// GitHub

If you're using GitHub as your source control provider, then I'd encourage you to using Branch Protection Rules if you're not already doing so! In this blog post, we'll cover what Branch Protection Rules are and how they can increase your code quality.

What is Developer Relations, and how do you build a career in it? Chris is joined by Martin Woodward — Director of Developer Relations at GitHub and the person who brought Git to Microsoft — to explore the open source contribution funnel, what drives community leaders, the community-building skills that underpin a DevRel career, and how platforms like GitHub Actions achieve explosive growth through network effects.

Chris and community members sail the Sea of Thieves while covering Azure updates including Government Top Secret GA, ASP.NET app migration tooling, and Forrester Wave recognition for streaming analytics. GitHub updates include 2FA enforcement for git operations, Git 2.33, and Discussions GA, while the crew discusses Azure certification prep strategies, career transitions into DevOps, and the open-source Cloud Katana security assessment tool.

Security vulnerabilities don't wait to be discovered — and developers are often unknowingly shipping them through open source dependencies. In this episode, Chris is joined by DeveloperSteve Coochin, Developer Advocate at Snyk, to explore the real-world state of vulnerabilities in modern applications. Steve shares findings from his research into the PHP ecosystem and explains how developers can shift vulnerability detection left — catching CVEs in dependencies before they reach production, by integrating tools like Snyk directly into their CI/CD pipelines and GitHub workflows.

Chris covers Azure updates including container app modernization, DDoS protection trends for H1 2021, and virtual network resizing in preview, alongside the general availability of GitHub Codespaces with a deep dive into how GitHub's engineering team uses Codespaces to develop GitHub.com. He also discusses Bicep and Infrastructure as Code on the Azure DevOps blog, plus upcoming sessions on AKS, application security, and cell-based cloud architectures.

Chris opens with a heartfelt tribute to Abel Wang before covering Azure updates including Site Recovery cross-region replication, ExpressRoute expansions, and immutable blob storage. The episode highlights GitHub's 15+ new code scanning integrations with open source security tools, a comparison of Azure Static Web Apps hosting options, and upcoming Cloud with Chris content plans.

Open source projects and communities are the backbone of modern software development, yet the human side of building and sustaining them is rarely discussed as openly as the technology itself. In this episode, Chris is joined by JJ Asghar, Developer Advocate at IBM, who shares hard-won lessons from over a decade cultivating open source communities — from a small Linux distribution to OpenStack, Kubernetes, Tekton, and Istio. This is not a tools talk; it is a candid conversation about the soft skills, scoping decisions, and leadership approaches that separate thriving projects from those that burn out.

Continuous Integration (CI) is a DevOps practice where engineers frequently merge small code changes into a central repository, triggering automated builds and test suites to catch regressions early. This video explains how CI applies equally to application code, Infrastructure as Code, database schemas, and data science notebooks, and shows how GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines act as automated gatekeepers through pull request workflows.

Chris is a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft. He'll provide an overview of GitHub and explore how GitHub Actions can be used to build and deploy your own static sites (or other apps!) to Azure.

Chris plays Sea of Thieves with community members James, Simon, and Dean while delivering Azure updates on Bastion Standard SKU, Application Insights authentication, and Windows 365 from Microsoft Inspire. The episode also covers GitHub blog highlights including GitHub Copilot and Issues forms, plus a discussion on making Cloud with Chris more accessible.