Speaker on Ash Tewari

Understanding RAG @ All Things Open AI 2025

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 02:29:39 +0000

What I learned while creating Bookshelf (open source RAG Application)

I had the opportunity to speak at the AllThingsOpen.ai 2025 Conference recently. It was a wonderful experience to learn from and share with so many amazing fellow presenters and attendees. All Things Open AI 2025 session recordings are available now.

I spoke about several key aspects of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and vector databases. The main topics I addressed included The Core Concepts of RAG, Embedding Models vs. Inference Models, Handling Multiple Embeddings and various Optimizations Beyond Naive RAG such as chunking strategies, enrichment with metadata, auto-merging retriever, and reranking models. Finally, I touched on Local Execution and GPU Utilization.

You can watch the recording here: YouTube - How I created Bookshelf: An Open Source AI-Powered Personal Knowledge Base - Ash Tewari

The slides can be downloaded from here: (Google Drive Link)

References and Links:

AI Powered Bookshelf - Blog Post
HuggingFace - MTEB Leaderboard
PyTorch - Local Execution
Medium - A Brief Introduction to Retrieval Augmented Generation(RAG)
[Microsoft - RAG Architecture](http://Design and develop a RAG solution)
Amazon - Retrieval Augmented Generation

Announcing New CodeDemo Feature - ZoomIt Integration

Mon, 16 Jun 2014 01:15:01 +0000

I am very excited to announce a new feature of CodeDemo. This feature integrates with ZoomIt and enables you to use ZoomIt much more fluently.

ZoomIt is a great presentation tool. It helps speakers and presenters deliver very effective presentations. But many presenters are not using this great tool as much and as effectively as it can be used. The reason is that ZoomIt has a bit of a learning curve. It takes practice to use it fluently. You have a lot going on in your mind while you are doing a presentation. Using ZoomIt distracts you from your presentation. Practice helps you get over this distraction. A lot of presenters use ZoomIt very effectively with practice. But for the rest of us, ZoomIt mastery has been elusive.

I have experimented and practiced (a lot) with several different ways to gain fluency with ZoomIt, including using custom keyboard combinations, but I could never get to the point where using ZoomIt feels like second nature. I realized that the mental and visual shift it takes to locate the keyboard combination and execute ZoomIt command with two fingers breaks the flow of the presentation and causes the distraction. I came up with a new way to use ZoomIt that has helped me immensely. And I added that as a feature in CodeDemo, so now you can use this method too.

Some of you are familiar with CodeDemo. For those who are not, it is another new tool for presenters. I created this tool to make it easier to use code snippets in your presentations. ZoomIt integration is a new feature of CodeDemo. To use this feature -

Start ZoomIt. If ZoomIt is not running, the commands will be simply ignored.
If you use custom keyboard combinations in ZoomIt, you will need to reset them back to defaults -

Ctrl+1 to Zoom
Ctrl+2 to Draw
Ctrl+4 to LiveZoom

Start CodeDemo.
Open a demo file. Any demo file will do. You must have a demo file open to call ZoomIt. If QuickStart.txt is already open in CodeDemo, you do not need to load another file. You can open Quickstart.txt file by clicking on the “Quickstart” button in the top menu.
Now the key step - do a quick double-tap on the CTRL key. ZoomIt will be invoked and you will see a zoomed-in portion of your screen.
At this point, you use ZoomIt as you normally do.
- Click to freeze the visual.
- Press Ctrl key and use the mouse to draw a rectangle on the screen.
Double-tap on the CTRL key (or press ESCAPE key) to exit ZoomIt “Zoom”.
You can also invoke ZoomIt “Draw” with a quick double-tap on the ALT key and ZoomIt “LiveZoom” with a quick double-tap on the SHIFT key. You may need to enable ZoomIt integration from the settings panel in CodeDemo :

Invoking ZoomIt with a quick double-tap using just the index finger (or thumb) did the trick for me. I do not have to direct my attention to the keyboard anymore. The CTRL key is right there at the bottom corner of my keyboard and I can invoke ZoomIt without moving my eyes, my hand or my mind. There is only one thing to remember while using ZoomIt from CodeDemo - The CTRL key. That’s all. That one key will take care of 90% of what you need, to become effective with ZoomIt.

