The latest technology
Eighteen-plus years at Oracle across AI, cloud computing and data systems. I teach from real-world practice, so students learn the tools and habits they will meet in their first jobs.
Guest lecturer · Instructor · Enterprise architect
Pat Shepherd
Complex AI, cloud and data topics made simple, relatable and engaging, with the real-world lessons that rarely make it into a textbook.
Based in the Maryland / Washington, DC area · Available in person and virtually
What I bring
Real-world experience, in plain English.
I am a passionate, engaging teacher and trainer. I offer impactful learning built on decades of real-world experience, and an ability to take complex subjects and make them simple, relatable and engaging.
Expansive training
I develop and deliver technology training in a range of formats, from live demos and discussion to exercises, plus public, online modules that students can run on their own laptops in class.
Enterprise architecture
Years of applied architecture work, designing and presenting solutions for Fortune 500 clients across industries.
Beyond the textbook
What the slides don't always show.
Technology changes quickly. The judgment behind it lasts longer. Along with the concepts, I share what years of real-world work have taught me, so students leave with context they can use on day one of a career.
Real-life situations
Stories from eighteen-plus years working with some of the largest organizations across industries. Students hear how projects actually unfold: the constraints, the trade-offs and the decisions behind the architecture diagram.
Lessons for early professionals
What I want every new graduate to know before their first job: how to pick up a new technology quickly, ask better questions, and become someone a team is glad to have.
Things to watch out for
The pitfalls that catch smart people: surprise cloud bills, data stuck in silos, ideas that never get funded, and solutions that do not fit the problem they were meant to solve.
How decisions really get made
Behind every technology choice are budgets, risk, people and timing. Students learn to see the business context around technical work, and how to explain their ideas to non-technical audiences.
Training experience & approach
Learning that fits the room.
As Content Lead for Oracle LiveLabs, I helped build a free, global, hands-on learning platform with more than 900 interactive workshops, used by developers, DBAs, architects and customers worldwide. I have also developed internal and public training videos across key topics.
I have presented, trained and demoed at large-scale events including Oracle Data Deep Dive, Oracle AI World Tour, the Gartner Data and Analytics Summit and Informatica World, and delivered training at field bootcamps and to sales development teams.
My style is to start with what the audience needs to hear, then choose the approach that fits the topic and the room: a live demo, a discussion, or an exercise where students work with the concept themselves. That blend was honed across enterprise architecture, integration business development, field technology enablement, competitive analysis and database product management. My experience as a 5th-degree Black Belt Taekwondo instructor adds energy and passion to the classroom.
A wide range of teaching topics
Pick a topic, or shape your own.
These are some of the topics most relevant to students today. Each can be tailored to your course. Many come with a complete teaching deck, and modules marked Live demo include a demo that can run in class, and those marked Live exercises are built around individual and group exercises.
AI frontier
- AI in the real worldLive demo
- A story-driven tour of how AI works and what happens when it meets a real enterprise. Following an architect at ShopSphere, a fictional retailer, students cover what AI is, how machines learn (machine learning, deep learning, language and vision), why data quality and governance decide whether projects succeed, and field lessons such as token maxing vs. token economics and matching the model to the job. Includes a live demo of building a working system with AI.
- Build with agentic memoryLive demo
- Good agentic AI is not a goldfish. Following one customer of ShopSphere, a fictional retail company, through four progressive live demos, students learn how memory carries context across sessions, what to store and what to keep out, how to match data types to the information, and how to save and retrieve memories with Python alongside live product and customer data. Includes a class exercise.
- Artificial Intelligence and Data 101Live demo
- AI as a data problem first: quality, governance and architecture, not just modeling.
Cloud & data fundamentals
- Relational database 101Live demo
- Reliable databases protect transactions and keep operations running. This is where the story starts: setting up the database behind the CRM of ShopSphere, a fictional retail company, the foundation for the applications students build in the other courses. Following its team, students learn what a database does and how it fits into the data pipeline, warehouse and lake, then work with tables, keys, constraints and SQL, running statements in a live database to see how each one behaves. They also see how business requirements become a database design, and how Oracle runs it behind the scenes.
- Database modeling
- How real business requirements become a sound data model, the design step behind databases that stay reliable and fast as they grow.
- Cloud computing fundamentals & economicsLive demo
- How cloud platforms launch faster, scale on demand and improve resilience, paired with cost-aware architecture, TCO and FinOps trade-offs that prevent surprise bills. Concepts apply across hyperscalers.
- Integrating data in the enterprise
- Connecting siloed legacy and modern systems to speed decisions and unlock analytics and AI.
Modern data types
- AI vector searchLive demo
- The foundation of semantic search, recommendations and more accurate RAG experiences, with a live demo students can follow.
- Property graphsLive demo
- Graph models behind fraud detection, recommendation engines and knowledge graphs.
- JSONLive demo
- Nearly every API speaks JSON. Native semi-structured data handling in databases, immediately applicable.
Applied & career skills
- Winning buy-in for technologyLive exercises
- Securing funding and support for a technical idea starts with customer-focused value, a career skill rarely taught in computing programs. Built around individual and group exercises, students develop the skills to pitch their ideas with that value front and center.
- LiveLabs learning 101Live demo
- A tour of an enterprise-scale learning platform with 900+ workshops, with students running labs on their laptops in class.
LiveStack industry experiences
State & local government
A paired demo and hands-on workshop turn a public-sector scenario into applied learning. Students see how enterprise solutions are communicated, then practice connecting technical choices to service outcomes.
Finance
A paired demo and workshop connect cloud, data and AI concepts to a finance context. Students practice evaluating business value, risk and implementation trade-offs.
Work together
Let's put something on the calendar.
I am happy to tailor a session to the topics and format that work best for your courses: a single guest lecture or a recurring slot across the semester. My home region is the Maryland and Washington, DC area, where I'm happy to join you in person, and I'm glad to teach virtually anywhere.
Send a connection request with a note about your course, and I'll be in touch.