0:00What's next? Go build.
0:22Okay guys, welcome to this vlog and of course I got to check that I look good for the camera, but we are going to see what a week in a life of a AI developer working in developer relation team what it looks like. And my week is typically jam-packed, but this time we're going off to the Bay Area. I was just in Leeds attending a friend's wedding. That was fun. First time in Leeds as well in the UK. So we're going from Leeds to London, then to Heathrow, and then to San Francisco. But one thing you guys are
0:51going to get is to see some of the hard work that goes behind the scene whenever I'm doing talks, recording courses, or organizing developer workshops. Also this week I'm recording a course with an AI legend, one of the top educators in the AI space, Andrew Ng. So look out for that later in the vlog. The life of a developer relation person is usually jam-packed and we do things like this.
1:13So enjoy the week in the life of a AI developer.
1:29How long is your talk?
1:36Uh how many slides have No slide check.
1:40So big money spender.
1:42Okay, you got to cut like cut or or speak Or speak fast.
1:46I wanted to go through my slides with you. So we have time tomorrow. I'll go through it with you tomorrow. So this is the first proper day over in the in the Bay Area. Today's going to be a very interesting day because we have an event later in the evening in San Francisco. We're doing it in collaboration with AI Camp.
2:13So, it looks like we have about 160 people have RSVP'd for this event. It's a workshop, which is where I would do like a very quick presentation.
2:23Tomorrow, we have a conference Friends Developer Week. I'll be doing a keynote there, and my teammate Nacho, he's going to be doing a breakout session, and we're trying to connect the two. So, you come to the keynote, you get the high-level overview. It's a bit It's a bit technical, to be fair, but high-level overview. Then, you go to Nacho's session, and you can then see something more bit more drilled down specific to like the Agent stack. And it's fun because one one thing I like
2:51doing these things cuz I get to meet the people that I work with. We get to chat in between the chaos. We actually get to chat, learn more about each other. But, it is a job, but there is a human aspect to it, and there's a human on the other end of where the Zoom call that I'm in.
3:07I've not had breakfast yet. It's like 1:00 p.m. Ridiculous. What time is it?
3:11No, it's actually No, it's 11:00 a.m. Haven't had breakfast yet, which is ridiculous. I'm hungry. I'm not going to get gains if I don't eat. It's that simple. And, they have a 24-hour gym. That's good. That's going to come useful tonight. Hold me accountable. Gym tonight. So, we just picked up Nacho.
3:39And, now we're off to the office to do some business stuff, you know. And, we're going to go pick up the merch for the workshop there today.
3:50We're trying to figure out the right building to go to.
3:53Got it. Got the beer.
3:55Thank you. All right.
3:57I think yeah, we know where we're going. We'll go get the the merch and join the queue.
4:09Come open the door. Open the door.
4:11So, we got the the merch and everything.
4:18See how hard it We'll go Well, it's kind of we could go that way.
4:21If you think you can steer it.
4:23One of the first things we're doing is we're heading to the AI Camp workshop. If we're going to make the trip all the way to San Francisco to the Bay Area, we want to make the best of it. So, we usually doing around three events in that week and one of it is always to engage with the developer community and the best way to do that is through a hands-on workshop.
5:05Different short-term types of short-term memory, one is working memory and you can break up working memory into the LLM context window because that's short-term.
5:23So, yesterday we spoke to a bunch of developers. I did a presentation and uh I also went through a bunch of technical resources with the developers. And one thing I always like to see is whenever I do this workshop, developers always encounter friction. All right?
5:42Because sometimes the the user the might not be that great. There's some things I didn't foresee, the systems they're using is different.
5:51But, regardless of that, I am always amazed by how developers will move through and pass through a bunch of friction just so they can get to uh something that you're presenting to them or actually experience and utilize something that you're teaching them. So, I talk a lot about agent memory, which is the ability for computational systems to remember or using a database and adapt and learn almost like a human
6:18does. And when you do a presentation for about 30 minutes on that particular topic, that might seem a bit wow, this is what I've always wanted and what I needed. Developers will go through a bunch of friction points just to get to that aha moment and experience what you've been telling them. And I witnessed that I've witnessed it several times, uh but yesterday I witnessed it again and it just made me realize that
6:46sometimes the best way to communicate to developers that are building essentially the future and uh the future and what is intelligence system is to make them feel like they are experiencing the future today with the information you're giving them. Make them feel like you've gone to the future and you've seen what it looks like
7:15and you've just come back and you're giving it to them today. Right? So, when I talk about agent memory, I always draw some parallels with what's happened in the past, for example, like planes, right? The initial humans that thought about vehicles of flight did not think it would look and work as planes did. In fact, they looked to hu- they looked to birds for inspiration.
