Angelika Klidas is the author of Data Literacy in Practice, we got the chance to sit down with her and find out more about her experience of writing with Packt.
Q: What is/are your specialist tech area(s)?
Angelika: ● Management of teams
● Data & Analytics (specialist and lecturer)
● Data & Analytics Project management or program management
● Sales & Account Management
● Change Management specialized in data & Analytics
● Performance Management
● Strategic Advisor in Data & Analytics
● Teacher / lecturer
● Data Visualization
● Data Management
● Public speaker
● Writer of small ebooks, articles & blogs
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Angelika: Birjees Patel approached me several months ago if I would be interested in writing a book about Data Literacy. She gave me the confidence to write with my buddy Kevin Hanegan this book. The journey is amazing, the stories that I used to tell on stage all around the world are now written down on paper, the models , frameworks, our vision it is all there. And to be honest is was an amazing journey to write together with Kevin.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Angelika: During my journey I could reason from my experience is the beautiful Data & Analytics world. I work with data and insights from data already 30 years. I teach Data & Analytics at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and I do have to keep up with new developments in our profession as a manager at a commercial Data & Analytics company and as a lecturer at the university. Research is part of my profession and is the core of what I do. Some topics are familiar but some need some research or discussion as well with my fellow teammates or with my co-author Kevin Hanegan.
I took a fair amount of time to research the hardware, software, people and process components of BI and DW before penning down the chapters. The research was ongoing to be honest – because as I was penning down chapters, new questions arose in me and by association, I figured out that those questions will be asked by the reader as well. So every topic was well researched – some on the spot, some preemptively.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Angelika: Some personal stuff, a bad accident in march 2022 caused a lot of damage to my knee. I will have a big surgery at the 31st of August and then finally I will be able to go to rehab and get well and fit again. But this situation gave also the peace to write, so it was a mixed feeling. The other challenges was that I needed to take care of my parents they both are somewhat older and need a lot of care and companionship. Also losing a loved family member is hard and caused just like the other elements writer blocks but with the help of meditation and talking to my loved ones helped me to gain confidence again.
Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Angelika: The book is not a technical book at all, it is more a business book. It tells the stories how businesses and people can get on that Data Literacy Journey to grow into their data informed decision-making. It is a guide for all people who want to understand how and what to learn for their decision making processes.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Angelika: It is full with amazing stories , tips and tricks from our daily live and of organizations and with those tips and tricks it helps our audience to get the inspiration and go on that journey and develop their understanding and passion to work with insights created from data!
Q: What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away with from the book?
Angelika: Understand how to start your data literacy journey with actionable steps, how to use the four critical pillars required for organizations to turn data into insights, get a firm understanding of what skills are included within a data literacy competency, getting an understanding how to visualize in a correct manager, or how to build visualizations that matter and that the viewers can actually read, get an understanding of organizational goals and how to measure them, understand the every data & Analytics implementation is a change (we have to help people), learning to question the things that you see and go on that learning path that we have been writing about.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Angelika: It is a book from a business point of view.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Angelika: My LinkedIn profile is the best place to read some stories!! if you google you will find through you tube some interesting recordings as well.
Q. Can you share any blogs, websites, and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Angelika:https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelikaklidas/recent-activity/posts/
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Angelika: It was an amazing journey!! Learned a lot about writing and how to build the book from scratch. We have gotten the time to think about the outline, what we needed to write (high over) and when we started the feedback was amazing so that we could learn during our journey.
Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Angelika: Not really as I am no technical person (not programming or scripting) but I know the essentials of technical solutions, I know how to design and test them. And due to my experience and educations I know technique from a conceptual, architectural point of view.
One of the examples of a technical book is the book QlikView 11 for Developers (from PACT) with that book I learned to build dashboards & reports, further I just follow the online courses (like Udemy, Coursea and so on)
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Angelika: Reading articles from Gartner, MIT, TechTarget and so on.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Angelika: Writing was mostly done in the evening, nights and weekends or during day’s off from my normal commercial and my teaching activities. I did not plan things exact but high over I did do some planning. But with a family and things going on sometimes it was hard, or a writers block occurred. The best thing to do then is just to relax, leave writing for a few day’s and try to pick it up in a late stage.
Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Angelika: How to write appealing and what to do for that, my dear and amazing friend Mireille Erasmus was my first reviewer, she helped me to structure the story in a amazing way. My official reviewer Priyanka Soam helped me to learn the PACKT way and as the journey went on the writing and PACKT style became better.
As I’ve learned during the way, write just write…. then structure and let someone else read your story, if they get it…. it will be amazing!
Q. Would you like to share your social handles? If so, please share.
Angelika:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelikaklidas/ ;
https://www.facebook.com/angelika.klidas
https://twitter.com/AngelikaKlidas ;
You can find Angelika‘s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here
Data Literacy in Practice – Available on Amazon.com
