Production RAG: From Naive Retrieval to Agentic Search

Naive RAG fails approximately 40% of the time, with 80% of failures traceable to the ingestion pipeline. The market is saturated for 'intro to RAG' but wide open for production-grade patterns. This full-day workshop moves participants beyond basic vector search into production-grade RAG architectures: hybrid BM25 + vector search, cross-encoder reranking (Cohere Rerank, FlashRank, ColBERT), chunking strategies that preserve context, agentic retrieval loops that self-correct, and systematic evaluation with RAGAS. Participants also learn to defend their RAG pipeline against the documented vector DB poisoning attack where 1% injected vectors contaminate 99.85% of query results. The day progresses from a failing naive implementation to a reliable, evaluated, hardened agentic system.

Covers: document processing and chunking strategies, embedding model selection, hybrid search architectures, reranking pipelines, query transformation and expansion, agentic retrieval with self-reflection, RAG security (poisoning detection, source allowlists), evaluation-driven development with RAGAS, and cost optimization.

About Brent Laster

Hi, I'm Brent Laster - a global trainer and book author, experienced corporate technology developer and leader, and founder and president of Tech Skills Transformations LLC. I've been working with and presenting at NFJS events for many years now and it is always exciting and interesting.

Through my decades in programming and management,I've always tried to make time to learn and develop both technical and leadership skills and share them with others Regardless of the topic or technology, my belief is that there is no substitute for the excitement and sense of potential that come from providing others with the knowledge they need to help them accomplish their goals.

In my spare time, I hang out with my wife Anne-Marie, 4 children and 2 small dogs in Cary, North Carolina where I design and conduct trainings and write books. You can find me on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/brentlaster), Twitter (@brentclaster) or through my company's website at www.getskillsnow.com.

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