Jason Haley

Ramblings from an Independent Consultant

Hands-on Agent Framework Workshop Jan 2026

Yesterday Bill Wilder, Udai Ramachandran and I held the first In-person, hands-on, all-day, free. Agent Framework Dev Day in BURLINGTON MA for the year. This year, we targeted both .NET and python developers (last year we only focused on .NET). My presentation and labs focused on implementing Agentic RAG with Agent Framework. Talk: Agentic RAG NOTE: The repository has moved to the new Agent Framework Dev Day github. About the Lab This year I tried to stay away from the instructional labs that just turns into a treasure hunt, copy paste set of instructions … though not completely. This year I created notebooks to cover the fundamentals, then a hands on exercise that had some instructions and excercises - plus the solution to the exercises. Notebooks: The Ingestion Phase (.NET) …

Posted by Jason on Saturday, January 17, 2026

My Session at Boston Code Camp 39

This past Saturday was Boston Code Camp 39 (fall edition). For those of you who don’t know, the Boston Code Camp is the one that started it all (back in 2004) - see wikipedia for more info … at this point it may also be the last remaining one (not sure.). I got to visit with many old friends that I mostly just see at Code Camp these days … many of which I met at a code camp some time in the past 20+ years. I did not get to attend any sessions due to taking the time to catch up with people instead. I presented a “lessons learned” session, which was well attended and very interactive. I had a lot of really good questions regarding RAG, chunking, etc. Lessons Learned from a Year of Building Copilot Agents & RAG Applications The presentation was a split …

Posted by Jason on Thursday, November 27, 2025

Agentic RAG Chronicles

Introducing: The Agentic RAG Chronicles (Blog Series) Last year I chronicled several RAG Demos with the idea I would have a documented place to return to when I was looking for specify RAG features. Having those demos documented and all the reference links in one location really was useful for me - so I am going to do the same thing this year, but with Agentic RAG components. Agentic RAG Last year when I was learning RAG, that technique became known as Standard RAG or Semantic RAG. At its core, it’s a system that uses semantic search—understanding meaning rather than just matching keywords—to find relevant information, then feeds that information to an LLM to answer a user’s question. When you first build one of these systems, the results feel almost magical. But it …

Posted by Jason on Sunday, October 19, 2025

Hands-on Boston AgentCon Workshop

This past Saturday, I held my latest hands on workshop: From Static Files to Smart Agents: Unlocking Document Intelligence at AgentCon Boston. I ended up with around 30 attendees. There was quite a bit of interaction, with some real practical questions being asked about RAG and GenAI applications. Hand-on-Lab: From Static Files to Smart Agents: Unlocking Document Intelligence The repository is located at: https://github.com/JasonHaley/agentcon-boston-workshop What is it? The end result (which is the “completed” branch of the repo), is a Chainlit application designed to provide four use cases: Compare a clause between two contracts and get detail and risk analysis of the clause Analyze a clause that is in one contract but not the other Compare two complete contracts Create a …

Posted by Jason on Tuesday, September 30, 2025

My Session at Boston Global AI Bootcamp

Yesterday was Boston Azure AI’s Edition of the Global AI Bootcamp at the NERD in Cambridge. We had a lot of interest in the event - 85 people on the RSVP list and almost that on the waitlist. Since the space we had couldn’t handle any more people, unfortunately we couldn’t let more people in. However since there was such good interest in a Saturday AI oriented bootcamp, we are working on planning another one soon - so if you happen to be one of those people that couldn’t attend - stay tuned! This year we only had one challenge with the facilities … lack of power strips. Thanks to Rich Crane and Mill 5 for getting a bunch of power strips at the last minute for us! Also a big thanks to Daymark for providing the breakfast and lunch - they were really good and …

