Global Ambassador for the Global Council for Responsible AI

I have the privilege to have been accepted to serve as a Global Ambassador for the Global Council for Responsible AI. As a Global Ambassador I will play a critical role in representing my country, supporting local engagement, and shaping international efforts for responsible AI development.  Working with the Global Council for Responsible AI will help build a future where AI serves humanity and upholds our most important values. I will help them as a leader and have commitment to advancing ethical, transparent, and accountable AI which is invaluable. 

The Global Council for Responsible AI (GCRAI) is the world’s most inclusive and expansive organization dedicated to advancing the responsible development, deployment, use and governance of AI. They are not simply observers of change; they are architects of the AI-powered future. With 72 global chapters and over 700 ambassadors, they are becoming the largest international governing body shaping what it means to innovate responsibly.

Global Ambassadors Role

Champions for public awareness and education who activate local and digital communities, spark engagement, and support our fundraising efforts to expand our impact.

What Makes the Global Council for Responsible AI

Human Dignity at the Core

They are stewards of human dignity, building technologies and frameworks that honour the full potential of life.

Ethical Stewardship

They lead with living ethics that adapt to the needs of humanity and the planet.

Leadership by Integrity

With representation in over 194 countries, the leaders embody respect, service, and principled action.

Community Honour and Global Representation

They honour cultural wisdom, underserved communities, and diverse worldviews, ensuring no voice is left behind in the future we are shaping.

Gold Standard Workforce Certification

Through their exclusive certifications, they offer the global benchmark for responsible AI readiness, combining innovation, ethics, real-world experience, and proven career outcomes.

Long-Term Legacy Focus

They are shaping a legacy designed to serve life. Every decision is made with future generations in mind.

The Mission

Shape the Future Where AI is Supporting Humanity in the Best Possible Way

Who is involved

• Visionaries, innovators, and technologists committed to ethical impact
• Policymakers, educators, researchers, and stewards of human-centered governance
• Founders, investors, and builders seeking sustainable, principled innovation
• Leaders who care about humanity’s future.

 

 

Microsoft Data Platform MVP 2025

I am incredibly thankful for the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Data Platform Award this year. It has been an incredibly tough year caring for my very ill mother, who has sadly now died. Being able to try and help the community has been the one thing that has given me purpose whilst caring for mum. I know she would be so proud and pleased that I have been been recognised with this award. My grateful thanks go to Microsoft for the award and the community with whom I work.  

Data Toboggan Cool Runnings 2025

Data Toboggan Cool Runnings is on Saturday 12 July 2025. Our first Cool Runnings summer event was in 2020. This was one track. Today we have 3 tracks of talks over a 12 hour period.

 

Our Piste Maps are out with our agenda

Bramberg

Pradaschier

Rigi Kaltbad

Agenda: https://bit.ly/DTCR2025-Agenda

Register now: https://bit.ly/DTCR2025-Register 

The SQLBits 2025 Charity

I am not attending SQLBits this year, the first time ever due to the sad loss of my mum the week before. 

It is incredibly kind of SQLBits to set their charity in celebration of her remarkable life.

SQLBits’ charity of 2025 is the National Museum of Computing, the world’s largest collection of working historic computers, based at Bletchley Park. This fantastic charity has been chosen by longstanding SQLBits helper, Dr Victoria Holt, in honour of her mum, Joan Frances Holt (nee Clark), who she sadly lost last week.

If you would like to donate this is the page here.

Read more about her remarkable story and this remarkable charity here https://lnkd.in/gsjRpFMP

My inspiration in life

Mum’s computing years

At this sad time I wanted to share that my amazing mother, Joan Frances Holt (nee Clark), died on Monday after a 8 month long struggle with arterial disease and blood cancer. A person who was always timid, humble and never talked much about her accomplishments. She started out life being born at the start of the second world war, playing on the streets decimated by incendiary bombs in Portsmouth and only recently discovered more details about her dad who was awarded the Imperial Service Medal (ISM) for long and faithful service in HM Dockyards following his 20 years in the army. She was married to dad for 64 years.

