Hello Reader,

Next week I will be on stage at AI Engineer (AIE) NYC.

Out of all the AI conferences out there, AIE is one of my favorites. The speakers are engineers who have actually shipped AI systems, so the talks cover real-world implementation with all the messy tradeoffs included. You walk out with patterns you can use on Monday morning.

Here are the details:

• Talk: Build a Self-Improving Portable and Secure Second Brain for Your Agents, with a live demo
• When: Tuesday, October 13th at 2:15 PM

Why Agent Memory Matters So Much Right Now

Memory is at the core of my talk, which enables self-improving the second brain and moves it out of static file systems. There is always a debate on what you should put in context vs saving in memory.

Here is how I think about agent memory:

Bad: Stuffing the entire chat history into the context window on every request. It works fine in the demo, and then cost and latency explode as the conversation grows.

Good: Storing conversation history and important facts in a memory database, and pulling back only what matters for each request. Now the agent is stateful. This is good, but NOT delightful. Most teams stop right here.

Delight: A second brain that improves itself. After every interaction, the agent extracts what it learned, such as user preferences, decisions, and mistakes it made, and writes that back into memory. And because the memory lives in the database outside any single agent framework, it is portable. Swap the framework or swap the model, and the knowledge stays with you.

That delight layer is exactly what I built this talk and the demo on.

My Game Plan for AIE

Speaking is only one part of it. I go to conferences to learn, and I am going in with a plan:

• Hands-on workshops on agent memory, eval, harness. I want to see how other builders handle memory extraction and retrieval in their own stacks, important eval metrics, and harness optimization tips
• New products versus proven fundamentals. Every week a new product like Jev shows up promising to fix agents. I want to hear from people running agents in production whether chasing the newest tool pays off, or whether mastering tried and tested concepts gets you further. My money is on the fundamentals, and I will report back.
• Other people's mistakes. Learning the tradeoffs and pitfalls from other projects is the cheapest education available. I would much rather learn a lesson over coffee than during a production incident on my own product.

What This Means for Solutions Architects

General Solutions Architects have to learn about Gen AI. The important part is - you can't master everything, so I'd be looking out for the important parts that you must master. I will also be evaluating which part you need to study extra for FDE roles. I already have the list, and I will reconcile with the SMEs.

And as always, I will share it with y'all via a future newsletter.

Your Action Steps

• If you are attending AIE NYC, come to Booth 4 on October 13th at 2:15 PM for the talk and the demo.
• Bring your toughest question about AI, including whether it will save or doom the world and your career. I am happy to debate it.
• If you cannot make it, reply to this email with what you want me to find out at AIE, and I will cover the best answers in a follow-up edition.
• Brush up on agent memory using the previous newsletter(s), so the demo clicks instantly.

I am genuinely excited to learn and explore, and even more excited to meet many of you in person.

Keep learning and keep rocking 🚀,

Raj

P.S - If you want to get an AWS Solutions Architect job without coding or learning every AWS service, the 10th cohort for AWS SA Bootcamp is launching on Oct 17th, 12 PM ET (Eastern Time) via live workshop. This program now includes our updated Gen AI - including FDE roles! Please register below:

Here’s what you get when you show up LIVE:

1. The myths keeping most people stuck - and what actually gets you hired as an SA - I've conducted over 300 SA interviews, so I know what I'm talking about!
2. How GenAI is reshaping the SA and Gen AI roles including FDE, and the exact AI concepts (RAG, agents, MCP, eval etc.) you need to speak fluently in interviews.
3. A first look at my new product feature, built to help you practice real-world, interview-relevant hands-on work instead of copy-paste tutorials.
4. Full bootcamp breakdown for Cohort 10, plus a special offer only for live attendees.
5. My exclusive Solutions Architect framework to prep you for today's job market! But if you’re not live, you won’t get it. No second chances.

And good news - it already worked for last cohort's students who secured cloud jobs in top companies, including at AWS, Microsoft, Google, JPMorgan, Reddit, and some of them didn't even have cloud experience 💰.

Spots are limited, so don't miss it!