UK Access User Group · May 2027
Our biggest ever, 2-day, in-person residential conference
Two full days of sessions at the Leonardo Hotel in Watford, with the conference, dinner and your room for the night in between included in the ticket.
25 & 26 May 2027
Leonardo Hotel, Watford
Dinner, bed & breakfast and refreshments
About the event
Everything in one ticket
We have never run a two-day conference before. We’re bringing together a fantastic collection of speakers, and giving us time to enjoy their presentations and time to chat afterwards: two days of sessions, the conference dinner, and a room at the venue for the night in between.
Two days of sessions
A full programme across both days, from brilliant speakers on a real breadth of topics.
Dinner
The conference dinner on the evening between the two days, giving delegates and speakers time to relax and chat.
Bed & breakfast
Your room at the Leonardo Hotel for the middle night, and breakfast before day two.
The bits in between
Coffee, lunch and the conversations that are half the reason to turn up in person.
Programme
What’s on when
Session times are provisional and more sessions are still to be confirmed. We’ll release more information as time goes by.
Day one · 25 May
Times to be confirmed · ends with a post-dinner session!
Registration & coffee with pastries
Welcome15 min
Introduction and welcome
The plan for the two days, and where to find the coffee.
You can get the job, but can you do the job? (2027 edition)
Armen Stein · J Street Technology
So you’ve advertised for more work. And now it’s about to come in. A client has asked you to quote for a big project. How do you know how long it will take? What does the quoting process even look like? How do you make sure you’re not going to go bankrupt whilst still giving the customer what they need at a price they’ll pay?
Break · Tea · coffee
Customer-facing AI in your database
Andrew Richards · The IT Service
Details coming soon.
Lunch
Managing IP rules for Azure SQL Server from within your Access Application
Rochelle Long · J Street Technology
In this live, hands-on session, we’ll design and develop an Azure solution that supercharges your Access application—with AI as your pair programmer. We’ll tackle a real-world challenge: automating secure IP management for Azure SQL. You’ll learn how to make remote, secure data access to Azure SQL databases possible—without VPNs, manually adding IPs or remote desktops.
We will also discuss Azure Entra Authentication for SQL and strategies for authenticating users in SQL using MFA. By the end, you’ll see how your Access skills, combined with AI, Azure Logic Apps and Entra Authentication can unlock powerful, secure scalable solutions in the cloud.
Using the Edge control to implement a date-picker: from the ground up
Marcus Dieterle
In this session, Marcus will be presenting his web-based Date Picker controls for Microsoft Access. The controls are displayed using the Access Edge Browser (acEdgeBrowser), allowing modern web-based controls to be integrated into an Access application.
He’ll demonstrate the controls live and explain how they work behind the scenes. He’ll also show how to integrate them into an existing Access project, so that you can see not only what they look like, but also how they can actually be implemented and used in their own applications.
Tea and coffee · with cake
Luke Chung · FMS Inc
Details coming soon.
What’s happening in Redmond?
The Access Team · Microsoft
We’re delighted to welcome back the Microsoft Access team to share their plans for the product and to answer your questions.
Round-table discussion45 min
A panel discussion featuring a selection of names from the conference – plus a special guest moderator.
Down-time and conversation, in the bar or as you wish
Conference dinner
One last thought for the evening….40 min
Armen Stein · J Street Technology
In a short session as you sup your warm milk / brandy, Armen will talk about sleep. Apparently it’s a passion of his. It’s his area of real expertise. If you know Armen, you know it’ll be entertaining. And we thought it would be a good way to end the evening before we head back to our rooms (or the hotel bar).
Day two · 26 May
Times to be confirmed · breakfast at the hotel
Breakfast & check out
How did I end up here??!
Luke Chung · FMS Inc
You may know Luke from his work as President of FMS. For his products such as Total Access Analyser, amongst many others.
Others may know him from his career as a viral influencer and how it ended up with an appearance in front of Congress. In a short session, Luke spills the beans on this rather amusing tale…
Inheriting someone else’s database, with AI as your guide
Juan Soto · Access Experts
Taking over someone else’s code and database can be very challenging, understanding their data architecture, purpose and code can take quite a long time. In addition, you need to be careful with adding new features that may impact existing functionality.
In this session Juan will show how you can leverage AI to analyze, understand, audit and help plan new features on systems you did not create, saving you countless hours and ensuring you’re not causing more harm than good.
Break
Migrating a (large) database with AI
Jonathan Stein · J Street Technology
In a “partner piece” to Juan’s presentation, Jonathan will share how he tackled the challenge of inheriting someone else’s database, and using AI to help.
