Like many of you, I got interested in AI after seeing the breakthroughs brought by ChatGPT. However, I've observed something, despite the excitement, a lot of content floating around is still stuck at the "Hello World" level. Building a chatbot using the weather API or calling an OpenAI endpoint is a decent start, but it's not enough if you're serious about building real-world GenAI applications.
That's why I'm launching "Beyond Hello World", a free 8-week Generative AI learning series, focused on practical, hands-on sessions that go deeper into how real systems are built using modern AI tools and techniques.
📅 Schedule and Topics
Every Saturday at 8 AM PST, from July 12 to September 6 (we'll skip August 9), I'll host a live 2–3 hour session that walks through one real-world topic in depth.
Here's what you can expect each week:
- July 12 - AI Agents Learn the fundamentals of AI agents and how to build them using LangChain, CrewAI, and n8n.
- July 19 - Model Context Protocol (MCP) Explore the powerful idea of using MCP to integrate large language models with developer tools. We'll integrate with Cursor and even build our own MCP server that can read GitHub pull requests.
- July 26 - Build Your Own Model Fine-tune your own language model using Hugging Face AutoTrain. You'll learn how to take a base model, train it with your own dataset, and evaluate it properly.
- August 2 - OpenAI Hands-on Go beyond the playground and learn how to use OpenAI's Python SDK the right way - handle retries, cost limits, streaming responses, and more.
- August 16 - Run Models Locally Learn how to use Ollama to run models like LLaMA locally on your laptop, and connect to them via Python APIs.
- August 23 - Vibe Coding with Cursor Discover how to build actual tools using Cursor + GenAI. Whether you're building coding agents or command-line helpers, this session will be a blend of coding and creativity.
- August 30 - Build Your Own GPT Go behind the scenes and understand how to implement a small GPT model from scratch using PyTorch or similar frameworks.
- September 6 - Production-Ready RAG We'll wrap up the series by building a full Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system from data ingestion to serving with vector databases and LLMs.
Built from Experience
This isn't just another tutorial series. These topics come from real projects I've built, including:
IdeaWeaver: A full-stack AI framework https://github.com/ideaweaver-ai-code/ideaweaver
GPT-2 Children Stories Model (30M): Trained from scratch for generating short stories https://github.com/ideaweaver-ai/Tiny-Children-Stories-30M-model
DeepSeek-style Story Model (15M): Lightweight, instruct-tuned LLM https://github.com/ideaweaver-ai/DeepSeek-Children-Stories-15M-model
No fluff. No hype. Just what I've learned building these projects - shared with you, every weekend.
Recordings & Resources
All sessions will be recorded and posted to my YouTube channel here:
 👉 https://www.youtube.com/@devops-boot-camp
If you can't attend live, you'll still be able to follow along at your own pace.
đź“ť Register here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/free2monthgenerativeaicourse-be7345645002171011073/
🙌 Help Me Spread the Word
If you think this series can help someone get started in GenAI the right way, please consider sharing it with your network. I've made it free and open so more people can benefit from real, production-grade learning.
Top comments (2)
This sounds like a great course. I cant wait to learn something new.
Hello @lakhera2015 - Is it happening now? I don't see a live event.