Curiosity, Creativity, and Chemistry: How I Stopped Copiloting and Started Collaborating - with James Bartlett

LIVESTREAM DATE/TIME 📅

June 11th 2026 - 9:30 AM (Pacific Time)

DESCRIPTION 📄

Most people use AI assistants like fancy search engines, and the results often leave much to be desired. But James Bartlett isn't most people. He has a personal AI agent named Cray, whom he treats more like a junior colleague, and they have racked up some interesting and impressive achievements together. Cray runs 24/7 on James's home server, managing scheduled jobs, helping James with otherwise boring and repetitive tasks, and building dozens of tools (including an entire PowerShell MCP framework) during unsupervised nightly "innovation sessions."

In this conversation with Reid Havens, James pulls back the curtain on what daily life with an AI partner actually looks like: the good, the weird, the genuinely useful, the unexpectedly wholesome, and the parts that honestly still need some work. If you've wondered what's beyond "prompt engineering," this is that conversation.

GUEST BIO (James Bartlett) 👤

James D. Bartlett III is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP, co-host of The Drill Down with Ahmad & James podcast, and an unapologetic PowerShell enthusiast. By day, he helps organizations wrangle Microsoft Fabric and Power BI at P3 Adaptive, and by night, he tinkers with open-source software projects, home automation, vintage audio gear, local LLMs, and an AI agent named Cray who lives on his LAN and builds handy tools while he sleeps.

Power BI to Plotly: Build AI Dashboard Apps - with Adam Schroeder

LIVESTREAM DATE/TIME 📅

March 6th - 9:30 AM (Pacific Time)

DESCRIPTION 📄

You’ve already invested in a Power BI semantic model. Cool. Now let’s actually use it outside the walls of a closed BI environment. In this session, Adam Schroeder (Plotly) shows how Plotly Studio can connect directly to your existing Power BI semantic model so you can build polished, production-ready data apps, powered by Python and accelerated with AI, without rebuilding or migrating your data.

You’ll learn how to:

• Build fully customized, production-ready data apps using Python (beyond drag-and-drop limits)

• Distribute apps broadly without getting crushed by per-user viewer licensing costs

• Own your branding, UX, and deployment strategy end-to-end

• Take a practical step toward operationalizing trustworthy AI on top of governed data

If you’re hitting the ceiling on Power BI customization, navigating licensing-based scaling challenges, or looking for more control over how insights (and AI) reach users, this is your playbook.

GUEST BIO 👤

Adam Schroeder is a Senior Developer Advocate at Plotly. He has helped grow the community through 1:1 relationships, contributing to 6 million Dash downloads per month. He’s taught Plotly Dash for over five years on YouTube as @CharmingData (over 60,000 views/month) and co-authored “The Book of Dash.”

RELATED CONTENT 🔗

Plotly Studio

AI-Powered Power BI: Building Custom Themes & Visuals with GitHub Copilot - with Zoe Douglas

LIVESTREAM DATE/TIME 📅

February 20th, 2026 - 9:30 AM (Pacific Time)

DESCRIPTION 📄

GitHub Copilot can turn Power BI customization from a tedious, manual grind into a fast, interactive workflow. In this session, you’ll see how to generate polished report themes by extracting color palettes from images, create named style presets that show up directly in Power BI’s formatting pane, and build custom visuals from scratch with Copilot as your pair programmer. From JSON theme schemas to visual implementation details, you’ll leave with practical techniques to speed up development, improve consistency, and ship better-looking reports with less trial-and-error.

GUEST BIO (Zoe Douglas)👤

I'm a product manager for Power BI working on core visuals with focus on the default and theming experience with visuals in reports. I'm also good with a semantic model and worked on features such as DAX query view, Copilot to write DAX queries, Copilot to write measure descriptions, Optimize ribbon, and more! Before coming to Power BI product group I was a Power BI consultant using Power BI everyday to bring insights to action!

RELATED CONTENT 🔗

LinkedIn
Zoe's Blog
Zoe's GitHub

A Generated Report: How AI can make Dashboards - with Injae Park

LIVESTREAM DATE/TIME 📅

January 9th 2026 — 9:30AM (Pacific Time)

DESCRIPTION 📄

This session explores how AI can be applied to the creation and modification of Power BI visuals, focusing on the different levels at which AI tools can interact with reports and models. The session looks at emerging patterns in how AI is being used across the Power BI development lifecycle, and where each approach is most effective.

We Will Cover

• Using web-based LLMs for fast iteration, ideation, and visual exploration

• Using MCP-style setups to interact with and modify the semantic model

• The trade-offs between speed, control, and reliability across these approaches

• How to choose the right level of AI involvement for different scenarios

This will be a discussion of a few examples of how the technology is moving at a rapid pace, and how that will affect and enable Power BI Developers

GUEST BIO 👤

Injae Park is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP who combines his technical expertise with a passion for teaching by sharing his insights and practical tips through his YouTube channel @PowerBIPark. Injae's content ranges from beginner tutorials to advanced techniques, and as part of the Power BI Core Visual Representatives - he aims to bridge the MS Developer team with the Power BI community. His education in psychology and economics as well as his experience in consulting gives him a well-rounded perspective on the Power BI Developer experience, making his tutorials both engaging and accessible.

RELATED CONTENT 🔗

Injae's Website
Injae's LinkedIn
Injae's YouTube