Speaking Events 2025
18-19 June - Commsverse
3 July - Event yet to be announced
24 September - Event yet to be announced
1-4 December - ESPC
Whenever a speaking event is confirmed I will post a blog post with the details of the event and the subject matter, so consider using the RSS feed for the blog, or signing up for the newsletter to stay updated.
2025 Session Abstracts
These session abstracts represent talks that I am planning to deliver in 2025. They’re not exclusive though so if you’d like me to talk about something else at your next conference, please talk to me about it!
Building Copilot Declarative Agents: Everything I’ve learned building ClothesPilot
Declarative Agents allow developers to extend what Microsoft 35 Copilot can do out of the box, by creating and registering agents to take on specific workloads. Users can choose to engage with these agents directly, or mention them in passing.
As an experiment, I created ClothesPilot to help me choose what to wear each day. With knowledge of my wardrobe, my calendar and the day’s weather, ClothesPilot made suggestions, and I followed them without question.
In this talk, I’ll go through everything I learnt during this process and how you can combine different APIs to create your own Declarative Agents. We’ll cover the pre-requisites, how to shape the APIs you have, how to build and modify your agent, and all the tricks and gotchas I picked up along the way.
I’ll be digging into the code and demo’ing the effect of various changes along the way to keep things interesting, and you’ll leave with a clear implementation plan for how you can build your own Declarative Agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Building Multi-Agent apps with the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol
Announced in April this year by Google, and officially welcomed by Microsoft for use in both Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry in May, Agent2Agent is an open protocol that enables agents to communicate with each other across organisations and technology barriers such as different clouds.
In this demo-rich session I'll walk through how it works, how to use it in your next agent project, any gotchas, and where I think the future of A2A is going.
I think Agent2Agent is a game-changer for how not just agents, but also different competing implementation technologies can work together, so come and see what all the fuss is about!
It looks like you're trying to build a Copilot Agent? Do you want some help with that?
It's all about Copilot Agents right now. Unfortunately, the Microsoft 365 developer extensibility story is ... uh, complicated. Instead of a single entry point, there are several, each one with its own set of trade-offs.
Should you use Copilot Studio, or start with a Declarative Agent in VS Code? What about if you want to perform actions, or use an external API? If your agent becomes super-popular, how should other AI agents work with it, and what about lifecycle management, bug-fixing, and all the other stuff that comes with software (yes, agents are still software).
My goal of this session to give you an understanding of each approach you could take, how and why it exists, the pros and cons, some examples, and give you enough knowledge so that you can choose wisely for your next Copilot agent project.
What can you actually do with Copilot Studio?
It's the latest member of the Power Platform and has just picked up some powerful new features at Build. But what IS Copilot Studio, and more importantly, where and when should you use it? How does it compare to existing tooling for build Copilot Agents, and is it really something that business users can use? What about security?
I'm advising enterprises right now about Copilot Studio, showing their staff what's possible and kickstarting their POC projects.
In this session I'll cover what Copilot Studio is and what it can do. We'll build some agents and explore the different capabilities. We'll touch on security and governance but will try and keep it interesting and fun.
"You get one chance to make a good first impression" - Building a Great Bot Experience
Everyone is building bots right now, and technology is making it easier than ever to get involved. But building a great bot experience takes planning and care. A bot conversation is the ENTIRE user experience, so it has to be really good, no excuses.
Join Microsoft MVP and Teams Development Architect Tom Morgan who will take his experience building bots over the past 10 years to address:
5 questions to ask BEFORE you start building your bot,
3 different types of testing to conduct BEFORE you go live,
the #1 thing you need to do AFTER launch
and more.
Speaking at your Event
I am passionate about Microsoft Teams Platform Development, Azure Communication Services, Bot Framework and the state of the Communications Industry today. If you'd like to discuss what I can talk about at your user group, conference or event, please get in touch and I'd be happy to discuss options with you.
Speaker Bio
Tom is a Microsoft Teams Platform developer and Microsoft MVP who has been blogging at https://thoughtstuff.co.uk for over a decade. He is an independent contractor working with Microsoft Teams Development Platform and Microsoft Azure solutions. He lives in Norfolk in the UK, travelling internationally to speak about Microsoft Teams platform development, Azure, UCaaS, Office365, Bot Framework, Cognitive Services, and the future of the communications industry.
Workshops
Contact me for more information and to discuss details around running workshops for your conference or organisation.