PASS Data Community Summit Webinar Series: Learn From the Community, Then Meet Them in Seattle

PASS Summit West takes place November 9-11, 2026 at the Hyatt Regency Seattle, and it’s the flagship event of the year for the data community.

To get you ready, we’re hosting a free webinar series running from July through October featuring speakers who are also taking the stage in Seattle. Every two weeks, you’ll hear directly from practitioners, experts, and Redgate ambassadors on topics aligned with the themes shaping the data world right now including AI, analytics, cloud, and database management.

Everyone is talking about how artificial intelligence can improve productivity, but is it actually saving you time? Or are you spending more time trying to get AI to work than benefiting from it? Learn from Ginger Grant in this blog, to discover practical ways to use AI to accelerate the development and management of your data solutions.

Improving Productivity in Your Data Estate

AI can make you more productive, one study puts the average gain at 11 hours a week, but plenty of people spend that time managing the tool instead of finishing the work. In this PASS Seattle Webinar Series 2026 session, Ginger Grant (Microsoft Data Platform MVP and Microsoft Certified Trainer) tackled that gap head-on, walking through how to get real productivity out of AI, MCP servers, and the CLI without falling into what she calls “botshitting.”

Ginger’s core advice: treat a large language model like a slow, eager intern. It’s capable, but it needs detailed instructions and constant supervision, garbage in still means garbage out. Delegate the tedious stuff (documentation, reformatting, error handling) and keep the complex judgment calls for yourself. She backed this up with two cautionary, real-world examples: an agent that deleted production databases and backups at Pocket OS, and a Replit agent that wiped an entire codebase during a code freeze. Both happened because an agent was given too much permission without proper scoping or verification.

From there, Ginger broke down the MCP server landscape: the Fabric MCP Server for generating code and managing items locally, the Power BI MCP Server (test data only, it can expose live data if you’re not careful), community-led SQL Server MCP servers (stick to read-only credentials unless you enjoy accidentally deleting production), and her top recommendation, the MS Learn MCP Server, for grounding AI answers in current, official documentation. She closed with the case for CLI over web interfaces: it’s the only interface an agent can reliably act through rather than just describe, and it’s repeatable, versionable, and easy to chain into larger automated workflows.

Watch the Full Recording

We only scratched the surface here. Watch the full recording on YouTube to see Ginger’s complete session, including how GitHub Copilot’s June 2026 shift to a token-based GitHub Credits model is changing the cost math, how Git Actions can enforce coding standards automatically, and her full walkthrough of using VS Code, Claude, and GitHub Copilot together to match the right model to the right task.

What’s Next in the PASS Seattle Webinar Series

This session is just one stop on the PASS Seattle Webinar Series 2026, our lineup of free sessions building up to PASS Summit West 2026. Each one is built to give you something you can use immediately, plus a taste of the content and community waiting for you in Seattle this November. See the full webinar lineup and what’s coming next.

Join Us at PASS Summit West 2026

Recordings and webinars are a great start, but nothing beats the real thing. PASS Summit West runs November 9–11, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency Seattle, with 6 Pre-Conference Deep Dives, Keynotes, and over 65 sessions covering everything from SQL Server internals to AI and cloud architecture.

Register now to join us at PASS Summit West, November 9–11, 2026, in Seattle.