Tadej Magajna is the author of Natural Language Processing with Flair. We got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.
Q: What are your specialist tech area(s)?
Tadej: Natural language processing, software engineering.
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Tadej: A Packt employee reached out to me after they spotted an interesting blog post I wrote.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Tadej: I worked with Flair both professionally and in my free time prior to writing the book. I contribute to Flair on GitHub and sometimes review other peoples contributions to Flair.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Tadej: It’s hard writing a quality book while being full-time employed, especially working in a big tech company which sometimes takes a big chunk of your personal time or at the very least drains your energy that you’re supposed to spend on writing the book in the evening.
Q. What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Tadej: Flair is a state-of-the art framework achieving amazing results in many areas of natural language processing. However, the NLP field is progressing at light speed and what is state-of-the-art today, may be obsolete tomorrow. So the framework will need to adapt and improve as the time goes by. Luckily, the original author of Flair is an active contributor and has many great ideas. He’s actively working on for the next version of Flair that will bring the next generation of amazing features.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Tadej: It’s both a great introduction to NLP for anyone that is new to the field as well as an interesting read for the more reasoned NLP engineers due to all the interesting approaches to how Flair tackles NLP.
Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?
Tadej: I would expect the readers to become proficient in the basic Flair syntax, gain confidence in using it and get a good overview of all of its features.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Tadej: I would recommend always having an open mind about how what you’re leaning could be used on your next personal project. Whatever you learn, try to use this knowledge as part of your own project and this will allow you to deepen your knowledge, learn and enjoy your time as you do so.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Tadej: Yes. You can find my posts at: https://medium.com/@tadejmagajna
Q. Can you share any blogs, websites, and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Tadej: The main source of truth about Flair is its GitHub page found at: https://github.com/flairNLP/flair
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Tadej: Definitely. I’ve seen a great deal of professionalism from everyone at Packt I’ve worked with. The publisher turned out to be very flexible in terms of my suggestions and always helped me find a solution that worked in all of our interests.
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Tadej: I follow the most prominent NLP contributors LinkedIn and they keep me up to date by posting links about interesting papers or NLP solutions.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Tadej: My full time job is always my no1 and I make sure book-writing never affects with my usual work schedule. Aside from that, I try to set time aside on afternoons for writing as well as plan on writing on weekend days when the weather isn’t great so that I don’t feel too bad staying in all day. I have to admit that after finishing the book I’ll be relieved to have some free time to spend in the afternoons.
Q. What is the one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Tadej: If you love the thing you plan to write the book about, then just do it! If you are betting on financial gain or a boost of your personal brand through writing the book, you will likely be disappointed and the book will not end up great. But if what drives you is your enthusiasm and love for the topic, then don’t even think about it and go for it!
You can find Tadej’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here.
