Interview with Alexander Meijers

Alexander Meijers is the author of Hands on Azure Digital Twins, we got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.

Q: What is/are your specialist tech area(s)?

Alexander: Extended Reality, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Services, Digital Twins, IoT, Power Platforment in general, Sanic specifically

Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?

Alexander: I got approached by someone van Packt based on my information feed on LinkedIn.

Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?

Alexander: I have been working last year on an internal accelerator at Avanade which combines IoT sensor data together with Dynamics data into a digital twin. A Microsoft HoloLens 2 was used to visualize the generated digital twin data. Based on the request of the book, the knowledge I have been acquiring during the process of building the accelerator and online documentation research i wrote my first book on Digital Twins.

Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?

Alexander: At the moment of writing Azure Digital Twins was in preview. Some of the chapters were required to be rewritten to accommodate the final release of Azure Digital Twins. The book itself does not include the integration with IoT Hub. This integration was released a short time ago and did not reach the book.

Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?

Alexander: I think Digital Twins is going to become the next important thing for organizations. Organizations are collecting so much IoT data and most of it is not used to improve their business processes. Digital Twins will bring new use cases for organizations which allow them to leverage that collected data.

Q. Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?

Alexander: The book really helps you step by step understanding the capabilities and features of Azure Digital Twins. I have tried to write it in such a way that knowledge gets extended each chapter. Secondly the book contains a lot of coding examples which allows the reader to be actively coding experiencing results during almost every chapter.

Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?

Alexander: Understand how Azure Digital Twins work and how to apply that knowledge in your own applications and services.

Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?

Alexander: Start small and expand over time. The technology can become somewhat overwhelming. And when not designed well can make the final result quickly complicated.

Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?

Adam: I just started one. https://xrpowerhero.com

Q. Can you share any blogs, websites, and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?

Alexander: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/digital-twins/overview

Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?

Alexander: It was a great journey. the team which supported me with writing the book really took their time to help me further. I would definitely recommend it.

Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?

Alexander: Microsoft Tech Community, Global XR Community, Global AI Community

Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?

Alexander: I read mostly articles posted on LinkedIn. Often these are referred to several different tech websites.

Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?

Alexander: Packt helps you in the beginning to come up with an initial setup of chapters. I noticed that this will/can change over time where Packt will support you.

Secondly before starting each chapter, i start with setting up a small contents. This really helped me writing each chapter.

Q. What is the one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?

Alexander: Determine the scope of your chapter and what message/knowledge you want to bring over. Than define a contents overview and start writing.

You can find Alexander’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here



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