7:44And they they mimicked the the sort of like the mechanisms of birds so we can actually build vehicles of flight, but planes don't flap their wings, do they?
7:53Um but they use it as inspiration. Then I also talk about some inspirations of neuro science into AI, more specifically neural networks and convolutional neural networks, right? And how that neuro science field and the exploration of the of the brain that happened in the '70s and the '80s inspired a lot of the AI um models that we see today. It is called neural networks really because it would draw inspirations from that. We're creating mimicking human neurons.
8:26And when I present this to developers and I say to them, "We're going to do exactly what the great inventors in the past have done." And I talk about agent memory and I talk about how the brain works in terms of memory at a very high level. I'm not a neuro scientist. But when I do that, they get excited. And I love to see this excitement.
8:47Then they get excited to be able to go through whatever technical resource I put in them. And obviously I deliver on what I'm actually saying. We actually build agents that can remember. And they get to see this first hand. And one of the questions one of the developers asked me was, "Hey Richmond, this notebook is great. The presentation is great. What's next?"
9:07Right? And I was like, "Go build." Go That's what's next. You go build the future. I've given you the building blocks. Now you go build whatever it is that you want humans to get value from. And uh yeah, so that's that's my rant and and it's why I it's why I do this job really. Yeah.
9:28It's just valuable, right? You communicate to people in a in a creative way and you get them to go through some of the things that you're putting in front of them. I guess it's marketing, right?
9:39That's what marketing is. Hey, I just reinvented the the the purpose of marketing, I guess. But, it it's fun. It's it it is truly fun. It It can be tasking at times, but I'm enjoying myself just doing this. Obviously, it's always hard to be away from family. Um so, today uh I'm going to be giving a talk uh a keynote at a developer conference in San Jose, and it's about maybe 15 minutes in that direction walking.
10:15This is a test. 42 g. They don't make it like that. Normally, they're like 23 or 20-something. But, 42 is crazy.
10:28American baby, I probably If you look at wrestling, right? There were some frictions that happened with one of the representatives. But, the developers still went through those frictions because we like dot com and all of this errors, but they went through it because of one thing. We basically told them we can show you It's not Asian parents or make it We made it exciting. All right, we got about 30 minutes till the talk.
11:22It gave us this interface of having LLM. But, automation would look like this. This is a diagram I put together. Um but, automation is very simple. You have bunch of steps, and the steps the predetermined path of the steps is already specified.
11:37After I give a talk, I typically like to talk to developers right after the talk. I like to get people's opinion on what I said, if they agree or disagree with what I said, and also how I can improve as well, and if the messages the key messages I said also landed.
12:00Please welcome Nacho Martinez.
12:01I I want to talk a lot of about a lot of things. So, thank you for coming. This is a little bit more more clear, hopefully. We have like three layers.
12:12The foundational layer, which is the memory layer, the tape devices, that infrastructure layer with all the raw compute, the GPUs, and all the things that all the considerations that you need to make to actually build uh which is one of the what I want to focus on today. And the tooling layer, which is basically NCPs, direct tool calls like for instance modifying files, editing, removing,
12:42Okay, so I just finished giving um the talk over at Developer Week. It was a keynote. And a couple of things. So, one thing I was with my teammate, and he was like, "Richmond, do you practice when you actually speak? Do you Do you practice?" And I just said, "No, I don't. I don't actually practice. I've never done public speaking. I'm not I've never done like voice coaching or anything.
13:07For me, it's simple, right? If you live it, why do you need to practice?
13:11Right? I am talking to developers every day. I'm talking to customers. I am building stuff. I am coding every day. I am thinking about this every single week and minute. So, when I get on stage and I'm speaking, I'm I'm just doing what I've been thinking about for the last let's say two three months in between all of these events.
13:32So, I can't wait to get to go out there and talk to people about the ideas I've been thinking about for a few months and even the implementation of it. So, I don't practice and maybe I should do more practice, but there's sometimes when when you just live this thing, when you just do it 24/7, it you might just augment at least some of the need to practice.
