Jan is the author of Building Big Data Pipelines with Apache Beam; we got the chance to sit down with him and learn more about his writing experience with Packt.
Q: What is/are your specialist tech area(s)?
Jan: Big Data, Distributed Systems, Machine learning, Statistics
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Jan: I was contacted by Packt, and I considered writing a book a challenge worth accepting. I always found practical knowledge-sharing very motivating because it helps shape one’s proficiency.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Jan: About a week. Mostly about what it means to write a book 🙂
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Jan: Technological issues mostly. Solved as any other technological issue.
Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Jan: Needs further development, but separating the computation model from how it is executed is the way forward.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Jan: The book focuses on using practical tasks to demonstrate various aspects of the Apache Beam model and mapping it on “everyday” problems.
Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?
Jan: Deep understanding of the unified batch-streaming model of Apache Beam. Understanding how various aspects of Apache Beam portability works.
Q. Can you share any blogs, websites, and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Jan: Apache Beam user@ mailing list for user issues, dev@ mailing list for deeper discussions, bug reports, etc.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Jan: I was able to reserve about one and a half workdays per week. It would’ve been impossible for me to write the book during weekends and evenings as suggested initially.
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Jan: It is quite about stepping out of the comfort zone. But essentially, yes, I think I would recommend Packt. It would help to use more “standard” tools than MS Word – e.g. LaTeX, which would help prevent some troubles during development that I was facing.
Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Jan: Apache Beam committers
Q. What is the one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Jan: I don’t feel like I should be giving advice. 🙂 If anything, I’d say that planning is the crucial part.
You can find Jan’s book on Amazon by following this link click.