Imagine being given the database schema as a PDF. A PDF that ran to over 1800 pages. And that the data runs to over 80GB of raw content including JPGs, PDFs and more.
And the customer tells you that they’ve already spoken to 4 different suppliers, all of whom have said it’s impossible…
Jonathan will tell you how he was able to do it. And just how long it took.
Thinking Like a SQL Server Developer
Anders Ebro
Moving from Access to SQL Server is about more than moving your tables and queries to a different platform. It means thinking differently about where your data logic belongs, how it should be structured, and what work should happen in the database rather than in the Access client.
In this session, we’ll explore some of the tools that SQL Server gives you for building that logic into the database itself. We’ll look at stored procedures, views, triggers and computed columns, and how they can change the way you design an Access application. If time permits, we’ll also venture into hierarchical data and some of the more powerful techniques SQL Server offers. The goal isn’t to turn you into a SQL Server DBA—but to help you help you think like a good SQL Server developer.
Lunch
Data visualisation with Power BI
Ynte Jan Kuindersma
Love Access but want modern dashboards, interactive reporting, and insights you can easily share with others? That’s where Power BI comes in.
While Access is excellent for building business applications and managing data, Power BI adds powerful analytics, rich visualizations, mobile access, and cloud-based reporting. Together, they can turn your Access data into professional dashboards that help users make better decisions.
Unfortunately, getting Access data into the Power BI Service is not always straightforward. Connecting Power BI Desktop to an Access database is easy, but publishing and refreshing that data in the cloud can be challenging.
In this session, Ynte Jan will show how to build reports based on an Azure SQL server and will try to show the report within the Edge control in a Access form.
Whether you’re maintaining a long-standing Access application or building something new, you’ll leave with practical techniques to bring your Access data into the modern BI world.
SessionTo be announced
Something else good · Coming here…
Details coming soon.
Tea and coffee · with cake
SessionTo be announced
One more good thing · Coming here…
Details coming soon.
Wrap up and final thoughts
Steve Girling, Peter Bryant and Andrew Richards
Close
Speakers
Who you will hear from
More speakers still to be announced.
Armen Stein
Microsoft MVP · Founder & President, J Street Technology, Seattle
Armen Stein is the founder and president of J Street Technology, a team of about 15 developers, designers and support staff located near Seattle. J Street has designed and built hundreds of custom Access desktop and ASP.NET web applications since 1994, and also supports dozens of Access and web applications built by others.
Armen is a Microsoft MVP since 2006, and has spoken at many user groups and conferences around the world, including Vienna DevKon, Office DevCon in Australia, the PAUG Conference (now Access Cascade Conference), Access Day events, the UK Access User Group in London, and the NADD conference in Amsterdam. He also regularly guest lectures on requirements discovery and database design at a local college. His other interests include travel, photography, Kauai, backgammon, trailer camping, movies, supporting people with disabilities in Nepal, and driving his 1969 Ford Bronco in the sun.
Luke Chung
Microsoft MVP · Founder & President, FMS Inc
FMS President Luke Chung, founded FMS (fmsinc.com) in 1986 to provide custom database solutions. He directs the company’s product development and consulting services efforts as the database industry evolved. FMS is the world’s leading developer of commercial Microsoft Access products with tens of thousands of customers in 100+ countries. Luke is the primary author and designer of many FMS commercial products including Total Access Analyzer, Total Access Detective, Total Access Emailer, Total Access Statistics, among others. He also leads the Advanced Systems Group (fmsasg.com) with its Sentinel Visualizer product for the intelligence and law enforcement communities.
A recognized database expert, Luke is a popular speaker at conferences in the US, Europe and Australia, and published many articles.
He is a past president of the Washington, DC chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization and served on the Fairfax County Information Technology Policy Advisory Committee for 9 years.
Juan Soto
Microsoft MVP · Founder, Access Experts & AccessUserGroups.org
For more than 30 years, businesses have trusted Juan Soto to protect, modernize, and grow the Microsoft Access databases their operations depend on. Today that trust extends beyond his clients – Microsoft has recognized Juan as an MVP every year for over a decade, and invited him to help shape how small and medium businesses use Microsoft’s technology.
He founded Access Experts in 1994 on a simple belief: that a Microsoft Access database, built and maintained correctly, can carry a business much further than most people expect. Over 32 years working with Microsoft Access, he and his team have designed, modernized, or rescued the databases running day-to-day operations for businesses across the US and Canada — from small shops to organizations managing millions of records.
Juan is also the founder of AccessUserGroups.org, with chapters on 5 continents, bringing together people online each month or watching the replay on YouTube, focused on a wide range of topics related to Access.
