Hot off my presentation at Access DevCon this spring, I received a flood of feedback from attendees — raw, honest, and in many cases genuinely thought-provoking. Rather than let it sit in a survey report, I want to share it with you and respond to it directly.
One thing is clear: the topic hit a nerve. As one attendee put it:
“Life as a developer is NOW forever changed — not sure if good or bad — TBD.”
That pretty much sums up the room.
The Enthusiasm Was Real
Many attendees were energized by what they saw:
“Very exciting to see how AI is being applied. Thanks to Juan for being so generous with sharing what he just recently learned and offering additional training for FREE. Incredible.”
“We’re on the cusp of a major revolution in development strategy. Juan made the opportunities clear and compelling. Juan also made it quite clear he intends to be on the leading edge of that wave.”
“Excellent! Your willingness to share the information you have and the process and setup of an AI agent to analyze Access applications is truly wonderful. Frightening… but wonderful.”
“Best demo of AI tools in relation to an entire ACCDB I’ve seen.”
I’m grateful for these comments. My goal is always to share what I’m learning in real time, and this topic is moving so fast that waiting until everything is “perfect” would mean never sharing at all.
Let’s Talk About the Slowness
Several attendees called out the speed issue, and they’re right — it is slow. Here’s one of the most detailed comments:
“On the one hand, it’s interesting to see that the AI can now work in an Access database on command. On the other hand, it’s really incredibly slow for these rather simple tasks… In the third example, the subform control was removed (I could have done that manually in a fraction of the time!).”
And another attendee put it humorously:
“It’s great to watch an AI and its equally enthusiastic yet incompetent user spend 45 minutes (plus a lot of prep work) on a task that we could have finished in just a few minutes. Plenty of time to have dinner and open a bottle of wine.”
Fair point. Let me address this directly.
Where AI earns its keep is in work that is genuinely difficult and time-consuming for a human to do well:
- Analysis: Understanding a large, unfamiliar codebase. When we take over a client’s database, it used to take us weeks to map out what was happening. Now we get there in hours.
- Planning: Before touching anything, AI can review the entire system and help you plan a change strategy that won’t break something else downstream.
- Bug hunting: AI can scan across every form, query, and module looking for patterns that indicate bugs — things that would take a developer days to find manually.
These are the use cases that justify the time investment. A simple field rename? Do it yourself. Understanding a 15-year-old database with 200 forms, 500 queries, and VBA spread across 80 modules? That’s where AI shines.
The Most Underrated Feature: Seeing the Impact of Changes
Here’s what I think is the most powerful capability that didn’t get enough attention in my session: knowing what breaks before you touch anything.
Every experienced Access developer has lived through this nightmare — a client calls and says “you fixed one thing but damaged something else.” You changed a field name in a table, and suddenly three reports are broken and two forms are throwing errors.
“If you rename this field, here are the 14 places in your application that will be affected.”
AI can analyze your entire database before you make a change and give you exactly that kind of system-wide impact report. That’s something we’ve never had before, and it’s a genuine game-changer for anyone maintaining a complex application.
The Wild West Comment
One attendee captured the current state of things better than I could:
“Using AI with Access is clearly cutting edge and a bit wild west, and Juan is brave to demo it when clearly the technology stack he chose to use isn’t production ready yet. He certainly gave eye opening insight into a process that many would not have.”
Absolutely. I’m not going to pretend this is a finished product. The tooling is evolving rapidly, and some of what I demoed is on the bleeding edge. That’s intentional. I’d rather show you where things are heading so you can start preparing, than wait for it to be polished and have you be two years behind.
What About the Skeptics?
A few attendees were less convinced, and I respect that:
“Not sure what I was expecting, but although there was a lot of good information covered, I left this session feeling like something was missing. Maybe I’m just missing my job in advance!”
“The presentation wasn’t clear, or maybe I just didn’t understand it.”
Those comments are fair, and they pushed me to think harder about how I present this. Some attendees mentioned they wished there had been more background context — a “Part 1” before jumping into the demo. That’s exactly why I’m now running a full three-month series at AccessUserGroups.org, starting from scratch.
And one attendee who was perhaps most skeptical ended with this:
“I think we can always trust Juan to be at the cutting edge with Access. I have been putting off using AI in my work because my Co-Pilot experiences have not been very good. Juan might just have persuaded me otherwise. Maybe I should look at a Claude subscription.”
Yes. Yes, you should. 😄
Join Us — May 19th at AccessUserGroups.org!
Despite some technical challenges on demo day, the response tells me this community is ready for this conversation.
The next session in our three-month AI with Access series is happening Monday, May 19th at AccessUserGroups.org. This is meeting #2 in the series, and we’re going deeper into actually using AI to analyze and modify a real Access database. No fluff, no theory — hands-on.
Haven’t seen the first session? No problem.
Before you join us on May 19th, watch these two recordings to get your system set up and ready to follow along:
Session 1 — Getting started with AI and Access
Session 2 — Setting up your environment
These two videos walk you through everything you need to have ready before May 19th.
Join the Conversation on LinkedIn
Stay connected between sessions in our Access with SQL Server LinkedIn group — it’s where I share updates, tips, and answer questions between meetings. Come say hello.
The revolution is happening whether we join it or not. I plan to be on the leading edge of that wave — and I want to bring you with me.
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