/Events /AgentCon 2025 - Utrecht /Schedule
AgentCon 2025 - Utrecht
Tuesday, April 22
Welcome
Main Stage ·A developers introduction to Copilot Studio
Building Agents should be easy! And it can be if you are using Copilot Studio. In this demo rich session Daniel and Albert-Jan will show you how you can build agents, orchestrate their behaviour, introduce knowledge and apply custom reasoning models and add actions.
Takeaways from this session: ✅ Learn how you can leverage your development skills to build agents ✅ Integrate with additional knowledge using Azure AI Search ✅ Integrate with custom API’s and Business Logic
As a senior cloud architect Albert-Jan Schot enjoys stepping up to the challenge of designing, developing and building innovative cloud solutions. He is a valuable source of knowledge for his colleagues, customers and the worldwide Microsoft-community. With his no-nonsense and can-do mentality he brings a unique combination of in-depth hands-on experience and consultancy skills on all levels to any team. As a CTO within Blis Digital Albert-Jan is responsible for the technical vision and strategy within the low-code practice.
Daniel is a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, where he continues to enthuse people about the possibilities of the Power Platform. Daniel loves to talk to you about what the Power Platform can do for you, whether you're a developer, an IT Pro, an architect, or an administrator.
AI-Assisted Architect: Rethinking Software Design with GitHub Copilot
You already rely on GitHub Copilot to handle the boring stuff — autocompleting code, helping with repetitive tasks, jumping in when troubleshooting gets tough. Maybe you’ve even asked it to implement the entire functionality for you. But does it stop there?
Now that Copilot takes care of the routine, you finally have time for creativity and bigger thinking. You want to design your application right. But what if I told you that Copilot could help with that too? What if it could recognize, advise, and even introduce architectural decisions and design patterns into your codebase?
In this session, we will explore how GitHub Copilot can act as an architectural assistant. We’ll see real examples, live demos, and a fresh take on AI-driven software design.
I am Liuba, IT Consultant and GitHub trainer. Turning complex coding challenges into simple, logical and efficient solutions is my passion. In a team I am all about sparking innovation and embracing new learning curves. When I'm not coding, you'll find me running, cycling, exploring new culinary delights or lost in a good book.
Yuliya is a Software Development Consultant at Xebia and Microsoft MVP. With over a decade-long journey in IT across various international environments, she has played multiple roles from software developer to team lead, scrum master and product owner, each enriching her professional outlook. Yuliya is passionate about crafting clean, well-architected solutions and streamlining processes for efficiency. She strongly advocates for diverse, collaborative and harmonious work environments and finds fulfillment in supporting others in their professional growth.
Secure by Design: Building GenAI Apps with Azure AI Foundry
GenAI is powerful but introduces new security risks. This session shows how to build secure and customizable GenAI applications using Azure AI Foundry. You will learn how to set up network isolation, role-based access, and data protection. We will also cover tools for prompt safety, policy enforcement, and user activity tracking. This is your guide to building GenAI apps that are safe, scalable, and production-ready.
Enabling startups, scaleups and digital natives succeed in leveraging cloud platforms My experience is in designing well-architected solutions on Microsoft azure. I help building intelligent apps (AI/ML) and platforms. Do you have a question to ask about Microsoft azure ? Send an invite @ https://aka.ms/helloraj LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/raj-microsoft/ Email - rajkumarb@outlook.com
Rebuilding Classic Video Games with o1 Reasoning model
Thijs challenged himself to rebuild one of his favorite games using AI technology. He was amazed by the fact that he built level 1 of the original Super Mario Brothers in 20 hours with all its game mechanics and interactions, by prompting only and applying the instructions and output from the AI.
This session is for anybody interested in using AI to significantly increase their productivity.
You will learn about the o1 model and its reasoning capabilities and there will be many demo's. Besides the playful parts about building games, Thijs will show how the o1 model helps him significantly in his daily job. Last we will enter the Boss Battle Arena and we will have AI agents adding features to our game. Next, Game Over?
Thijs is a passionate DevOps engineer and front-end development enthusiast @ Xebia, with a unique edge as an AI-powered developer. As an AI-powered developer, Thijs integrates cutting-edge AI tools into his development process. This allows him to improve code quality, boost productivity, and be any profession, ensuring that his projects stay ahead of the curve. With over 10 years of experience in a broad range of technologies, Thijs primarily builds native apps and websites using all modern JavaScript frameworks, Blazor, and Flutter. He has a guilty pleasure for CSS and enjoys working closely with UX designers. In addition, Thijs is also very experienced as a .NET back-end developer, building event-driven architectures. Thijs is a strong advocate for applying DevOps practices at customers' projects, focusing on team autonomy as one of the most important aspects. He enables teams to deploy their own cloud resources through Infrastructure as Code and their services through CI/CD. Thijs has also implemented an observability strategy to provide effective 24/7 support. "You build it, you run it, you own it."
