---
title: "The model swap workshop"
category: "talks"
date: "2026-06-29"
time: "11:05am-12:05pm"
track: "Workshops Day 1"
room: "Track 4"
speakers: ["Pamela Fox", "Arun Sekhar"]
sourceLabels: ["Official conference schedule", "Public YouTube metadata"]
scheduleTrack: "Workshops Day 1"
scheduleRoom: "Track 4"
scheduleLabels: ["Workshops Day 1", "Track 4", "workshop", "confirmed"]
---
# The model swap workshop

## Conference Context
- Date/time: 2026-06-29 · 11:05am-12:05pm
- Track/room: Workshops Day 1 · Track 4
- Speaker(s): Pamela Fox, Arun Sekhar
- Session type/status: workshop · confirmed

- Track: Workshops Day 1
- Room: Track 4
- Session type: workshop
- Status: confirmed

## Session Description
Frontier labs are releasing new models constantly, and it is hard to know when “better” is better enough to justify touching a working system. On top of that, “just swap the model” often turns into real work because providers expose different APIs and different expectations around tools and structured outputs. The model swap workshop is a hands-on bake-off across frontier LLMs. We will run the same scenarios using multiple models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Kimi, and more) and compare results side by side for agentic tool use, structured outputs, and multimodal tasks. Swapping models is not just changing a model name. In this workshop, you will actually do the swaps, including moving between OpenAI-style Responses APIs and Anthropic-style Messages APIs, then see what breaks and what needs to change in your prompts, tool definitions, and JSON strategies. We will finish by running a small eval suite so you can quantify tradeoffs instead of relying on vibes. We will provide the Microsoft Foundry environment for access to the models, no account needed.

## Media Evidence
[Running AI Application in Minutes w/ AI Templates: Gabriela de Queiroz, Pamela Fox, Harald Kirschner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t-9-s1brcg) (speaker-match related prior/adjacent AI Engineer video; captions: English auto-captions).

- Source video: `youtube-1t-9-s1brcg`
- Slide deck: [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-dense-slides|Dense Slides: Running AI Application in Minutes w/ AI Templates: Gabriela de Queiroz, Pamela Fox, Harald Kirschner]] — 50 visible slide image(s); 50 HTML recreation(s).
![[assets/dense-slides/1t-9-s1brcg/slide-001.jpg]]
![[assets/dense-slides/1t-9-s1brcg/slide-002.jpg]]
![[assets/dense-slides/1t-9-s1brcg/slide-003.jpg]]
- Additional slide evidence: [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-slides|Slides: Running AI Application in Minutes w/ AI Templates: Gabriela de Queiroz, Pamela Fox, Harald Kirschner]], [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-reconstructed-slides|Reconstructed Slides: Running AI Application in Minutes w/ AI Templates: Gabriela de Queiroz, Pamela Fox, Harald Kirschner]]
- Slide-derived themes for `youtube-1t-9-s1brcg`: azure, proxy, templates, microsoft, startups, founders, startup, faster.

## Evidence Graph
This evidence graph is generated from currently linked source material: official schedule text, related video pages, cached transcripts, visible slide text, dense/reconstructed slide pages, and AI slide-classification audits.

### Media Signals
- `youtube-1t-9-s1brcg` — 6 slide-derived text signals
- Slide-derived themes for `youtube-1t-9-s1brcg`: azure, proxy, templates, microsoft, startups, founders, startup, faster.
- Evidence links for `youtube-1t-9-s1brcg`: [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg]], [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-slides]], [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-dense-slides]], [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-reconstructed-slides]]

### Agent Reading Notes
Use these signals to refine the synopsis, topic links, people/company context, and method notes. If a source is a related external video rather than an exact official recording, keep it framed as supporting evidence.

## Transcript Status
Related video transcript availability: English auto-captions. Treat this as supporting context, not a recording of this exact scheduled session unless later confirmed. Not fetched yet.

## People
- [[pamela-fox]]
- [[arun-sekhar]]

## Supporting Slides
- [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-slides]] — extracted from the related public AI Engineer video.

## Slide Evidence
- Slide-only cropped deck: [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-dense-slides]] (50 viable slide images).
- Related slide/OCR pages:
- [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-dense-slides]]
- [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-reconstructed-slides]]
- [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-slides]]
- Slide-derived terms: `azure`, `microsoft`, `github`, `startups`, `account`, `workshop`, `boars`, `founders`, `instructions`, `open`, `mode`, `gene`, `they`, `engineer`, `signin`, `login`, `pass`, `will`

## Synthesis
### Synthesized Breakdown
# The model swap workshop ## Conference Context - Date/time: 2026-06-29 · 11:05am-12:05pm - Track/room: Workshops Day 1 · Track 4 - Speaker(s): Pamela Fox, Arun Sekhar - Session type/status: workshop · confirmed - Track: Workshops Day 1 - Room: Track 4 - Session type: workshop - Status: confirmed ## Session Description Frontier labs are releasing new models constantly, and it is hard to know when “better” is better enough to justify touching a working system. On top of that, “just swap the model” often turns into real work because providers expose different APIs and different expectations around tools and structured outputs. The model swap workshop is a hands-on bake-off across frontier LLMs. We will run the same scenarios using multiple models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Kimi, and more) and compare results side by side for agentic tool use, structured outputs, and multimodal tasks.

### Speaker And Company Context
- [[pamela-fox|Pamela Fox]] — Principal Cloud Advocate at [[microsoft|Microsoft]].
- [[arun-sekhar|Arun Sekhar]] — Principal Product Manager for AI Developer Experience at [[microsoft|Microsoft]].

### Topics Covered
- [[coding-agents]]

### Derived Links And Source Material
- [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg]] — related YouTube source page.
- [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-slides]] — slide evidence.
- [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-reconstructed-slides]] — slide evidence.
- [[youtube-1t-9-s1brcg-dense-slides]] — slide evidence.

### Novel Concepts / Clever Methods
- No highlighted novel concept has been detected yet.

### Evidence Boundary
This synthesis is based on the official schedule and linked source pages. It should be revisited when exact session recordings or transcript-backed secondary sources are available.