Apps Script + AI with BigQuery: What’s New in Looker Studio, Sheets & BigQuery

Explore AI-driven Google Apps Script automation and the latest Looker Studio, Google Sheets and BigQuery updates at this online Lagos data community meetup. Hosted by the Lagos Looker, BigQuery & AI Agents Meetup, this session takes place online on Saturday 29 August 2026 at 7:00 PM WAST. It combines a concise product-update briefing with a deeper technical presentation on turning Apps Script into a platform for local development, BigQuery integration and multi-cloud automation. ## What’s on the agenda ### What’s New in 2026 , Looker Studio, Sheets & BigQuery In this 25-minute session, Rif Kiamil, Google Developer Expert, will review notable features and changes introduced across Looker Studio, Google Sheets and BigQuery during the previous six months. Expect practical examples and ideas for using the tools together across: - Reporting and data analysis - Interactive dashboards - Connected data workflows - Business intelligence projects ### Google Apps Script as a Lingua Franca The second 45-minute talk comes from Bruce McPherson, author of O’Reilly’s Going GAS: From VBA to Google Apps Script and a former head of architecture and IT engineering at Motorola and Lucent Technologies. Bruce will examine how Apps Script has developed beyond macros into a serious automation platform. Drawing on Gassypedia research covering more than 1.4 billion GitHub files, he will explore an ecosystem of over 6,000 developers, 11,000 repositories and 18,000 published Apps Script projects. The presentation introduces gas-fakes, an emulation layer for running familiar Apps Script code natively on Node.js. Demonstrations will cover: - Faster local execution and debugging - BigQuery integration - Secure, sandboxed Apps Script execution - Multi-cloud automation using one common scripting approach - Combining local AI models with Gemini to reduce token usage and cost - Exploring the Gassypedia BigQuery dataset through Looker reports ## Who should attend? The meetup welcomes data analysts, BI professionals, developers, engineers, Google Cloud users, students and early-career practitioners. It is equally relevant to experienced builders and people beginning to explore data platforms, AI agents or automation. An open call for speakers also gives community members an opportunity to propose topics for future sessions.… Register for this event