Workshop: Build your first agent with Azure AI Foundry
Dive into the world of intelligent conversational agents with Azure AI Agent Service, a seamless blend of service and SDK that simplifies the development of robust AI-driven solutions. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn to create a powerful agent capable of answering sales-related queries, performing data analysis, generating visualizations, and integrating external data sources to deliver enhanced business insights.
Douwe is Principal Solution Architect at Capgemini, focussing on generative Artificial Intelligence and Cloud. He is currently Lead GenAI for the NL & NCE Cloud CoE’s and based in the Netherlands (Utrecht). Before joining Capgemini Douwe worked as solution architect focussing on the adoption of emerging technologies. He brings a 20-year track record in the world of IT with a strong focus on the discovery and unlocking of value.
Malgorzata Ilczyk is Enterprise Architect and Data Architect more than 10 years experience in Architecture advisory for data estate modernization including building data platforms and implementing secure, sustainable and simplified solutions. She finds joy in making complex topics simple and sharing her knowledge in internal and external communities and conferences. She loves getting hands-on while learning new things and during cold winter months she focuses on gaining new Azure certs.
AI Developer Odyssey: Navigating Use Cases, Models, and Technical Patterns
In today's fast-paced AI-World, new language models are being released almost daily, each claiming to be superior to the last. But how do you determine which one is best suited for your specific use case? How can you easily and freely compare them? What parameters should you consider, such as tokens per minute (TPM), latency, responsibleness, safety, and cost etc.? Moreover, how do you architect a system around these models? Are there established app design patterns? What about logging and monitoring?
These are valid questions that often go unanswered. Let me guide you through a developer's journey, from the selection of a language model to the design and production of AI applications. We'll also explore how to automate this journey with tests and evaluations.
I am a technology enthusiast working at Microsoft as a Solution Architect, with over 19 years of experience in software programming, designing, and architecture which includes on-prem, cloud-native applications, and web-based conversational application design.
This session will give you 2,6h a day of your time back!
A recent study by McKinsey revealed that the average professional spends 2,6h of the work day reading and answering email. Unbelievable! In this session I'll share some surprising insights in behavioral science to change this and look how we can apply this knowledge in building AI assistants.
Bart is a passionate Solution Architect, who believes software will save the world. Bart has a strong focus on evolutionary design, reuse, automation and application lifecycle management. He is always looking for technical challenges.
Food
Main Stage ·May the Agents Be Ever In Your Favor
Just when we got used to the idea of AI and Copilots and such, now we have a NEW THING to worry about: Agents!
In this AgentCon keynote you will learn:
- What exactly are Agents (and what is Sparkling Automation)?
- What Agents exist today and what are they good for?
- How can you get started today with Agents that you can adopt out of the box, extend with your own data and build from scratch?
Software Engineer. Multi-published author (turns out fiction writing is really useful in software!). Owner of the fashion brand Prima Dona studios. Aspiring sommelier at Side Hustle Wines. Dyslexic but Dealing. Believer that tech upskilling is the ultimate equalizer. Always ready to get on a plane.
Matthijs is a Coding Architect at Xebia. With a strong focus on Azure and AI, he helps clients achieve more on Azure. Matthijs has a passion for good work environments, great code, and amazing teams. Matthijs trained and led teams in different countries. He strongly believes that remote and distributed teams can be just as (or more) effective than sitting in the same old office together. Matthijs received the Microsoft MVP Award four years in a row.
Taking Agents everywhere with Semantic Kernel
In this session, Eduard, one of the developers of Microsoft's Semantic Kernel will show you how to take agents everywhere, with local models and local vector stores, but also combining this with cloud based Agents, and any combination you want!
Eduard is a longtime Microsoft employee, he worked in different roles in Microsoft Netherlands, West Europe and EMEA, and is currently part of the Semantic Kernel team.
Born to run: build the ultimate playlist with Generative AI and Semantic Kernel!
