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content/podcast/2026-07-20-the-powershell-podcast-jake-hildreth-on-psconf-eu-stepper-updates-and-taking-the-day-off.md

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+---
+title: The PowerShell Podcast Jake Hildreth on PSConf EU, Stepper Updates, and Taking the Day Off
+author: Andrew Pla
+authors:
+  - Andrew Pla
+  - Jake Hildreth
+date: "2026-07-20T14:00:00+00:00"
+podcast_url: "https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/gc2ywy5rrdjk2zdd/The_PowerShell_Podcast_episode_238_Jake_Hildreth78xdh.mp3"
+episode: 238
+youtube: Rqkuaeps_jM
+guid: powershellpodcast.podbean.com/950e53f7-e949-3914-9df5-f0f7d04dc416
+aliases:
+  - /2026/07/the-powershell-podcast-jake-hildreth-on-psconf-eu-stepper-updates-and-taking-the-day-off/
+---
+
+Jake Hildreth, Principal Security Consultant at Semperis and Microsoft MVP, is back on the podcast fresh off a trip to PowerShell Conference Europe, where he and Andrew co-presented a session on securing PowerShell. Jake also gave his own talk on Stepper, his open-source module for building resumable, step-by-step scripts — a tool that's grown considerably since his last appearance on the show. The two dig into what makes PSConf EU such a standout event, the refreshing lack of elitism in the PowerShell community, and the updates Jake's been shipping, including named steps, built-in logging, and secret suppression. The conversation winds into burnout, the importance of actually taking your vacation days, and how the same mindset that drives good automation — knowing when to stop and reset — applies to taking care of yourself.
+
+Key Takeaways:
+
+- Stepper has gotten some meaningful quality-of-life updates since Jake last appeared on the show, including named steps, automatic logging, and the ability to suppress secrets from logs — making it more practical for real-world production scripts.
+- PSConf EU punches above its weight as a conference experience: technically deep but genuinely welcoming at every skill level, with none of the elitism that can creep into security-adjacent events.
+- Your vacation time is a benefit, not a backlog item. Jake makes the case that getting good at separating your work time from your off time isn't a soft skill — it's a sustainability practice.
+
+Guest Bio:
+
+Jake Hildreth is a Principal Security Consultant at Semperis, a Microsoft MVP in both PowerShell and Identity/Access, and a recovering sysadmin with 25 years of IT under his belt. He's probably best known for building Locksmith, the open-source AD CS auditing and remediation tool, but he's also the creator of Stepper, Deck, BlueTuxedo, and PowerPUG! — a suite of tools designed to make identity security a little less painful for the admins who live in it. When he's not untangling Kerberos or chasing down ADCS misconfigurations, he goes by "horse" in the PowerShell Discords.
+
+Resource Links:
+
+- Jake Hildreth's Website: [jakehildreth.com](https://jakehildreth.com)
+- Jake's GitHub: [github.com/jakehildreth](https://github.com/jakehildreth)
+- Stepper (Resumable PowerShell Scripts): [github.com/jakehildreth/Stepper](https://github.com/jakehildreth/Stepper)
+- Locksmith (AD CS Auditing & Remediation): [github.com/jakehildreth/Locksmith](https://github.com/jakehildreth/Locksmith)
+- Locksmith 2 (Next-Gen AD CS Toolkit): [github.com/jakehildreth/…](https://github.com/jakehildreth/Locksmith2)
+- PowerShell Conference Europe: [psconf.eu](https://psconf.eu)

content/podcast/2026-07-27-the-powershell-podcast-active-directory-meets-source-control-with-fred-weinmann.md

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+---
+title: The PowerShell Podcast Active Directory Meets Source Control with Fred Weinmann
+author: Andrew Pla
+authors:
+  - Andrew Pla
+  - Fred Weinmann
+date: "2026-07-27T14:00:00+00:00"
+podcast_url: "https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/pcrjefxw7shdjmwn/The_PowerShell_Podcast_episode_239_Fred_W8in0d.mp3"
+episode: 239
+youtube: 8SlIqUKP3hY
+guid: powershellpodcast.podbean.com/44f9b6b5-91b0-3508-b93d-863615f47705
+aliases:
+  - /2026/07/the-powershell-podcast-active-directory-meets-source-control-with-fred-weinmann/
+---
+
+Andrew sits down with Fred Weinmann, one of the most prolific PowerShell module authors in the community, for part one of a multi-episode series covering his projects. This episode focuses on the Active Directory Management Framework, or ADMF, a configuration-driven system Fred originally built while working as a field engineer at Microsoft for a large enterprise customer managing hundreds of Active Directory forests.
+
+Fred walks through the problem ADMF was designed to solve: Active Directory is notoriously hard to manage consistently across environments, and most organizations just accept the chaos as the cost of doing business. The old approach at this particular customer involved zipping up scripts, RDPing into domain controllers, and running them manually. ADMF changed that by borrowing the test/apply concept from Desired State Configuration, but making it flexible enough to handle the messiness of real-world AD environments.
+
+The conversation covers how ADMF is structured around components (like organizational units) and contexts, why generating a reference configuration from an existing environment is harder than it sounds, the protocol juggling required to handle Group Policy and schema updates, and why Fred would use raw LDAP instead of the built-in AD commands if he were starting from scratch today. Fred also touches on the credential provider plugin system, which lets teams plug in their own password management workflows for things like break-glass accounts.
+
+Key Takeaways:
+
+- ADMF follows a test-before-apply model borrowed from DSC, but trades DSC's all-or-nothing enforcement for a more selective, component-by-component approach that better fits the fluid reality of Active Directory management.
+- Generating a configuration from an existing AD environment is tempting but potentially counterproductive. If you auto-generate your desired state from a domain that's accumulated years of cruft, you're not capturing what you want, you're just freezing what already exists.
+- Performance at scale is a real consideration. The built-in Active Directory PowerShell module uses the AD Web Services protocol, which sends XML over the wire. Raw LDAP is significantly faster, and Fred says switching to it is the one architectural change he'd make if building ADMF over again.
+
+Guest Bio:
+
+Friedrich "Fred" Weinmann is a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft and one of the most recognized PowerShell community contributors working today. He is the creator of PSFramework, which underpins many other modules in the ecosystem, as well as tools like PSModuleDevelopment, PSUtil, and the Active Directory Management Framework. Fred is a frequent conference speaker, a longtime community collaborator, and someone Andrew credits with helping shape his own PowerShell journey.
+
+Resource Links:
+
+ADMF documentation and getting started guide: [admf.one](https://admf.one)
+
+ADMF on GitHub: [github.com/ActiveDirectoryManagementFramework/ADMF](https://github.com/ActiveDirectoryManagementFramework/ADMF)
+
+ADMF on PowerShell Gallery: [powershellgallery.com/packages/ADMF](https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/ADMF)
+
+PSFramework (Fred's logging, configuration, and scripting infrastructure module): [psframework.org](https://psframework.org)
+
+Fred Weinmann on GitHub: [github.com/FriedrichWeinmann](https://github.com/FriedrichWeinmann)
+
+Fred Weinmann on X: [x.com/FredWeinmann](https://x.com/FredWeinmann)