Posted by Jason on Sunday, March 23, 2025

Hands-on AI Workshop Jan 2025

Yesterday Bill Wilder, Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez and I had the second Hands-on AI Workshop - this time in Cambridge MA. Like the last time, the goal was to give the attendees a hands on experience using Semantic Kernel. The target audience was .NET developers using Visual Studio Code looking to learn GenAI. My presentation and labs focused on RAG. Talk: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) I made a few small changes since the December workshop, mostly in the part where I discuss chunking. NOTE: The repository has moved to the new BostonAzureAI github. What about Visual Studio? The original labs are still on the old github that contain the Visual Studio labs, however this time we decided to simplify expectations and just focus on using VS Code. Personally I prefer Visual Studio for .NET …

Posted by Jason on Saturday, February 1, 2025

A Semantic Kernel Workshop

Announcing: A Semantic Kernel Workshop Friday Bill Wilder, Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez and I finally were able to make the workshop we’ve been working on for the past couple of months public. We had an in person day long event where we used the content, which was received really well. The attendees had some good questions - giving us some really good ideas on how to improve the content. Target audience: .NET developers looking to start using Gen AI in their applications Overview The workshop (currently has a long name which we’re planning on shortening soon): Building RAG-Enabled Apps and AI Agents with Semantic Kernel and Azure AI, contains 6 labs and (currently) 2 presentations. We have both Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio versions of the first 5 labs (I’m working …

Posted by Jason on Sunday, December 8, 2024

Hands-on AI Workshop Dec 2024

Yesterday Bill Wilder, Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez and I put on a Hands-on AI Workshop in Burlington MA. The goal was to give the attendees hands on experience using Semantic Kernel. The target audience was .NET developers using Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio looking to learn GenAI. I gave the middle presentations and labs focusing on RAG. Talk: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) This was an intro level presentation on what RAG is and the concepts you need to know to create a RAG system. The presentation can be downloaded on the github here The labs that were RAG related where: Lab 3: Using WebRetrieverPlugin to create a RAG application - (Visual Studio edition) Lab 4: Creating a RAG application to Search a PDF - (Visual Studio Edition) Lab 5: Putting it all together - (Visual Studio …

Posted by Jason on Saturday, December 7, 2024

Azure SQL, Entity Framework, Semantic Kernel Hands-on-Lab

Announcing: Build a RAG App using Semantic Kernel, Entity Framework and Azure SQL DB Hands-on-Lab A couple of weeks ago after Azure SQL DB announced their public preview of native vector support, I put a hands on lab together to help people get started with the new feature and EF Core extension. Bill Wilder and I did mentioned it in our presentations on December 12 and December 15, but I haven’t had a chance to announce it for those of you who missed our presentations. Overview The hands on lab: Build a RAG App using Semantic Kernel, Entity Framework and Azure SQL DB provides a step-by-step walk through creating a RAG application using SQL Azure DB, EntityFramework Core and Semantic Kernel. I used VS Code for the steps, but if you are an experienced .NET developer using Visual …

Posted by Jason on Monday, November 25, 2024

Boston Code Camp 37 Session

Yesterday was Boston Code Camp 37. I spent the majority of the day talking with people in the community I haven’t seen for awhile, as well as some new people I hadn’t met before. I only made it to one session (Juan Pablo Garcia Gonzalez - Agentic AI: Unlocking the Power of Multi-Agent Systems), which was good and got me thinking about how to rewrite my demos in my talk to use agents. It was nice to see a good amount of new (and younger) people attending the code camp. We always have a lot of student volunteers from Curry College that help out and the last couple of years I’ve noticed some of them still continue to attend even after they have graduated. After having a full day of socializing, I realized that I must be an introvert because my energy was gone. Talk: Using …

Posted by Jason on Sunday, November 24, 2024

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ABOUT ME
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Jason is an experienced developer and solutions architect focused on helping companies provide real business value with custom software development using the Microsoft stack of technologies. This includes C#, .NET, Azure and AI services. In 2024, Jason was awarded a Microsoft MVP in AI - highlighting his latest focus on AI and specifically Generative AI technologies in real world business applications. The prior seven years, he was a Microsoft Azure MVP.

Let's work together to find solutions that fit your needs. Reach out today to discuss how I can support your goals—I'm here to help!

Jason Haley MVP