Livestreams

A selection of upcoming and previous livestreams.

Upcoming

Previous streams

Learning Pieces for Developers

Learning Pieces for Developers: JimBobBennett & Ben Dechrai

In today's live stream, Jim is joined by Ben Dechrai, Head of developer relations at Arcjet, a security layer for developers. Using Pieces as his trusty assistant as always, Jim will be learning how to add security to his APIs with Ben's help.

Learning Pieces for Developers: JimBobBennett & Daniel Maher

In today's live stream, Jim learns about access control with Daniel 'Phrawzty' Maher, senior devrel manager at Carbos, a tool to implement, manage, and delegate fine-grained access control. Can Jim leverage Pieces to help him implement access control with Daniel's help? Come join us and find out!

Learning Pieces for Developers: JimBobBennett & Dan Holdsworth

In today's live stream Jim is joined by Dan Holdsworth, Dev Rel at roadmap.sh, a community effort to create roadmaps, guides and other educational content. Dan will be teaching Jim all about roadmap, and together they will try to create one for Pieces. If you are interested in creating roadmaps or other tech guides, or just want to geek out on learning content then come join us!

Learning Pieces for Developers: JimBobBennett & Björn Büttner

In today's stream, Jim is joined by Björn Büttner a PHP developer from Germany. After joking that the last stream Jim did should have used a different language, Björn agreed to join Jim to teach him the basics of PHP. Jim will be using Pieces to help him learn as Björn shows that PHP is an amazing language as they try to build a ToDo app.

Learning Pieces for Developers: JimBobBennett & Rishab Kumar

In today's stream, Jim is joined by Rishab Kumar, Staff Developer Evangelist at Twilio. Twilio are running an AI challenge to build an AI powered app using Twilio services, so in this stream Jim and Rishab will try to build an SMS copilot!

Learning Pieces for Developers: JimBobBennett & Bishwajeet Parhi

On today's stream, Jim is joined by Bishwajeet Parhi, an AppWrite hero and Flutter developer. Jim is new to Flutter, the underlying UI tech stack for the Pieces apps, so in this stream Bishwajeet will be helping Jim to get started with Flutter, and obviously Pieces will be helping along the way!

Learning Pieces for Developers: JimBobBennett & Ellie Zubrowski

Join JimBobBennett (Head of Developer Advocacy @ Pieces.app) & Ellie Zubrowski (Freelance Software Developer) as they learn the Pieces for Developers suite of products.

MLH Global hack week - AI/ML, August 2024

Supercharge your Student Journey with AI using Pieces

Discover how to enhance your academic journey with Pieces for Developers. Learn to use Pieces to streamline your study habits, organize notes, and boost productivity, making your student life more efficient and enjoyable.

liblab live

liblab live March 2024 | Our first monthly livestream of all things new in SDK generation

On this episode, Jim is joined by Dales, an engineer at liblab to talk about our newly released v2 Python SDK generation.

Machine Learning for Beginners

ML for Beginners - introduction to Machine Learning

🤖 Welcome to the first of our Machine Learning livestreams! In this episode, Jim and Bea Stollnitz from Microsoft introduce Machine Learning, covering the basics of what it is, what you need to know to be successful in learning ML, and answering real-world questions from our live audience.

ML for Beginners - introduction to Machine Learning Q&A

🤖 Welcome to the second of our Machine Learning livestreams! In this episode, Jim and Bea Stollnitz from Microsoft continue to introduce Machine Learning, answering real-world questions from our live audience around careers, responsible AI, and more.

Crack code interview problems in Python

Episode 1 - Sudoku validator

Come watch ‘experts' try (and possibly fail) to solve coding challenges in Rust! In this episode, Jim is joined by Jay Miller, a Python developer advocate at Microsoft and together they try to crack a sudoku validator problem.

Episode 2 - Sudoku validator continues

Come watch ‘experts' try (and possibly fail) to solve coding challenges in Rust! In this episode, Jim is joined by Dr Sarah Kaiser, a Python developer advocate at Microsoft and together they continue to try to crack the sudoku validator problem from last week.

Episode 3 - Sudoku validator continues

Come watch ‘experts' try (and possibly fail) to solve coding challenges in Rust! In this episode, Jim is joined by Jay Miller and Dr Sarah Kaiser, both Python developer advocates at Microsoft and together they continue to try to finish the sudoku validator problem from the last two weeks.

Crack code interview problems in Rust

Season 1, Episode 1 - Number of Islands problem

Come watch ‘experts' try (and possibly fail) to solve coding challenges in Rust! In this episode, Jim is joined by Ryan Levick from the Rust Foundation board and together they try to crack the number of islands problem.

Season 1, Episode 2 - Conway's game of life

Season 1, Episode 3 - Conway's game of life continues

Come watch ‘experts' try (and possibly fail) to solve coding challenges in Rust! In this episode, Jim is joined by Yosh Wuyrt, a Rust developer advocate and together they try to finish the implementation of Conway's game of life from last week.

Season 2, Episode 1 - Word Search problem

Come watch ‘experts' try (and possibly fail) to solve coding challenges in Rust! In this episode, Jim is joined by Nell Shamrell-Harrington from the Rust Foundation board and together they try to crack a word search problem.