Seven months after leaving school in March 1958, mum started as an Assistant Experimental Officer (AEO) at Aldermaston. A post normally only available to people with degrees, but mums maths was outstanding and was referred for the job by her headmistress at Portsmouth Grammar School. She learnt to program on the Ferranti Mk 1*, with a list of instructions with their binary equivalents, considered an old computer even then. The Ferranti Mk 1* had a large number of valves requiring servicing frequently that could only be run for a short time, which took punch cards. Mum worked on the very latest, state of the art, computer, the IBM 704 mainframe which was among only 2 in the country, the other being at Harwell, mum thought. There were 2 people operating the machine which had several huge magnetic tapes standing in cabinets about 6ft high, a printer, card input and output machines and a central console.  Mum was impressed to work on this. She attended a programming course on the IBM 704 and from printouts asked to draw a graph from the information in 2 columns. The start of modern-day analytics. She learnt how computers were constructed and how the data was stored. The main content of course training included programming the computer to carry out instructions using a symbolic assembly code, to read card input and produce a printout of results.  At the end of the 2 weeks, she had to write a program to calculate sin x. She had to use the machines to type out the program on punched cards, which were then converted to binary by an assembler on the computer.

In contrast, Mum and Dad both were involved in amateur filmmaking of cine films at Harpenden Cine Society in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  Walking in the lake district and travelling in France became a regular occurrence for her, from her 20’s

A small snapshot into a varied and extraordinary life, always an adventurer, and above all family centric and loved so much.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7338818960726929409/

The Shape of Intelligence: Reflections on Microsoft Build 2025

Microsoft Build 2025 took place from 19 to 22 May in Seattle, Washington. It was a four-day event packed with announcements on AI, agentic platforms, and developer tools. 

This year’s Microsoft Build felt less like a tech conference and more like a glimpse into a future already unfolding. What emerged was a tapestry of tools and ideas woven not just for developers, but for thinkers, makers, and leaders who believe technology should feel like an extension of purpose.

Microsoft Fabric continues to evolve and not just as a platform, but as a philosophy. It’s now the connection between data engineering, real-time intelligence, and business insight. The new Digital Twin Builder lets us model the world as we experience it: layered, imperfect, alive. And with Cosmos DB now embedded in Fabric, the boundary between structured and unstructured data feels less rigid, more fluid. It was exciting to see SQL Server grow with another release.

Some of the data and AI announcements from Microsoft Build 2025

AI Agents & Copilot Enhancements

Copilot Tuning – Preview: Customize Copilot with your own data and workflows for domain-specific tasks  

Multi-agent orchestration in Copilot Studio – Preview: Enables agents to collaborate across tasks  

Microsoft Entra Agent ID - Preview: Assigns unique identities to agents for governance  

Agent Store - Generally Available: Discover and deploy agents across Microsoft 365 endpoints  

Bring Your Own Models (BYOM) – Preview: Use over 1,900 Azure AI Foundry models in Copilot Studio

Data Platforms & Analytics

Power BI changes enable you to chat with your data. The preview of Standalone Copilot in Power BI was quietly revolutionary. Now, natural language becomes the interface. It’s not just about data literacy; it’s about data empathy. A new Copilot-powered experience for users to interact with their data through natural language, across any inputs, semantic models, apps and data agents they have access to.

Data agents in Microsoft Fabric serve as virtual business analysts, which you can bring right into Copilot Studio and deploy across Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot

Cosmos DB in Microsoft Fabric – Preview: Adds NoSQL capabilities to Fabric Databases  

Digital Twin Builder in Fabric Real-Time Intelligence – Preview: Create virtual replicas of physical/logical entities  

Standalone Copilot in Power BI – Preview: Natural language interface to query across reports  

Translytical Task Flows in Power BI – Preview: Enables write-back and automation from reports

AI Development & Infrastructure

SQL Server 2025 – Public Preview: AI-ready enterprise database with native integration. It is designed to securely power AI applications—transforming into a vector database in its own right.   