14:00Uh maybe if I did practice, maybe I'll be better. Maybe if I have more speaking gigs, I might take it more seriously.
14:06Then my colleague I was there with crushed it. It was just so amazing seeing people just really just being their own element. And the queue to for people just to hear him speak was amazing, right? But I've got so many LinkedIn messages of people asking for the presentation. Um so, if you're ever doing like a talk or something, it's always good if you want to increase your connections and followers, you can tell people that, "Hey, I will give you the LinkedIn I'll give you the presentation if you just
14:35follow me and message me on LinkedIn."
14:37And that way you can keep the conversations going. Also, you can have like a barcode or a QR code on on your presentation to your LinkedIn to make it easier for people to reach you. So, tonight going to meet up with some friends over in San Francisco in the Richmond district. So, they chose that particular place cuz his name cuz I'm named after it's not I'm named after, but similar names, right? Not similar, it's the same name cuz it's Richmond and they thought it would just be interesting. Um so, going to I think a
15:06Korean barbecue restaurant where you can eat and you know we love food. So, we in um might hit the gym later, who knows. I need to stop saying that. Hold me accountable. Gym tonight. Just going to do a bit of work now. Um recording a course in a in a few days. I'm out here I'm out here experiencing stuff. The weather is a bit weird. It's cold but it looks sunny. It's giving me London vibes.
15:32On these trips I tend to catch up with friends that I've known for a few years.
15:38Maybe people that I've gone to university with and I take the time out of my evenings when I'm not working to actually meet people that I've studied with, went to university together and we all work in tech so we always have that in common. And it's usually good to always share notes to see what's working and how we're both just handling life and work-life balance.
16:00What is it? Like 11:00 in the morning on day three. Today is probably one of the quietest day I'm going to be having. Pancake is the only thing I can get today started. It's Saturday but you know what we do. Um so now I'm just going to look for some pancakes. The lady at the hotel told me that it's a good pancake spot so we're going on a quest. Still in San Jose.
16:24Uh switching hotels, going over to Mountain View. Then this evening I'll meet up with a few folks in San Francisco and uh we're just going to chat. Thank you very much.
17:18Quinoa and nani oshi na.
17:31All right, so I started learning Japanese around a year ago and I went to Japan and had a very good experience and I just decided when I came back I would love to just learn the language as a good challenge and I've been doing it for a year. I'm not that great at it, but it's a good activity apart from what I do in tech and it just gives a break for my brain sometimes and exercises the brain to be honest. Japanese is a hard language to learn.
18:15On some of these trips, I do take the opportunity to meet up and speak to the AI partners we work with and it's usually good for building relationships and channel plan out some activities we can do in the year together and this might involve talking about how we can meet developers and actually do some joint marketing activities, co-selling activities and also just maybe even go to some conferences and show up together as well.
18:54I take the opportunity out of my day to make the time to meet the AI partners I work with and some of them are typically going through the same activities that I'm going through and we are going through in the team that I work in.
19:15Yo, so um day something maybe four three Who knows? Uh today's probably one of the quietest days I'm going to have while I'm here in the States.
19:28Uh going to be recording a course tomorrow throughout the whole day tomorrow. Obviously, get the code and the presentation ready for the course, get the scripts for the course done. Um it makes it easier if you have everything you're going to say just written out so you go there and just do the filming. Um I'm also going to work a bit on Open Speech as well. Um got some features I need to implement Xbox.
19:50I really need to start doing more on the marketing on the marketing side for Open Speech. Then going to plan out the week. So today's Sunday, so I'm going to try and plan out the week. Yesterday was good. Had one of the best dumplings I've ever had. Uh place called Dumpling Home in San Francisco.
20:09Um it was it was very good, very amazing. Would recommend. Also going to see if I can go to a nearby gym. We'll see. The gym in this hotel is not that great. So they got like a treadmill and we're losing muscle, so need to get some some free weights going. But I do feel a bit like whenever I travel I do feel a bit disoriented um in terms of what I need to do for my week and my goals. Um but
20:37as as long as you have that north star, sometimes it's okay when you don't have a direct plan and as long as you just have the goal that you're trying to aim for. So it might be okay sometimes. And yeah, just going to crush it.
20:59Beat to the code for lesson two. We've been working for about How many hours? About six hours?
21:07Yeah, about Yeah, yeah, yeah.
