Brian Kaiser

I noticed a while back that we all started calling ourselves 'software engineers.' But is what we write actually engineered? Or is it just a sequence of steps that happen to work? That’s scripting. Its typically dressed up in anemic classes (basically structs) and services (aka junk drawer functions), but it’s still scripting. Engineered code reflects system thinking— Not just a list of steps.

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🚨 Cincinnati Developers & Security Pros — Mark Your Calendars! 🚨 The next two OWASP Cincinnati chapter meetups are locked in: 🗓️ June 16 🎤 Featuring 😀 Ryan Ross Ryan will live demo real-world exploitations of the OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities. If these have ever felt abstract or theoretical, this session will make them real—and a little scary. You’ll walk away with a clear understanding of how attackers think and why these flaws matter. 👉 https://lnkd.in/gYYapgVP 🗓️ July 17 🎤 Featuring Chris Lindsey from OX Security Chris will show how AI-assisted coding can help you build a fully functional app—riddled with security flaws—in minutes. We’ll explore how to spot and fix what the AI gets wrong. 👉 https://lnkd.in/g3bsB5DY 🍕 As always, there will be food, great people, and sharp insights. Don’t miss out!

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How many different things can you do in an AI app built in Azure Foundry? Join us at Azure Cleveland to learn all about it: https://lnkd.in/gvKT_t_S

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Stop paying the MTTR tax. Tool sprawl isn’t a strategy. It’s an architectural failure. Most teams aren’t solving problems during a Tier-0 outage. They’re playing detective across five different screens. Fragmented tools create a "Dashboard Graveyard". The result? Engineers context-switch their way to a million-dollar loss. We helped one of APAC’s largest fintechs: > Cut MTTR by 40%. > Reduce TCO by 30%. > Gain 99.9% visibility across 7,000+ servers. Move from tool sprawl to unified intelligence. Stop hunting. Start resolving. #Observability #FinTech #SRE #Integra

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This week, I'm headed to the Kansas City Developer Conference! I've experienced FOMO firsthand from missing this conference, so I'm excited to be attending and giving two talks! 1️⃣ The first is The Developer Skill Tree: Growing Beyond the Code, where we'll cover the soft skills that are just as important as the technical ones. Learn how to build influence, expand your expertise beyond code to be a cross-functional collaborator, and build systems to help you learn in a fast-moving ecosystem. This talk was born out of the hard conversations and feedback that shaped me into a better engineer. 2️⃣ The second talk, Code, But Make It Cute, explores web animations and interactivity with GSAP. Animations don't just make your sites pretty; they tell a story. We'll walk through ways to transform a website that looks "fine" into one that provides visitors with a narrative. I'm so excited for both of these talks, and I hope to see you at the conference! #kcdc

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I'm super excited to talk about #Playwright at the Kansas City Developer Conference. Come see "Synthetics Monitoring with Playwright" on Thursday, August 14, 2025: Playwright is an open source end to end testing Framework by Microsoft for testing your modern web applications. It can automate what a user does such as clicking on elements, filling in text etc. Playwright can be used as part of a monitoring solution: checking your site continuously for changes and regressions.

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📖 Scale your tenants, not your growing pains. As SaaS platforms grow, teams often hit friction from manual sharding, noisy neighbors, and rigid schemas. These challenges create operational drag and slow innovation. In this new guide, learn how teams like Atlassian, Manus, and Conga use modern data architectures to scale multi-tenant platforms with less complexity. Inside, you’ll learn how to achieve: 🔸 Elastic scalability without manual sharding 🔸 Strong tenant isolation for true multi-tenancy 🔸 Real-time, in-app analytics 🔸 Faster development with fewer operational constraints Download the free guide: https://ow.ly/1RIE50XZJUP #SaaS #MultiTenancy #DistributedSQL #TiDB #DatabaseArchitecture

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Identity verification shouldn’t take weeks of integrations, custom logic, and stitching APIs from five different standards. Hovi Core SDK gives developers a single, unified way to verify any credential SD-JWT, mDocs, JSON-LD, and more. One API call. One pipeline. Zero complexity. From strong authentication to automated access control and reusable KYC/KYB, you can make your app identity-aware without becoming identity-complex. Build trust once. Scale it everywhere. #Developers #DigitalIdentity #VerifiableCredentials 

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Learn what Playwright is, why teams use it, how it compares with other E2E tools, and how to scale tests with parallel execution.

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Stop the SDK maintenance grind! Use your OpenAPI spec as the single source of truth to generate consistent, high-quality SDKs automatically. Free up engineers for core API work.