You can get CodeDemo from http://www.codedemo.net.

Photo Credit : http://thenounproject.com/term/gift/13360/

Using Layer Diagrams – Keeping your MVVM code from turning into spaghetti

Sat, 09 Nov 2013 20:46:16 +0000

Raleigh Code Camp 2013 is wrapping up this afternoon. The venue and the crowd was phenomenal. I really enjoyed presenting“Using Layer Diagrams - Keeping your MVVM code from turning into spaghetti”. Thanks to everyone who attended the presentation.

John Sonmez, Our Keynote Speaker, made my day by accepting my request to attend my presentation. It was awesome to have him in the audience and to get feedback from him!

I did not get the time to complete the raffle at the end of the presentation. But the folks who won the raffle should be getting an email from me with instructions to download their free license of CodeDemo (Professional).

The presentation slides can be downloaded from here : download.

Getting Started with MVVM

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 16:29:24 +0000

I just finished presenting here at RDU Code Camp. It was a great crowd ! Here are the slides -

Getting started with MVVM

View more presentations from ashtewari.

Win Advanced MVVM Book

Mon, 10 May 2010 03:33:06 +0000

I am presenting a session on Building WPF Application using MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) on May 15th at the Carolina Code Camp 2010.

I will dissect a Sample WPF MVVM application and then highlight the most important aspects of the MVVM by coding a brand new ViewModel and incorporating it into the application. You will learn about the Roles of the MVVM triad, the advantages of using MVVM and Characteristics of the ViewModel.

Attendees will be eligible to win two copies one copy (see below) of Josh Smith’s Advanced MVVM book as well as a few other WPF Books.

{ I will be giving away one hard copy version of the book instead of digital versions due to concerns about DRM protection and unclear gift guidelines at lulu.com }.

And the winner is … Mark Freeman !!! Congratulations Mark, your copy of “Advanced MVVM” is on its way. Thanks for attending the code camp and your feedback.

Session Recommendations for SoCal Code Camp @ USC

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:02:24 +0000

SoCal Code Camp is coming up on November 21st & 22nd 2009 at University of Southern California, Los Angeles. There is just an incredible lineup of sessions. If you are trying to make up your mind about the sessions to attend, here are my recommendations -

1. Attend as many of Llewellyn Falco’s and Woody Zuill’s sessions as you can. Specially, Unit Testing The Easy Way and one of the Dojo sessions. Any one of these sessions will make your entire trip worthwhile.

2.Kristian Hermansen’s Get Hacked Live ..

3. Stacey Broadwell’s Using Technology & Social Media to Target Candidates & Jobs should be very useful. I attended her recent presentation at L.A. Dot Net @ UCLA, it was very informative.

4. and of course If it walks like a Scrum … by yours sincerely.

I am planning to attend as many of the following sessions as the schedule allows -

\* Algorithmic Trading in C# scott hodson \* Automated Grid layout in Silverlight and WPF Richard Fencel \* Building nTier Applications with Entity Framework Services David McCarter \* Experiencing Agile Through Games Carlton Nettleton \* Interoperability in the Cloud Alejandro Espinoza \* Rapid Prototyping with Expression Blend mark bosley

\* One of Paul Sheriff’s WPF presentations \* SCRUM CLUB: Agile Requirements Gathering Workshop! Amanda Abelove

See you there !

Is Scrum Bad For Developers ?

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:22:25 +0000

SoCal CodeCamp was a blast. Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation : If it walks like a Scrum.

The slide-deck can be downloaded from here.