21:10Maybe like Since 5 hours. We've been working for 5 hours. I'm not going to lie. I thought I will be just like working for 2 hours, then I'll move on to some other task. It was but 5 hours later.
21:24Some unexpected errors in the sandbox environment where you were running the code so students can have like a isolated environment to run the code and get all the lessons and teachings we're giving them. But yeah, 5 hours later. Hopefully we're going to get we're going to eat but Nacho was like, "Hey, if you got to do a all-nighter, we will." We should. That is how we roll. But man, I'm tired.
21:52Celsius and I think that's what's got me running. Nacho's running on no energy drink, just pure adrenaline and willpower to deliver. That's it. Hopefully we'll finish soon. And then I We are in the programming AI studio. We're going to record We spent a whole day just recording. I thought I forgot my camera but the camera is here, which is good. So, I'll just film the process and then it's going to be a whole day.
22:26So, we are going to get makeup and and is it okay if we take like pauses in between?
22:32Absolutely. So, like if you like the editors are going to be able to cut up everything to make it perfect. If you mess up a line, just restart.
22:40All right, cool. That sounds good.
22:41Um we got through two, three, and four. Uh we'll just have to do the other ones after.
22:47Two, three, four, and five?
22:50This is my second time doing a course with Andrew and it's always a pleasure to work with him and his team. It's definitely an honor to be able to work with someone that I used to learn from back when I was in, you know, university and learning machine learning and now we're both educating developers and machine learning engineers and AI engineers on the same course. Definitely feels like a full circle moment.
23:11Our third session is Agent Memory, building memory-aware agents taught by Richmond Alake and Nacho Martinez. Memory turns a stateless LLM into an agent that learns over time. How to architect agent memory is one of the most hotly debated topics in AI.
23:28This course will give you a comprehensive view of the most common memory patterns. Specifically, you'll design a complete agent memory system that allows an LLM to store, retrieve, and operate on data to enable it to learn, adapt, and complete long-horizon tasks.
23:43That's right, Andrew.
23:45For the past few years, we've focused on prompt and context engineering to get to the best results from a single LLM call. But engineering the right context for agents that need to work over days or weeks needs an effective memory system. In this course, we'll take this memory-first approach towards building agents.
24:04You've heard about prompt engineering and maybe also context engineering. This course goes beyond that, and you learn about memory engineering.
24:12I hope you enjoy the course.
24:24Okay, let me do this quickly. Are we pressed for time?
24:31I just had a donut, and I think that's the That's the leftovers.
24:35Uh yeah, literally that's my breakfast.
24:38I woke up, and I was in a bunch of meetings, then someone in the meeting had donuts, and I was like, I need to eat. Donuts are not good breakfast.
24:46No, they're not good. They They give you a little bit of sugar rush that you might Then you're just going to crash.
24:50So, stand on a little piece of carpet. There's a little piece of tape somewhere here. That's where your belly button goes, just about there. Just line up with your belly button. You going to drop this down in front of my shirt.
25:00You missed a You missed a belt loop this morning.
25:04Yeah, you can tell that I was in a rush then. And it's fine. I'll just Can I put this over here?
25:10Want me to scroll through it so you can read it?
25:12Yeah, go ahead and practice a little if you don't mind.
25:16If you've been in an AI agent today, there's a good chance you're inheriting one of the most painful anti-patterns in modern software. I've got persistence. Here's what that looks like in practice. You need a vector search for semantic retrieval, so you spin up a vector database. You need flexible document storage, so you add a JSON document store. You need to traverse relationships between entities, so now you are bringing in a graph database.
25:44And of course, you still need your relational data, your transactions, your structured records, and source of truth.
25:51That's four databases.
25:53Four query language. Four sets of infrastructure to secure, scale, and keep in sync.
26:02Are the best dumplings I've ever had.
26:05Yeah, dumpling home is where the place is called.
26:09So, Mountain View, the houses there look very impressive.
26:13Yeah. But, I heard they're unaffordable as well.
26:16Everything's unaffordable.
26:22So, very quickly, just finished recording.
26:25Uh it was quick, quicker than yesterday's one. Uh yeah, I've got about two more meetings, then heading straight to the airport, then there homebound. Yeah, recording. I'm starting to like get into the zone of reading off scripts and other good stuff.
26:42More recordings in the future.
26:55So, it is a bit intense. It could be jam-packed, but I am having so much fun doing this, and I hope you guys can tell, and I will see you in the next vlog.