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At Nebraska.Code() this summer, we wanted to do something different at our booth. Instead of distributing handouts or giving demos, we asked conference attendees three questions: How do you coach other software engineers? How do you like to be coached? What’s the biggest pain point with professional growth in your team—and why? Their responses were eye-opening. Check out the latest post by Lindsey Hruby, MBA, USAF Ret. as she breaks down the responses and what they could mean for development teams. https://lnkd.in/gifhAmjR #softwareengineering #coaching #leadership #professionaldevelopment

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We have spent years trying to pave over the messy parts of software engineering. We love patterns, strict rules, and making sure everything fits into a perfect box. But software is more like a garden than a parking lot. It grows, it changes, and it gets wild. Trying to control every tiny branch only leads to fragile systems. We need to stop fighting the natural growth of our projects. This means building tools that let us see the mess clearly instead of covering it up. When we allow our systems to be more organic, we find better ways to solve problems. It is time to let our code breathe and accept that software is a living thing. This change helps us build systems that actually last because they can adapt. We do not need more rules: we need more clarity and better ways to observe what is already there. Please like and share this post to help others see software differently. Do you think our obsession with clean code actually makes things harder to manage in the long run? #SoftwareArchitecture #Agile #SystemsThinking #TechMindset

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I asked AI to generate an image of what it’s like chatting with me every day. It came back with: “This is fine. Everything is fine.” 😅 If you’ve ever shipped software in a real enterprise, you know the feeling: * the pipeline is green… except in QA * the “small change” touches 6 services and 2 vendors * the architecture diagram is clean… until you zoom in * someone’s “source of truth” is a spreadsheet from 2017 But here’s what I actually like about AI in the middle of that chaos: Not that it writes code. That it helps me keep momentum when the system is loud. It’s a second brain for the unglamorous work: * clarifying the end-state before we build the wrong thing perfectly * turning tribal knowledge into repeatable patterns * tightening contracts and boundaries * translating complexity into plain language so decisions can happen “This is fine” isn’t denial. Sometimes it’s the moment right before you turn the mess into a plan. #engineeringleadership #softwarearchitecture #platformengineering #devops #ai

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🚀 Introducing the Vanilla-Slice Framework 🔗 github repo -> https://lnkd.in/dURskwjT A framework designed for .NET Blazor and MAUI developers to build apps faster, cleaner, and across multiple surfaces with a single shared architecture. Over the past decade, I’ve been deeply involved in building software products across desktop, web, and mobile—through transitions from WinForms → WPF, WebForms → ASP.NET MVC/Core, and now into the Blazor multi-surface era. That journey led to the Vanilla-Slice Framework, a mindset and architecture for cutting features into thin, manageable slices, enabling: ✅ Faster delivery ✅ Consistent code ✅ Platform-agnostic components With .NET Blazor Multi-Surface, we’re now able to run the same apps seamlessly on: 🌐 Web (WASM, SSR, Server Interactive) 📱 Mobile (MAUI Blazor Hybrid & Native) 💻 Desktop (shared Razor components) Here’s a complete demo video on how to setup projects in a minute and start creating features. 🎥👇 #Blazor #MAUI #DotNet #VanillaSlice #SoftwareArchitecture #MultiSurfaceDevelopment #OpenSource #CleanArchitecture #VerticalSliceArchitecture

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Agile Manifesto 25th Anniversary 🚀 Twenty-five years ago this week, February 11–13, 2001, seventeen software practitioners gathered at a ski resort in Snowbird, Utah. They represented different methods—Extreme Programming, Scrum, DSDM, Crystal, Feature-Driven Development, Adaptive Software Development, Pragmatic Programming—but shared a common frustration with how software was being built. They weren’t trying to start a movement—they were responding to shared frustrations: 📄 Heavy, documentation-driven processes 🔒 Plans treated as fixed commitments 🏢 Control-oriented management cultures 👥 People valued in theory, interchangeable in practice What emerged were four enduring values—simple, clear priorities that reshaped how teams build, collaborate, and deliver value. Twenty-five years later, the environment is more complex than ever. Markets shift rapidly. Technology disrupts overnight. Competitive advantage depends on adaptability. The question organizations now face is broader: Are we built for change? Agility can no longer live only within delivery teams. It must extend across: ⚡ Strategy and decision-making 🤝 Leadership and culture 🔄 Operating models and governance 🎯 Enterprise-wide value delivery This is the evolution from Agile to Enterprise Agility—expanding the original spirit of adaptability and collaboration across the full organizational system. The next 25 years will belong to organizations that can sense change early, align quickly, and empower their people to respond with clarity and purpose.

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With .NET 10, you can just create an app.cs file and run it—no setup required. See it in action.

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Custom software isn’t just tailored, it’s built to last. Off the shelf tools may seem quick or budget friendly at first glance, but they come with hidden limitations: 1. rigid structures that stifle growth, 2. costly integrations as your needs evolve, 3. and an uphill battle against generic features. We’ve seen it again and again, custom solutions future proof your business by adapting seamlessly to scale, integrating precisely where you need them, and delivering long term savings. So here’s the real question: Are you asking for something that grows with you or settling for what fits in a box? #CustomSoftware #Scalability #BusinessGrowth

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Last summer, we partnered with Don’t Panic Labs to pilot a Software Engineering Skills Assessment to better understand Nebraska’s software engineering talent landscape. Thank you to the many organizations and individuals who participated. One key takeaway was clear: a shared, statewide view of the tech workforce, paired with insight at the regional level, is especially timely as we work to understand trends, identify gaps, and support higher education, employers, and tech talent across Nebraska’s six community college regions. Building on that work, we’re excited to partner with Lightcast, a leading labor market analytics firm trusted by states, higher education, and employers nationwide, to develop the next version of the Nebraska Tech Workforce Dashboard. This work will bring together workforce and labor market data to provide clearer visibility into talent trends and workforce needs across the state and by region. The updated dashboard will launch this spring. More to come soon.

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