Thanks to Jonathan Crowe, the Director of Community at NinjaOne, for inviting me to be a part of one of the Like a Ninja streams that they host on the NinjaOne YouTube channel every couple of weeks. This stream was on October 9th, 2024 and was a conversation with that Jonathan hosted with Mark Giordano, a Technical Product Manager at NinjaOne and former customer and community member (also known as AiVenom), and me around how to determine the Return on Investment, or ROI, of scripting and automation.

While programmers and technicians are usually somewhat easy to convince about why automating things is worth investing time and effort into, it's not always easy to convince business leadership that automation is worth it, because the business wins aren't always as obvious when automation is approached from a technical perspective.

The video is about an hour long. Here it is, following the official stream description:

Does it feel like the time you spend on scripting and related training is going unappreciated? Or, worse yet, like you'll never get approval for that in the first place? Effective use of scripting can be a game-changer for IT admins, but unfortunately management doesn't always view it as a priority, and it's rare when the value of it is clearly communicated to all the stakeholders involved.

Join us for tips on how you can better highlight the business value of scripting, and get increased buy-in and support for it as a critical time investment.

Thanks to Jonathan Crowe, the Director of Community at NinjaOne, for inviting me to be a part of one of the Like a Ninja streams that they host on the NinjaOne YouTube channel every couple of weeks. This stream was on February 28th, 2024 and was a conversation with that Jonathan hosted to let me demonstrate how to write PowerShell scripts using an existing script I've published as an example to walk through.

The video is about an hour long. Here it is, following the official stream description:

Join NinjaOne star David Szpunar as we go over how to write PowerShell scripts like a ninja!

The video is somewhat fast-paced and does assume some beginner knowledge of PowerShell, focusing on the structure of building the structure of a script into a usable whole with various parameters and functions.

Setting Up VS Code and Git Like a Ninja​

If you enjoyed that video, a month later on March 26th, 2024, NinjaOne community member and PowerShell programmer extraordinaire Mikey O'Toole led a follow-up video stream called How to set up VS Code and Git Repo Like a Ninja that helps get you further down the programming rabbit hole with information on how to set up an environment more conducive to writing and debugging PowerShell on your own machine, as well as tracking changes and sharing code using Git and a centralized source such as GitHub or one of the alternative services.

Welcome​

I'm the CEO of a US-based IT services company (Managed Services Provider, or MSP), and I like technology (and people! People are great, I love people! We use technology to serve them, but I have a soft spot for the tech like a true geek!). While I have a long history with and interest in technology and programming and security, I've spent my free time relaxing by playing with PowerShell lately, and have had fun sharing them with peers to help the community.