helpfulassistant.show // season 01 / pilot
about  ·  hosts  ·  guests  ·  listen  ·  shirt
file: helpful_assistant.podcast type: audio + video status: delving

Helpful
Assistant.

Delving into how everyday people put AI to work.

Helpful Assistant: robot says I am a helpful assistant to a human
// what this is

Two of us, one guest, one specific thing they have wired together. We look under the hood and try not to break it.

Each episode, our guest brings something they actually use day to day. A workflow. A script. A custom GPT. A spreadsheet held together with regular expressions. We ask how they built it, what it solves, and the thing that nearly drove them to madness along the way.

AI welcome but not required. If your favourite automation predates ChatGPT, we would love to see it. Especially if it is still running.

// hosts   ·   the helpful assistants

Two DevRels with opinions and a healthy automation habit.

FILE: PHIL.BIO
P
MELB · UK

Phil Nash

Developer Relations Engineer · IBM (Langflow)

Started professional life as a front-end dev in London fixing Internet Explorer 6 bugs. Has been in DevRel since 2014, with stints at Twilio, Sonar, DataStax, and now IBM (working on Langflow and the OpenRAG stack). Speaking at conferences since 2012.

Polyglot in JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby. Google Developer Expert. Lives in Melbourne with a miniature dachshund called Ruby. On a mission to find the world's best beers. Once helped build a website that captured the world's favourite sandwich fillings.

FILE: BEN.BIO
B
MO · AU/UK

Ben Dechrai

Senior Developer Advocate · Zencoder (For Good AI)

Twenty-five years in software. The last decade-ish in DevRel: Auth0, SonarSource, Arcjet, now Zencoder. Microsoft MVP. Co-founded the Open Source Developers Conference in Australia in 2003, back when conference organising was a different sport. Has spoken at DEFCON, NDC, Devoxx, PyCon, and a long list of meetups he can no longer remember.

Application security by trade. JWT, OAuth, WebAuthn, the whole alphabet. Currently more interested in what AI agents can do without supervision. Lives in Missouri. Smokes meat. Makes cocktails. Automated his already-automated irrigation system because it wasn't meta enough.

// upcoming guests   ·   season 01

People with something to show, not just something to say.

A
Confirmed · Sydney AU

Aaron Powell

Principal Cloud Developer Advocate · Microsoft

Twenty years in web and .NET. Polyglot across ASP.NET (C# and F#), Node, and Go. Microsoft MVP since 2011. Lead organiser of DDD Sydney. Deep on .NET Aspire, contributes to the Aspire Community Toolkit. Has been known to code tic-tac-toe in git commits.

G
Confirmed · Perth AU

George Coldham

Cloud Solution Architect, Cyber Security · Microsoft ANZ

Microsoft Certified Trainer with 15 active certifications across the Security and Azure space. Runs the Perth Microsoft Security Meetup. Currently working at the seam where AI coding agents meet enterprise security: secret scanning in MCP servers, secure-by-design Copilot CLI workflows.

C
Confirmed · Tampa, FL

Chris Ayers

Principal Software Engineer · Microsoft (Azure Reliability)

Builds AI tooling that figures out why distributed systems fall over and how to keep them upright. Organises DevOps Days Tampa Bay. Talks Aspire, MCP, GitHub Copilot, MITRE ATT&CK. Frequents the same conference circuit as half this list.

E
Confirmed · Sheffield, UK

Emmz Rendle

Senior Engineer · ANNA Money

Building a slightly magical personal assistant using AI and mixed reality. Gave the 'How I Tamed Claude' talk at NDC London on a four-role Claude Code workflow used to actually ship code. Stand-up comic in a previous life. Currently bass player in tech parody band The LineBreakers. We'll be lucky to keep up.

E
Confirmed · Brooklyn, NY

Erin Mikail Staples

Developer Experience Engineer · dltHub

Developer experience engineer by day, stand-up comedian by night. NYT-featured comic who runs the Laugh Dammit open mic at Young Ethel's in Park Slope. Hosts the DevRel(ish) podcast. Lately shipping MCP servers for education and a Reactigotchi that teaches application memory by making you keep one alive. Coconut LaCroix evangelist.

H
Confirmed · Kansas City, MO

Heather Downing

Developer Advocate · Yugabyte

Developer advocate at Yugabyte, founder of VennApps, former Principal Developer Advocate at Okta. Sessionize Most Active Speaker three years running and on the NDC circuit nearly every season. Currently touring ‘AI Agents Need Permission Slips’ — dynamic permission scoping, context-aware authz, and human-in-the-loop approval gates, on the premise that giving agents broad permissions is like handing a toddler the car keys. Competitive equestrian and mounted archer.

Pending · Identity withheld

Hidden Name Here

REDACTED

Builds developer tools we'd actually use ourselves. Has not yet said yes. Watch this space.

Pending · Awaiting intro

Hidden Name Here

REDACTED

Spotted at a meetup by a mutual friend. Awaiting the intro email. Patience.

If you have built something we should see, pitch yourself

01
Episode 01 · Drops week of 25 May

This Changes Everything. No guest, just Phil and Ben working out what this show actually is.

Coming soon →