Season 2, Episode 2 - Word Search continues

Season 2, Episode 3 - Word Search refactoring and can CoPilot solve the problem?

Come watch ‘experts' try (and possibly fail) to solve coding challenges in Rust! In this episode, Jim is joined by Nell Shamrell-Harrington, a Rust developer advocate and together they refactor their solution to the word search problem from last week, and see if GitHub CoPilot can do a better job.

Tech Career Tips - Sea of Nerds

Tech career tips from educators at Microsoft – Sea of Nerds

For this session, our crew is joined by Jennifer Ritzinger, the General Manager of the Next Generation Experiences team at Microsoft, and Pablo Veramendi, director of audience evangelism and the brains behind the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador and Imagine Cup programs.

Tech career tips from graduate hires at Microsoft – Sea of Nerds

For this session, our crew is joined by a couple of young pirates who interned at Microsoft in different ways before taking graduate roles with the company. Tessa Wiedmann started as an engineer, but being a former Student Ambassador jumped at the chance to help grow this program! Gustavo Cordido joined under more locked down circumstances, doing a virtual internship at the start of the pandemic. That experience didn't put him off a life on the ocean waves, and he joined Microsoft as a developer advocate when he graduated.

Tech career tips from interns at Microsoft – Sea of Nerds

For this session, our crew is joined by a group of young pirates who recently interned at Microsoft.

Tech career tips from game developement educators – Sea of Nerds

In this episode our crew is joined by Professor Chris Headleand, the head of the department of games design and technology at Staffordshire University in the UK. As our crew quest for gold, they will be talking about topics including learning games development, how to get internships and jobs with games companies, what tools there are to help you create games, and more!

IoT for Beginners

Lesson 1: Introduction to IoT

This lesson covers some of the introductory topics around the Internet of Things, and shows a basic ‘Hello World' project with a microcontroller.

Lesson 1: Introduction to IoT - office hours

As a follow up to what was covered in the last ‘IoT for beginners' session, join Jim for an open office hour where you can ask questions relating to the material that has been covered in the series so far, getting explanations of the concepts taught, diving deeper into theory or practice, or getting troubleshooting help on your IoT journey.

Lesson 2: A Deeper Dive into IoT

This lesson dives deeper into some of the concepts covered in the last lesson. The two components of an IoT application are the Internet and the thing, and this lesson dives deeper into both of these, covering different types of ‘things', including microcontrollers and single-board computers. It then looks at the different ways these ‘things' can use the Internet.

Lesson 2: A Deeper Dive into IoT - office hours

As a follow up to what was covered in the last ‘Introduction to dev kit hardware' session, join Jim for an open office hour where you can ask questions relating to the material that has been covered in the series so far, getting explanations of the concepts taught, diving deeper into theory or practice, or getting troubleshooting help on your IoT journey.

Lesson 3: Interact with the Physical World with Sensors and Actuators

This lesson introduces two of the important concepts for your IoT device - sensors and actuators. Sensors read data from the physical world, actuators control it, and this lesson looks in more depth at how this happens, covering analog and digital hardware (and what these terms mean). You will also see how to build a nightlight with a microcontroller, using sensor data to control an actuator.

Lesson 3: Interact with the Physical World with Sensors and Actuators - office hours

As a follow up to what was covered in the last ‘ Interacting with the Physical World with sensors and Actuators' session, join Jim for an open office hour where you can ask questions relating to the material that has been covered in the series so far, getting explanations of the concepts taught, diving deeper into theory or practice, or getting troubleshooting help on your IoT journey.

Lesson 4: Connect your Device to the Internet

This lesson introduces some of the communication protocols IoT devices can use to connect to the cloud, and the types of data they might send or receive. It will also show how to control a microcontroller over MQTT.

Lesson 4: Connect your Device to the Internet - office hours

As a follow up to what was covered in the last ‘Communicating with Devices' session, join Jim for an open office hour where you can ask questions relating to the material that has been covered in the series so far, getting explanations of the concepts taught, diving deeper into theory or practice, or getting troubleshooting help on your IoT journey.

Lesson 5: Soil moisture sensors and digital agriculture

This new 4-part series is a continuation of IoT for Beginners run throughout September based off the second project in the 24-lesson series – digital agriculture. This lesson covers monitoring soil moisture using a soil moisture sensor, and in doing so dives more into how IoT devices communicate with sensors.

Lesson 6: IoT powered automated plant watering

This 4-part series is a continuation of IoT for Beginners run throughout September based off the second project in the 24-lesson series – digital agriculture. This lesson covers controlling a water pump from your IoT device based off sensor data from the soil moisture sensor.

Lesson 7: Connect your device to the cloud with Azure IoT Hub

This 4-part series is a continuation of IoT for Beginners run throughout September based off the second project in the 24-lesson series – digital agriculture. In this lesson we look at migrating your plant to the cloud. We will dive into what the cloud is, and how to set up an IoT service in the cloud to listen to telemetry data.

