Transcript: The Road to ECS - S2:E7: Carlotta Castelluccio

Welcome everybody and we're back with another episode of Road TCS. It's looking at the description, it's season 2, episode 7. I'm not sure if that's correct, but who's going to keep the count? I think it's correct actually. It is. It is. Okay, perfect. I mean so many already. I would trust him on that. Okay, perfect. Well, yes. So, we are actually that far in and we get closer to May every time we do one of these episodes. So, the count is here. We're getting really close. But before we get there, we're here online live. Well, we are live by the time you're watching. We aren't. That aside, the time bending aspects of the side, we are back with another episode and another guest Carla Castaluchio from Italy. Welcome back. Thank you so much. Happy to be here with you for a chat and looking forward to European Cloud Summit as well. It's becoming a tradition. It's for me third year so I'm waiting for it. It's a tradition of Kota going to be with us for the third year as a speaker, as a keynote speaker, participating in different panels. A few weeks ago for whatever reason I was sorting the photos we did for some of the marketing actions and then I saw Carla on so many photos from the expo. So I realized how much stuff you did also there on the panels and around there beside actually delivering sessions and everything else that you can be delivering and I think also being part of the workshop and all the others that you were living the reality. I was like she was everywhere. You know something that it's happening is that I think you're right, I'm everywhere on the website so people are starting to ping me as if I was part of the organization, asking me questions because I'm not part of the organization. I mean that is an interesting point right because you kind of get the perks without the actual work. Yeah. This was not nice. This was not being asked, you know, being recognized. It's like the first, isn't it? Yeah, I know. But I realized you have been, I have at least seen you at least in two panels last year. One that you were doing with the startups and everything that Amit was there and then there was another panel I forgot now which one where I saw you on the main stage downstairs. The panels plus the sessions plus everything. How was 2025 for you? What was your impression from the event and what are the memories or good things or bad things that you are taking away from the last year?
So yeah, I think what I really enjoyed was the diversity of format of the sessions. There's something for all flavors. If you want to have a full day workshop there's the full day Hansen lab for the pre-day. If you want to just sit in the hub and ask questions to experts and hear more informal chats between experts, Q&A and this kind of stuff, you have those. If you want classical breakout sessions, you have those as well. And also in terms of topics, there is a bunch of variety of technologies. I think that's very unique for a conference to have such a variety of formats and topics. Everyone feels included whatever is their favorite way of learning. Well, that last sentence was the biggest compliment you gave us. Everybody feels included, that's what we are really trying to achieve. Since day one that's what ECS is all about. But you were talking about sessions, topics and formats, but I hope you also had fun there. No, I didn't have time to have fun. No, I was thinking. Yeah, of course I had fun. I had fun and I was thinking what format I had most fun with. I would say I really liked the panels in the hub. There is a direct dialogue with the community, so I really like them very much. But the workshops are fun as well because you get a full day with people putting their hands on technologies and sometimes even if it's step-by-step, developers explore additional things so you learn a lot as well. It's very interesting to see different perspectives and usage of technologies you work with every day but still learn new things.
That is an interesting point because you get immersed in a room full of folks who push boundaries and try to learn things applicable to their work. Is there one big eye-opener or exciting thing you learned from your audience? I don't know if there is a specific thing, but the main thing I discover every time I go to community events is that I feel I'm living in a bubble as a remote worker. I work for big tech, communicate with internal teams, not customer-facing, so when I go to these conferences, I'm in the real world. I understand the needs, fears, and perspectives of people. It's an immersion in reality. That's the main thing for me.
Definitely, I recognize that too. We are immersed internally and sometimes ahead of the market, but the real reality check comes at events with people who are not on social media, who work in enterprise environments. That's what people actually do versus what they say. There's nothing that substitutes that. Even though we are there to share and teach, we go there selfishly to learn from them, maybe even more than they learn from us. Which is fine, but let's take a step back. What is your daily work? What do you actually do? The thing I love about my role, which is called cloud advocate in developer relations, is that I don't have a traditional daily job. Each day is different. I was in Brazil last week, now working from home doing completely different stuff. I describe the cloud advocate role as an intermediate role between product groups and developer community. Product groups release technologies, and cloud advocates make them digestible and usable for developers through samples, tutorials, events, and content. On the other hand, we gather feedback from developers to inform product teams about real-world needs and gaps so they can adjust their roadmap. One day I work on tutorials, another day on labs, or initiatives like a hackathon called Agents League where people build agents and compete live. It's very dynamic.
You said product groups sometimes live in a bubble. I would say most of the time. Looking at last year's material, some of it is already deprecated. How has building agents changed between then and now? The biggest change is how much we use AI to build AI. Tools today are far more advanced. It's not just code completion anymore; it's building agents for you. Developers still need to review, ensure production readiness, and security. Frameworks have evolved, tools improved, and developer workflows simplified. AI-assisted tools are the biggest transformation.
We discussed tools like GitHub Copilot and others reaching similar maturity. In production, though, we still use Semantic Kernel because migration takes time and effort. That's reality. There's also a limit to how many agents you can manage and review. The bottleneck shifts from coding to reviewing and planning. Specs-driven development becomes important, but writing specs still takes time. Humans remain the bottleneck in expressing what we want clearly.
That brings us to your talk at ECS. What will you cover? My focus will be on the end-to-end lifecycle of agent development. Starting from planning and identifying business needs, selecting models, iterating prompts, then building the agent using tools like AI Toolkit in Visual Studio Code, evaluating the system, and finally deploying it to the cloud. The goal is to walk attendees through the entire lifecycle.
You will also be around the expo and panels. Yes, I will be there to connect with people, share ideas, and hear real-world experiences. We will have many Microsoft speakers, MVPs, and experts. It's a great opportunity to ask questions and learn directly from people shaping the future of AI. Thank you very much. Looking forward to connecting with everyone.