May 2026 Microsoft Data & AI MeetUp in Reading (In-person Only)

Welcome to our May 2026 Micorsoft Data & AI Meetup in Reading.

1st Session: - From Data to Decisions: Building Intelligent Data Agents in Microsoft Fabric

Data Agents in Microsoft Fabric represent a shift from dashboards to intelligent, domain-aware experiences, bringing data closer to the decisions that matter.
In this session, we’ll focus on how to create Fabric Data Agents that deliver trusted, contextual insights to your business users. Rather than relying on generic AI over raw data, Data Agents provide a governed, curated layer that understands your business semantics, metrics, and rules.
You’ll learn how Data Agents work under the hood, how they leverage Fabric data sources, and how they integrate seamlessly with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Teams to bring insights directly into users’ daily workflows.
Through demos and real-world patterns, we’ll cover:
What Data Agents are and why they’re different from traditional BI and generic AI tools
How to model, configure, and publish agents
Best practices for grounding, governance, and trust
How to expose agents to end users via Copilot and Teams
Common pitfalls and current platform limitations
By the end of the session, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to move beyond dashboards and build intelligent, reusable Data Agents that scale across your organisation.

Rob Carrol
Principal Data Platform Consultant, Coeo
I've been working with Microsoft data platforms for over 20 years, firstly as a DBA and now as a consultant. I joined Coeo as a Data Platform Consultant in 2021 providing advice and guidance to customers modernising their SQL Server and analytics estates onto Azure SQL and Microsoft Fabric. I previously worked for Microsoft as a Premier Field Engineer (PFE) and as an independent database consultant, working across various sectors including financial services, retail and defence. When I'm not working with SQL Server, I'm a keen runner and enjoy spending time with my family.

Pizza and Networking: There will be Pizza and Networking during the evening.

2nd Session: - Forget Visual Query Plans, Parse the XML

The SSMS graphical execution plan is a simplification. It hides thread skew in parallel operators, buries memory grant wait times, shows only the first missing index when there are several, silently misorders index column recommendations, and renders scalar UDFs as zero-cost operations. The XML underneath shows all — and most people never read it.
In this session, Richard demonstrates what the graphical plan isn't showing you, using a live demo of Plan Investigator — his free, public beta built specifically to surface these hidden details. We'll parse real execution plans and expose what SSMS misses: per-thread row distribution in parallel plans, memory queuing time before a query could even start executing, composite index column gaps and much much more!
Every finding is traced back to the specific XML attribute that contains it, attendees will leave understanding not just what the tool found, but how to find it themselves using nothing but native SQL Server capabilities.

Richard Douglas
Solutions Engineer at Redgate Software.
He spent over 20 years working with SQL Server, Couchbase, and other database platforms. Notably at Quest, SentryOne, and Couchbase where he presented sessions at conferences around the world. These days he helps companies scale to higher levels of performance with Redgate Software.