Generative AI is cool. Sure. But it is also limited. LLMs' power shines through if you combine their knowledge with your Generative AI, which is impressive. Astonishing. Almost magical. But, much like a GPS that insists you drive into a lake, it has limitations. The real magic happens when you combine AI's knowledge with your systems, giving it just enough guidance to be helpful without it going all HAL 9000 on you.
Enter Semantic Kernel, a way to make AI sound smart and actually be smart by calling on the world for answers when it gets confused. Think of it as a polite Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but for your data.
So, how does this help you? Simple. AI is going to help us generate the ultimate Spotify playlist, one that perfectly matches our mood, whether we’re pounding the pavement like Springsteen or just lounging on the couch contemplating the meaning of life (and whether 42 really is the answer).
This session is mostly live coding, which means we’ll be building this system on stage, in real-time, with all the suspense of a Monty Python sketch, except with fewer Spanish Inquisitions and more AI magic. So, whether you came here to learn about AI or just want an excuse to listen to better music, this is your stop. existing systems.
Semantic Kernel is a great way to make that happen. But what does all this mumbo-jumbo mean?
In essence, it is simple: AI does what it can do, and as soon as it gets confused, it calls on the world for answers.
That gives us a nice hook to achieve what we want to achieve: generate a Spotify Playlist that matches our mood, which we can listen to while we run or while we relax on the couch, whatever tickles your fancy.
This session is mostly code, where we will build most of this system live on stage. So that's already a great way to get your heartbeat in higher gear!
CTO, Team lead, developer. I do it all. Passionate about spreading knowledge on technology, people, management, developing and all the Douglas Adams books. I have been speaking at conferences, meetups and business meetings all over the world, always trying to get the audience to be as enthusiastic about the topics I talk about as I am. I have been active in the techindustry for over 30 years and still get a lot of joy writing code. But I also enjoy enabling other people to experience that: as a leader I always try to make sure people are safe, secure and have fun doing what they do best! Even more important: I love spreading my experience so others can do the same!
Workshop: Build your first agent with Azure AI Foundry
Dive into the world of intelligent conversational agents with Azure AI Agent Service, a seamless blend of service and SDK that simplifies the development of robust AI-driven solutions. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn to create a powerful agent capable of answering sales-related queries, performing data analysis, generating visualizations, and integrating external data sources to deliver enhanced business insights.
Malgorzata Ilczyk is Enterprise Architect and Data Architect more than 10 years experience in Architecture advisory for data estate modernization including building data platforms and implementing secure, sustainable and simplified solutions. She finds joy in making complex topics simple and sharing her knowledge in internal and external communities and conferences. She loves getting hands-on while learning new things and during cold winter months she focuses on gaining new Azure certs.
Managing (AI) Infrastructure with AI
Setting up, managing and troubleshooting your (AI) infrastructure can be a challenging effort. Suzanne will cover various aspects of using AI to optimize, monitor, and maintain infrastructure, demonstrating the transformative impact AI can have when integrated into infrastructure management processes. Through practical examples, this session will show how you can handle your infrastructure with help of Azure Copilot and the GitHub Copilot for Azure Agent (better known as @azure).
Suzanne's passion is to improve developer experience and increase productivity. Developers, or rather engineers in general, are ultimately driving innovation forward. Your developers should be empowered to ship with quality and security as a default. Suzanne has a broad experience in the field of Platform Engineering, Developer Portals, and Developer Tools and works at Microsoft to help customers with these challenges.
Letting agents control your webbrowser. What could go wrong?
2025 is the year of Agents. Last year, we mostly built applications that created text or searched through your business data with RAG. Now, we're giving generative AI more power by using agents. What makes agents different is their ability to perform tasks or run actions themselves.
In this talk, we'll look at one specific agent as an example: an agent that uses a web browser just like a human would. While a browser agent can be a powerful tool in your AI agent toolbox, the principles you'll learn from this agent can apply to connecting any kind of system, service, or API.
We'll talk about a new protocol called MCP (Model Context Protocol), explaining how it enables seamless connections between AI agents and virtually any system or API.
In this session you'll learn to understand the broader application of MCP for agent integration or making your own applications MCP ready, and discover when it's smart to use these agents, when you shouldn't, and what could possibly go wrong.
Geert van der Cruijsen is CEO of Zure in the Netherlands helping customers to build their engineering cultures and improve the way they build software. Geert specialises in Modern Software Development, DevOps, architecture, Cloud & AI and loves combining these areas. Geert is an active member of the community, loves speaking at conferences and for his community efforts has been awarded a Microsoft MVP award for the last 7 years.