  hey you know what, let's look stupid. But it was, when you look videos or expert, you think they got it right all the time. And I was like, no, like, we I search all the time for what I'm looking for, like, I copy paste, like anybody else from you know, famous website.

Rick
You have the keyboard or you don't. I think that's the site you're talking about, right?

Frank
So my goal was like, okay, you know, what's important when we pick tech, as our job our career, what you do, in fact, is you choose learning. So the important point is learning how to learn. And that's what I was trying to do and have fun and build stuff. Because I think I'm a creative creator. I don't know, you know, like, I like to build stuff. So I was like, okay, let's do Twitch for that. And that's why I had a lot of fun doing that. And TikTok. That was mostly an experiment. I did some video in French, I did some video in English. See what? Like, I'm not regular on that one I should be, but at the same time, it's priorities. But sometime, like on Friday, I wake up, I have an idea. I was like, okay, let's do it. And then I take 30 minutes, you know, record the video, publish the video, and then I'm done. Like that. And feedback. Good. The response is awesome. Like, immediately on all platform, I'm probably very lucky, I always have a great experience with the audience. No bullying, no, nothing. Always great feedback, a lot of questions and things like that. And that's why I do it. So I'm always okay, you know what, you asked me a question, then I will take the time. And I will answer your question. And if I can make a video to answer your question, that's even better, I think.

Rick
Yeah, because, I mean, that works, right? Some people learn by reading, and some people learn by watching and the cool thing about a video, is that you can see how somebody is doing it. Most of the time, it's also written down somewhere in the vicinity of the video, or you can also listen to somebody explaining why and how they are doing things. So it actually combines the three different types of learning probably together, enabling people to pick whatever they need to pick to learn stuff.

Oscar
Yeah, and even if you're hitting on a topic that someone else already did, because YouTube is full of videos, but the way you speak the way you explain like everyone else has a different way of learning and thinking about that. So I think like you if you're a creator want to be like also don't get challenged about this stuff is already out there. Because you will have a nuance in there a way of explaining or maybe indeed in your native language to reach an audience that would normally not have normal access to this video or to this content.

Frank
Yeah. Another thing also is, by doing the video in English, well, I will probably speak slower, I will use simpler vocabulary. And then for non native English, they will prefer that compared to a native English will speak with maybe a little bit more complex vocabulary, speak faster and things like that. So my, my video will be interesting, because oh, I can understand what he's saying. Because he's speaking slower. That was also feedback that I got on my video. Oh, like, you're so nice. Like, I can understand what you're saying. Thank you for speaking slowly. And it was okay. I was just like, I was doing my best to speak fast. But yeah, I think that helped.

Oscar
Well, unexpected. You see, you see that you never know where you add the value comparing to something else.

Frank
Yeah. And like you said, your background. So like, when I did videos on DevOps, my background was a developer, not an IT pro. So I was, I was all about, but now it's really trending. But that was all about coding my environment, like the infrastructure, infrastructure as code. I've been focusing on that for a while. Compared to other people would prefer VMs. And was like, no, no, no, no, like, I want to script I want to build that don't I don't want to maintain VMs. I'm not friend. I think networks don't like me. I'm really bad with networks. It's always been very hard for me. But yeah, I think your, your background, put some color in your video. And I think that's even if you're talking like yet another video about static web apps and sweet. We talked so much about static web app, your video will be different because there's a flavor like in it. That, that's interesting.

Rick
And it's something that makes it personal. And that could be maybe even your tone of voice or your your accent might actually help people understand better because it's an accent close to theirs or, I mean, there's all types of nuances in videos that can actually help people understand stuff easier.

Closing – 37:16

Oscar
Yep. Is there anything Frank that we missed? Or you'd like to get back to?

Frank
No, like, I've been, I've been active in the community, I'm coming back kind of thing. I've been working behind the scene. And now I'm starting again to stream I will start to do more videos. Again, no promises on like the frequency yet. Because it's July at Microsoft, so anything can happen. But no, like right now. Like I'm working on my open source project. I built a URL shortener got some traction over there, I built that for myself, few people jumped in. So I'm trying to upgrade it since Azure static web app changed and Azure Function changed, and now everything is broken. So I need to upgrade and like make make make it simpler and easier to use and everything. So Rusty, and I need to learn back my, my .NET skills.

Rick
And of course, you need to use all the new shiny bits instead of the bits that you're using currently, right.

Frank
In fact, no. I don't need to, but I will. Because like, for example, the so my URL shortener, I create that because nobody, wants, will remember a very long URL that showed in a video. So that's why I built my URL shortener. So I could have like a very short link, that is easy to remember. So I use Azure function to the redirect part. And I was like, oh, let's try to build an admin interface using static web app. But when I did use that static web app was in preview. So it changed so much. Now, that identity is not done the same way function now is had so much evolve with .NET, .NET, just .NET has changed. Now I want to use .NET, six for many different good reasons. So it's not that I want to but I need to because right now, if people are trying to deploy that, well, it doesn't work very well. It's complicated. And the goal of that was for anybody, I want my grandma to be able to deploy and use a like I want a one click or something very easy to have a URL shortener. So people can use it and have their own stats. I want it simple. I want to kind of a use case also to, hey, this is how you deploy an Azure function. This is how you build a static web app. And after that, people loved it and create a bunch of different tools. Some people were using Share points to create lists like the community jumped on that thing and create many different tools. So it was, I feel like I cannot, I cannot leave it dying, and I need to make it, you know, refresh it.

Oscar
Sometimes it's hard if you've put some example out there and like couple of years later, you know, like this GitHub example that I put out, just, just to show someone something. Oh, but it's like, three versions behind and like, this package is actually deprecated. Like, do you just put a date in your calendar once a month to clean everything up? Like it's also hard because then the blog post points to something that doesn't work anymore. It's sometimes a bit of an issue to put stuff in time. Yeah, we're doing this for, for people to use it. So I think cleaning it up makes sense.

Rick
And to make sure that people can find it, we will add a link to your project in the episode description.

Oscar
Yeah, definitely. And so much looking forward to your new content on all the channels.

Rick
So thank you very much for being here today, Frank.

Frank
It was a pleasure. Really, really happy to be here.

Rick
Thanks.

Oscar
Thank you for listening to Betatalks the podcast, we publish a new episode every two weeks.

Rick
You can find us on all the major streaming platforms like Spotify and iTunes.

Oscar
See you next time.

Rick
Bye.