Azure Cosmos DB Vector Search – Preview: Store and query vector embeddings for generative AI  

Azure Database for PostgreSQL with Vector Embeddings – Preview: Generate embeddings via SQL for RAG apps  

Azure AI Foundry Agent Service – Generally Available: Build and orchestrate multi-agent systems  

Model Context Protocol (MCP) – Supported: Open protocol for agentic web interoperability  

To read the complete guide to all the new and events announced this year look at the Book of News. 

The rise of AI agents was at the heart of Build 2025. Not tools, not assistants but colleagues. With Copilot Tuning, organisations can shape agents using their own language, workflows, and values. It’s low-code, but high-trust. And with multi-agent orchestration, these entities collaborate across domains: HR, IT, marketing.

Open Protocols, Open Possibilities

Microsoft’s embrace of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and the launch of NLWeb signal a shift toward an open agentic web. It’s a vision where websites speak in semantic layers, and agents navigate with nuance. HTML gave us structure; NLWeb may give us meaning.

Discovery and the Scientific Imagination

Perhaps the most exciting announcement was Microsoft Discovery. An agentic platform for research and development offering a new enterprise agentic platform, which uses specialized agents and graph-based knowledge to accelerate research and development for scientists. 

Build 2025 wasn’t just about what’s new. It was about what’s next and who gets to shape it. 

The 2025 AI Index Report

The eighth edition of the AI Index report is out. The 2025 Index is the most comprehensive to date as AI’s influence across society, the economy, and global governance continues to intensify

In the report it covers 

• in-depth analyses of the evolving landscape of AI hardware 
• novel estimates of inference costs 
• new analyses of AI publication and patenting trends. 
• fresh data on corporate adoption of responsible AI practices
• expanded coverage of AI’s growing role in science and medicine. 

Microsoft AI Skills Fest

The Microsoft AI Skills Fest is starting from 8 April 2025 to 28 May 2025 to enhance your AI skills and unlock the future. From experiential content to hackathons, there is a lot of opportunity to learn at all levels. 

Register today: https://msft.it/6042qSzcE

Microsoft Community Fabric Conference 2025 announcements

There were lots of announcements during the FabCon 2025 conference. Here are a few to catch up on. The main Microsoft blog post can be read here: Fueling tomorrow’s AI with new agentic capabilities and security innovations in Fabric

Fabric Data Factory

Fabric Data Factory enables data ingestion through applying data transformations, and orchestrating different data-related activities for modern data management architectures. There were many new features added such as 

• General availability for CI/CD capabilities in Data Factory 
• SPN auth available for pipeline CRUD APIs to secure API apps without needing to use their user token when using the REST API.
• Lakehouse connector to read delta tables, being able to use the information from the deletion vectors to exclude deleted records.
• Support for column mapping, and automated auto-creation of tables with new schemas.

Further reading Fabric Data Factory: What’s New and Latest Roadmap

There were also many product improvements and features for Mirroring in Fabric

Mirroring in Fabric – What’s new

Migration Assistant for Fabric Data Warehouse

A really exciting announcement to help migrate from Azure Synapse Analytics was unveiled. This Migration Assistant for Fabric Data Warehouse will soon be in preview! The Migration experience is built natively into Fabric and enables the seamless transition from Azure Synapse Analytics (Data Warehouse) to Microsoft Fabric.

Migration Assistant for Fabric Data Warehouse (Preview)

Copilot for Data Engineering and Data Science

There is a new version of Copilot for Data Engineering and Data Science, a next-generation AI-powered assistant designed to elevate data analysis and coding experience. 

Further reading Enhancing AI productivity in Fabric notebooks with Copilot updates

Copilot F2 and above SKUs 

This is great news for customers on F2 and above SKUs that they will have access to Copilot, Fabric data agents, and more.

hashtag

Azure AI Foundry

Organizations can use Azure AI Foundry to connect customized, conversational agents, created in hashtagMicrosoft Fabric.