Andrew Richards
Microsoft MVP · The IT Service · UKAUG co-chair
Andrew has been running The IT Service since 2009, and building databases since 2000. His time is split between building databases using Access and SQL, and training people on anything to do with data, including Access, Excel, SQL, “AI without the hype”, CyberSecurity and GDPR.
He’s consulted with a wide range of clients from museums (such as the British Museum) to universities (including Imperial College London and Oxford University) and from BBQ supply firms to forensic laboratories.
He lives with his partner Angela in East Sussex and provides care and support to sheep, chickens, guinea fowl and cats.
Anders Ebro
Anders has over 15 years of experience as a system designer, software developer and consultant, always focusing on really understanding the user and business requirements, their work flow and thus optimizing their experience and ROI.
Having designed data models and systems for such diverse applications as Requirement Management, Bus planning, Budgeting, Expense Re-allocation he has a great understanding of both domain driven design and the human element in application.
Anders is easy-going, honest to a fault, and empathic, and likes to build strong relationships with both clients and co-workers. He loves to teach and mentor new employees, with a focus on best practice, and it’s key to Anders that he never wants to stop learning or growing himself.
Rochelle Long
J Street Technology
Rochelle has several decades of experience developing Access Applications as a consultant and employee in a variety of industries. Over the last 10 years she has also expanded into PowerBI and Power Apps.
Rochelle recently spent nearly 4 years at Microsoft as a technical PM in Azure, and later a data analyst and engineer in data center intelligence. She quietly built several Access databases at Microsoft – tools that enabled her to do things that others said couldn’t be done. Shhhh.
Jonathan Stein
J Street Technology, Seattle
Jonathan is a software engineer for J Street Technology, primarily focusing in full-stack web development and AI assisted development. In 2018 he completed a 6 month Seattle programming bootcamp for web development. From there, he found his way to a tech startup in Seattle that helps users fight traffic tickets, where he became a lead developer. After a few years he moved to J Street, and has taken on a number of internal and external projects with an emphasis on using AI to streamline workflows and migrate code bases.
Jonathan has a passion for finding the best tools for the job and improving processes that slow teams down. He is relatively new to SQL, and very new to Access, but is always excited to take on complicated challenges and to learn about new technologies.
Marcus Dieterle
Dieterle Programmierung
Marcus has been working with Microsoft Access and VBA for around 15 years. Over the years, he has developed and delivered a number of Access solutions for customers, covering a wide range of requirements and challenges.
These days, he’s focusing more on creating reusable tools, controls and solutions for other Access developers. He also enjoys sharing what he learns with the community by writing technical articles and presenting his ideas and solutions at conferences and community events
Ynte Jan Kuindersma
Freelance trainer and programmer
Developer, trainer, consultant, speaker, and lifelong problem solver: Ynte Jan Kuindersma has been working with data and software since the 1980s. His philosophy is simple: technology should serve the solution, not the other way around. That’s why his toolbox ranges from Access and SQL Server to Power BI, Power Platform, Visual Studio, and beyond.
Known for his practical demos, real-world examples, and approachable presentation style, Ynte Jan has inspired audiences throughout the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria. He is also a regular and popular speaker at major Access community events, including Karl Donaubauer’s AEK.
Sponsors
With thanks to our sponsors
Sponsoring the conference gets you a number of benefits – including discounts on tickets. Find out more and purchase your sponsorship package at https://ukaug.co.uk/shop
Gold sponsors
Silver sponsors
The venue
Leonardo Hotel London Watford
Sessions, dinner and your room are all in the same building, so there is nothing to organise beyond getting yourself there.
Leonardo Hotel London Watford31–35 Clarendon Road
Watford
By train
Watford Junction is the nearest train station – approximately 800m from the hotel.
By tube
Watford Underground station (Metropolitan Line) is the nearest tube station – approximately a 20 minute walk from the hotel.
Parking
Discounted parking is available to guests at the nearby Sutton car park that’s open 24/7. After parking your vehicle at Sutton, please enter your vehicle registration on the Citi Park tablet at Reception, this will discount your stay to £4 per 24 hours.
Extra nights
If you would like to arrive the night before or stay on, please contact the hotel direct, on 01923 422800.
Access needs
If you have any accessibility or dietary requirements, let us know and we will sort it out.
Early bird
Book early, pay less
Early bird pricing is open until 24th November 2026. Enter your code in the booking form below and the discount is applied at checkout.
MM27-EARLY£70 off your ticketMNM-27-EARLY£50 off your ticketNot a member yet? Membership gets you the larger discount.