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Fireside chat with Don - Embracing AI - Don on MCP and the Biggest Transition in FME's History

  • May 22, 2026
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oliver.morris
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Recently a post on tthis community forum sparked quite the debate. The core concern raised was: is FME at risk of becoming a 'legacy' tool in a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence?

At Avineon Tensing we managed to get some time with Don during his visit to London to discuss the post. Don shares his reaction to the forum post and explains why he views this technological shift not as a threat but as the most significant and exciting evolution in FME's history.

The conversation explores the rapid transition from traditional visual programming with a blank canvas to the new frontier of collaborating with AI agents. A major focus of the discussion is MCP (probably no surprises!)

Grab a coffee and watch the full discussion below.

Apologies for my rather croaky voice!

 

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    hazlin
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    • hazlinContributor
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    • August 13, 2026

    As someone still new to FME and MCP, I gained a lot of new insights from this session. Thanks for sharing!

    oliver.morris
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    • oliver.morrisContributor
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    • August 13, 2026

    Thanks ​@hazlin it was fun putting it together.

    I presented yesterday actually on the value FME continues to bring to the table and how it offers the best of both worlds - or maybe I just found a nice cartoon and wanted to find a reason to include it in the presentation :)

    GenAI on its own is stateless and probabilistic with every new chat starting from scratch even when provided with the same instructions or skills it can approach the task differently each time. FME gives you deterministic (repeatable) transformers that while still letting you call on AI transformers where useful.

    Run the same buffer workflow 100 times in FME and you get the same result every time, its repeatable and auditable rather than reinvented (and re-explained) from scratch with each run.

    FME offer the adaptability of AI where you need it, with the reliability of a standard process for other parts of the data pipeline/workflow. I also think with Patchmageddon situation we are in, having the great team of Safe Software devs keeping on top of patching is reassuring!

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