Microsoft Purview

There are several new innovations in hashtagMicrosoft Purview for protected, AI-ready data
1. Enhancing Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) support for lakehouse in Fabric to help prevent sensitive data loss by restricting access
2. Expanding DLP policy support for additional Fabric items such as KQL databases and Mirrored databases to show users notification through policy tips when they are working with sensitive data
3. Microsoft Purview for Copilot in Fabric
4. Data observability, now in preview, within Microsoft Purview Unified Catalog

These are a few of the announcements that were of particular interest to me but there were a lot of announcements showcasing the sheer volume of change and growth of Microsoft Fabric.

Reflections on MVP Summit

I had a great time at MVP Summit this week.  I learn a lot of new things. It was great to be able to network, provide customer feedback and talk about the ever evolving Data & AI landscape. With the speed of change seemingly increasing all the time it is good to stop and have a clear week reflecting on things that work and don't work and how to improve our practices when working with data and AI.

I think the biggest take away is that the Data & AI community is always approachable and helpful. There is always someone with deep knowledge of an area who can help and the community just gives up so much time to help others learn and grow from helping children learn coding skills, to creating and running conferences, speaking, mentoring and so much more. 

I have been privileged to be a Data Platform MVP for the last 7 years and would like to thank Microsoft for providing an amazing opportunity to attend the conference.

Reasoning Agents to help with Research and Analysis

There have been some mind blowing changes released today which will aid the future of work. Microsoft have introduced the first-of-their-kind reasoning agents for work.

Researcher

Researcher helps you tackle complex, multi-step research at work. This will help delivering insights with greater quality and accuracy.

Analyst

Analyst thinks like a skilled data scientist looking at raw data to produce insights in minutes.

Introducing Researcher and Analyst in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Read more about Researcher and Analyst

Deep reasoning and agent flows 

Deep reasoning and agent flows in Microsoft Copilot Studio is in preview and offers a comprehensive platform to create, manage, and deploy agents matched to business needs. 

Deep reasoning

Deep reasoning, agents can perform complex tasks and make more accurate decisions. 

Agent flows

Agent flows bring AI workflows into Copilot Studio that enable agents to follow a predefined sequence of actions, ensuring consistent results for structured tasks. 

 Read more 

Attending MVP Summit

It is exciting to be able to attend MVP summit 2025 virtually. It was not possible to attend in person, this year, but so glad that it is possible to attend virtually. 

Copilot shares its thoughts on the summit.

The MVP Summit is an exclusive event hosted by Microsoft for its Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs). These are individuals recognized for their exceptional contributions to the tech community, such as sharing knowledge, providing feedback, and supporting others in using Microsoft technologies. The summit offers MVPs the chance to connect with Microsoft engineers, attend technical sessions, and collaborate on shaping the future of Microsoft products and services. It's a unique opportunity for networking, learning, and sharing expertise.

The Microsoft AI Decision Brief

The AI Decision Brief Insights from Microsoft provides insights for AI leaders on navigating the Generative AI platform shift. AI has a potential to transform business but the rapid growth of the technology causes challenges in keeping up to date and knowing how to adopt it. As well and the infrastructure required 2 areas that are covered in the report which I this need investing is is AI skills and the importance of AI governance strategies. It is worth reading the guide to understand about the complexities and seeing how real world examples use AI.

