Guan Wang is the co-author of Conversational AI with Rasa 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)?
Guan: Machine Learning, NLP
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Guan: My friend Xiaoquan and I are working on a Chinese book for Rasa, and we think it may be a great idea to also do it in English to reach wider community – this is when Packt comes to our mind.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Guan: I’ve been an open source contributor to Rasa and several other NLP projects for 6 years.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Guan: It is hard to keep the deadlines. My trick was to really keep the passion and finish at least the first version of draft ASAP, and then iterate and improve – just like writing codes.
Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Guan: Chatbot will be one of the most important UI in a digital world.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Guan: This is the first chatbot book that is based on open source Rasa stack. No hard selling of commercial products – everything is open and tweakable.
Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away with from the book?
Guan: Building a chatbot can be easy, and sky is the limit with tweakable features in open source world.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Guan: Create a Github account and start exploring!
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Guan: Yes, I have a blog – http://www.crownpku.com/
Q. Can you share any blogs, websites, and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Guan: https://forum.rasa.com/ have great content.
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Guan: Yes – fantastic publisher!
Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Guan: Yes, I am a Google Developer Expert in Machine Learning
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Guan: I read academic papers and open source code repos on Github.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Guan: I guess working from home during Covid-19 period made it a bit easier.
Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Guan: If you find a desire to write, go writing! Don’t worry too much that it will not be perfect. Finish a first draft so you have something you can iterate and improve on.
You can find Guan‘s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here
