{"id":37,"date":"2025-11-11T11:11:50","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T10:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vondervoort.be\/?p=37"},"modified":"2025-11-11T11:14:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T10:14:45","slug":"directions-emea-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vondervoort.be\/index.php\/2025\/11\/11\/directions-emea-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Directions EMEA 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I love street art as I find it brings color and life to otherwise gray streets and buildings. On the walk between the conference venue and my hotel I passed a lot of murals. Some were large, others subtle and hidden in corners you\u2019d almost overlook. I liked this one as these days away from my daily work give me space to breathe and connect with our community to absorb fresh ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agentic AI<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start with the elephant in the room; Yes, it’s AI and Yes, it\u2019s agentic! Around me, I see people doing amazing things with Copilot, but I couldn\u2019t get it to work for myself to be honest. I realized I needed to find a workflow that would work for me. One where I didn\u2019t have to fight the AI over its unpredictable outcomes. For me the problem was that there was always a new tool or model just around the corner. Do I need VS Code, Cursor or Claude? Which model should I choose? Do I need to become a prompt engineer? How do I even begin to control this beast?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to Directions EMEA. Last year, I felt there were too many sessions about AI. This year, I couldn\u2019t get enough. The difference for me is that last year I did see the potential, but now, with tools becoming available and real world examples everywhere, I see how I can use it in my daily work. And not just for development, but also for gathering requirements, creating documentation and analyzing telemetry!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Development Zone<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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New this year were the dedicated zones for Leadership, Consulting and Development. I followed multiple sessions in the Development zone. Though calling them “sessions” doesn\u2019t quite capture it, it felt more like grabbing a drink while a fellow colleague shared a story. The setup made it feel informal and close. No microphones, no distance, just people leaning in to listen, which made it feel even more personal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing I\u2019d love to see next year is for these zone sessions to be listed directly in the Directions app schedule. With so much going on, it would help to plan better and not miss out on these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sessions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A big shoutout to all the speakers this year; You\u2019re the rockstars! The preparation, the time, the energy you poured into it and your willingness to climb on stage and share your experiences and knowledge with us, shows your dedication and strengthens our community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Choosing sessions this year was more difficult than ever. There were time slots where I had to pick between three, sometimes even four parallel sessions (and not to mention deciding between attending a session or diving into a workshop). I definitely missed a few I really wanted to see, so I’m hoping there’ll be follow-up webinars or future conferences where I can catch up on what I missed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are a few highlights from the sessions that stood out to me. The content, the perspectives and the practical takeaways that I\u2019m bringing back with me and already looking to apply in my daily work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hey Azure DevOps users! Let’s talk about GitHub – DeepDive<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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As an Azure DevOps user, I loved the session on GitHub comparison. Kamil Sacek<\/a> and Krzysztof Bialowas<\/a> didn\u2019t only talked about the differences, but they shared their real-world experiences between the both. With the great features of Copilot on GitHub it would make sense to move your repository to GitHub and use a hybrid solution between Azure DevOps, so you have the best of both worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You need to implement Agents now! …But what even is an Agent?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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I came into this session questioning how and when we should implement (agentic) Agents into our world of AI. Tine Staric<\/a> has a talent to bring this complex question to the audience in his one unique way and bring us along in his story in a completely \u201csold out\u201d packed conference room!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Chaos to Code: Building a Knowledge-First Development Workflow<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Just when I thought I knew a bit on how to work with Copilot in VS Code, Jeremy<\/a>\u2019s session felt like I\u2019m years behind. I\u2019ve been told not to worry, as most of the things he has shown didn\u2019t exist a few months ago, which shows how fast things are evolving currently, it\u2019s wild.

I often find my agents, whether it\u2019s ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, running off into the woods and returning with results I was not expecting. This session showcased how we get the knowledge into the development workflow, which will absolutely improve your results on agentic AI development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

43 dev tips in 45 minutes<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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I always appreciate sessions like the one from Milan Milin\u010devi\u0107<\/a>. There are always some hidden gems in there. Things you didn\u2019t know or maybe even forgot. Some are small, but super useful in your daily work and you can start using them right away on Monday. Even though Luc van Vugt<\/a> unfortunately couldn\u2019t join us this year he was virtually with us through the slides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keynote Day 3 – Is AI working for you ?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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The Community Keynote on Day 3 featured two familiar faces from the Business Central community; Krzysztof “KB” Bialowas<\/a> and Jeremy Vyska<\/a>. It was great to see them on the main stage sharing how they see AI fitting into the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ecosystem. With KB having recently stepping into a new role as “AI First Director for Business Central” and Jeremy Vyska continues to support our community by sharing his experience with AI through the Nubimancy<\/a> project, their contributions highlighted the importance of shared learning through this AI shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The Directions for Partners team delivered another fantastic edition of Directions EMEA this year in Pozna\u0144. Huge thanks to the organizers for pulling it all together and I\u2019m looking forward to next year in Paris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love street art as I find it brings color and life to otherwise gray streets and buildings. On the walk between the conference venue and my hotel I passed a lot of murals. Some were large, others subtle and hidden in corners you\u2019d almost overlook. I liked this one as these days away from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":7}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vondervoort.be\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vondervoort.be\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vondervoort.be\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vondervoort.be\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vondervoort.be\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.vondervoort.be\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/www.vondervoort.be\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vondervoort.be\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vondervoort.be\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vondervoort.be\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}