The paper shares the five stages of generative AI readiness as

1. Exploring
2. Planning
3. Implementing
4. Scaling
5. Realizing

The five drives for business value mentioned are

1. Business strategy
2. Technology and data strategy
3. AI strategy and experience
4. Organisation and culture
5. AI governance

The top 3 elements to create best practice to get started are to

• Define the AI strategy and direction
• Target a top business challenge
• Establish AI readiness and governance

It is a useful document to read AI Decision Brief Insights from Microsoft

Reference

Maximizing AI’s potential: Insights from Microsoft leaders on how to get the most from generative AI

Customizing Generative AI for Unique Value

A new global report from MIT Technology Review Insights report looks at how business is leveraging AI customisation. It examines challenges faced by technology, motivations and methods to create business value. The report talks about improving efficiency, user satisfaction, and innovation but also looks at challenges such as data integrity and privacy. Simplifying AI customization is key and Azure AI Foundary , formerly AI Studio, helps design, customise and manage AI apps and agents at scale to help with business opportunities.

AI Playbook for the UK Government

The UK Government launched the AI Playbook for 2025 to provide departments and public sector organisations with accessible technical guidance on the safe and effective use of AI. 

The playbook covers 10 core principles for AI use in government and public sector organisations. These are

Principle 1: You know what AI is and what its limitations are

Principle 2: You use AI lawfully, ethically and responsibly

Principle 3: You know how to use AI securely

Principle 4: You have meaningful human control at the right stage

Principle 5: You understand how to manage the AI life cycle

Principle 6: You use the right tool for the job

Principle 7: You are open and collaborative

Principle 8: You work with commercial colleagues from the start

Principle 9: You have the skills and expertise needed to implement and use AI

Principle 10: You use these principles alongside your organisation’s policies and have the right assurance in place 

The paper shows the interdependencies between some existing and emerging fields of AI. 

Microsoft Purview Data Governance Roadmap H1 CY2025

The Microsoft Purview Data Governance Roadmap H1 CY2025 has been shared

Purview Data Governance is aligned with the Microsoft Security wide semester planning process. Next roadmap update is expected in July 2025. The roadmap covers these four areas to enhance data governance, improve data quality, and leverage AI in data management.

Unified Data Catalog Roadmap

• Enhancements in catalog management, including glossary terms, custom attributes, and duplicate detection.
• Support for glossary migration and scoped access.
• Automation of workflows for publishing business concepts and data product access.

Data Quality Roadmap

• Support for multicloud and on-premises data sources.
• Actionable data quality features, including scheduling, alerting, and issue remediation.
• Incremental data quality scoring and expanded connectors for on-premises support.

Data Estate Health Roadmap

• Introduction of bring-your-own-compute (BYOC) capabilities.
• Enhanced controls and user experience for monitoring data assets and ensuring critical data governance.
• Reporting on data quality trend history.

AI for Data Governance & Copilot

• Natural language search and data discovery with Security Copilot.
• AI-assisted catalog management and data quality rule recommendations.

Data Toboggan Winter 2025 Piste Maps

 The Data Toboggan Piste Maps for Saturday 25 January 2025

Register Now: https://bit.ly/DT2025-Register

Agenda: https://bit.ly/DT2025-Agenda

Bramberg Room

Pradaschier Room

Rigi Kaltbad Room

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Agent Starter Kit

Jack Rowbotham has shared a great set of tool to get Copilot ready for agents . The full set of tools to use can be downloaded here: https://lnkd.in/gpPBSMmf

This includes 4 areas:

• Agent in Copilot Chat Handout
• Agent Overview Guide 
• Copilot Chat User Training Guide
• IT Controls Guide

This is a great set of resources to help you get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. The Copilot Control System covers enterprise data protection (EDP) for data privacy and security. It has the ability to govern access, manage and report the usage and lifecycle of Copilot and agents. 

The guides include

Agent Overview Guide

1. Options for creating agents
2. Agent templates
3. Examples you can create
4. Agent building steps
5. One-pagers on use cases with instructions

Download: https://lnkd.in/gfxr-rrH

IT Setup and Controls Guide

• IT admin setup steps
• Managing access to Copilot Studio
• Setting up pay-as-you-go for agents
• Managing and viewing consumption

Download: https://lnkd.in/gRqrzAJi

Read more about it Enabling agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

Try Copilot Chat today at: www.m365copilot.com