This talk comprehensively introduces Vision-Language Models (VLMs), their importance, and a wide range of applications. It delves into the technical aspects of pre-training VLMs, covering common techniques and recent advancements. Attendees will gain hands-on experience through live demonstrations using open-source VLMs and minimal reproducible Colab notebooks. Additionally, the talk will focus on fine-tuning PaliGemma, Google's latest VLM, providing a step-by-step guide for specific tasks.