Inside the PowerShell Working Groups with Ryan Yates

Fresh off a PowerShell Wednesday session on Windows PowerShell versus PowerShell 7, Andrew Pla sits down with Ryan Yates, a longtime pillar of the UK PowerShell community and member of three PowerShell Working Groups (Cmdlets, Engine, and Interactive UX). Ryan pulls back the curtain on what working group members actually do, from triaging issues and reviewing PRs to deciding how bugs and enhancements should be implemented before the community picks up the work.
The conversation rewinds to Ryan's early days as an IT apprentice at Barclays, where supporting SharePoint without a Visual Studio license led him straight to PowerShell and a lifelong love of breaking things to learn how they work. Ryan also shares his take on PowerShellGet and PackageManagement headaches, why PSResourceGet and DSC v3 point to a better future, how AI's cost barrier affects everyday PowerShell users, and his dream of turning old devices into a local AI compute farm.
Things wrap up with a rapid-fire lightning round covering underrated cmdlets, favorite automatic variables, the most rewritten code block in PowerShell history, and a heartfelt call for more community eyes on the PowerShell repository.

Key Takeaways:

• The PowerShell Working Groups triage issues and decide how bugs and enhancements should be handled, which opens the door for community members to step in and contribute the actual code.
• PSResourceGet (Install-PSResource and Find-PSResource) is the path forward for module management, and cross-platform software installation is shifting toward DSC v3 rather than PowerShell itself.
• Anyone can contribute. Start a discussion or open an issue in the PowerShell repository, and the team can convert between the two as needed. Everyone made their first contribution at some point.

Guest Bio:
Ryan Yates is a UK-based PowerShell community member who has been a driving force behind the UK and international PowerShell communities for over a decade. A former seven-time Microsoft MVP for PowerShell, Ryan currently serves on the PowerShell Cmdlets and Modules, Engine, and Interactive UX Working Groups, where he is in the PowerShell repository triaging, testing, and contributing. He began his career as an IT apprentice at Barclays supporting SharePoint, which led him to PowerShell, and he went on to help organize UK PowerShell user groups and PSDay UK. Ryan also helped keep the PowerScripting Podcast running in its later years. You can find him most days in the PowerShell Discord as pwshdoodUK.

Resource Links:

• Ryan on GitHub: https://github.com/kilasuit
• Sponsor Ryan on GitHub: https://github.com/sponsors/kilasuit
• Ryan's Blog: https://blog.kilasuit.org/
• Ryan on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ryanyates90
• PowerShell Repository: https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell
• PowerShell Working Group Definitions: https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/docs/community/working-group-definitions.md
• PSResourceGet: https://github.com/PowerShell/PSResourceGet
• DSC v3: https://github.com/PowerShell/DSC
• ConsoleGuiTools (Out-ConsoleGridView): https://github.com/PowerShell/ConsoleGuiTools
• Microsoft.WinGet.Client Module: https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/Microsoft.WinGet.Client
• PowerShell Discord: https://discord.com/invite/powershell
• PDQ Discord: https://discord.gg/pdq
• The PowerShell Podcast Hub: https://pdq.com/the-powershell-podcast
• The PowerShell Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/r5IYrhIEH4Y