Lesson 8:Control your IoT device with serverless code

This 4-part series is a continuation of IoT for Beginners run throughout September based off the second project in the 24-lesson series – digital agriculture. In this lesson we will look indo controlling the automated watering system using serverless event driven code.

Counting bears with TinyML

Jim left the UK a few years ago to move to the Pacific North West of the US. Back in the UK the scariest animal he might have encountered would be a sudden hedgehog, but in Washington State where he lives it seems there are bears! He even lost an apple tree and a fence to one once. A useful tool for him would be a bear detector – a device to alert him if there are bears in the garden.

AMA: IoT, cows, AI and 💩 - Jim discusses IoT in farming with Bryn Lewis

In this session, Jim is joined by Bryn Lewis, a Microsoft MVP and IoT expert who is working with farms in New Zealand to implement solutions using AI and IoT. Jim and Bryn will dive into some of the cool projects that Bryn is working on, discussing how AI and IoT can improve cow health, make milking easier, and even reduce water usage for cleanup, all within a hostile environment with wide temperature variances throughout the year, and way too much poop.

On Wednesdays we wear tech

Subtitle shirt

In this episode, Jim shows how to build a smart t-shirt that provides a live stream of everything you say, first in your native language, then translated into a language of your choice. Using a $15 Raspberry Pi Zero W 2, a $20 LED panel, and some free AI services in the cloud you two can build your own smart subtitling t-shirt.

Be-kind-o-matic

In this episode, Jim shows how to use speech to text and sentiment analysis to get a feel for how positive or negative spoken sentences are, with a microphone and a Raspberry Pi Zero W 2. He then connects this to a hoodie that lights up red for negative sentiment, or green for positive.

GitHub status bracer

In this episode, Jim builds a language model that can be used to ask questions about the status of GitHub repos. He then uses this model from a Raspberry Pi to convert spoken questions into an understood query, which he then uses to query GitHub and show the relevant status on a wrist-mounted display.

Reading parrot

In this episode, Jim sticks a parrot on his shoulder (an inflatable one, not a real one), adds a camera, a Raspberry Pi Zero W 2, and teaches it how to read. Using a free AI service, this parrot can recognize both printed and hand-written text and read it out loud to you.

Ask the expert

From Padawan to Jedi in Azure IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a promising technology that is transforming enterprises. Join us and learn more about everything it can offer to help you in starting your IoT projects, or to move your current ones to the next level.

Jim Learns Stuff

Python Episode 1: Ancient Cryptography

In this episode, Jim explores some classic cryptography and builds out tools in Python to not only encrypt messages, but also to try to decrypt them! he'll be travelling around the ancient world from India, to Rome, Sparta and Baghdad, learning about their techniques for encrypting and decrypting all manner of secrets.

Python Episode 2: Python in the browser

In this episode, Jim learns all about PyScript, putting the early alpha versions through their paces to build out a simple web app. He'll be seeing if he can do web development without JavaScript.

C++ Episode 1: Intro to modern C++

In this first episode, Jim is joined by Sy Brand, a developer advocate on the Microsoft C++ team, to learn about the basics of C++. Jim will be drawing on his knowledge from years ago of both the good and the bad parts of traditional C++, but rather than lead you down the wrong path, Sy will be on hand to share all about modern C++, and they are more than ready to correct Jim's mistakes!

C++ Episode 2: C++ Tooling

Every good programming language has great tools to help you get the most of it, and C++ is no exception. 25 years ago, Jim first used Microsoft Visual C++ 1.52 which came on a CD-ROM (if any of you remember those). Now C++ is supported by a range of developer tools.

C++ Episode 3: Show and tell time!

C++ is a versatile language, supporting everything from operating systems, to games, desktop apps, IoT and more. What better way to wrap up this series with a show-and-tell covering a range of different use cases for this versatile and powerful language.

IoTea in the home

Episode 1: Time for Tea

In this episode Jim and Sam introduce themselves and the problem at hand – tracking Sam's tea. They will talk about the architecture they are planning on implementing, then they will build and live code a scale and get the data into the cloud via IoT Hub.

Episode 2: Teaing up New Devices

Jim and Sam dig deeper into IoT Hub and how it ingests and exports data. They will look at how to use the device provisioning service to provision any new scales should Sam need to weigh more than just one container of tea.

Episode 3: Pouring out the Data

How much tea does Sam consume? Jim and Sam extract the data from the IoT Hub and store it somewhere, looking at different database options and how data can be streamed in using tools such as Azure Functions and Stream Analytics. They look at costs and decide on an architecture to store all the data.

Episode 4: Dashboards and Darjeeling

Reporting time! Sam loves dashboards so our intrepid developers look at reporting and dashboarding tools to build a dashboard so Sam can quickly see how much tea he has at any given time. These dashboards will let them track metrics and create reports from the data they're collecting.

Episode 5: Leaves and Logistics

Once they have dashboards, Sam and Jim will look at automating the supply chain – making predictions on when tea will run out and sending notifications to order more.

Episode 6: Rolling out the Tea Trolley

No app is complete without deployment. In this episode Jim and Sam look at how to manage and deploy services using DevOps practices, including using tools to define your infrastructure as code, and to deploy automatically from GitHub.