KarthiKeyan is the author of ‘IoT Edge Computing with MicroK8s‘. 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)?
K: Kubernetes, Containers, Cloud-native applications, IoT, Digital Twins
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
K: Learning and sharing knowledge is not new to me. I was running technology blog that covers hot industry topics. Based on the articles that I have written, I was approached by Packt for covering the topic in detail,I quickly accepted.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
K: Topic of the book was very familiar and I use them every day at my work. Additionally, topics to be covered was born out of a PoC that I built for one of the customer in healthcare field who was looking for innovative ways to solve the problem.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
K: Quite lot of challenges but with support from Packt, I could overcome them.
Q. What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
K: Technologies discussed in the book are definitely the future and its ecosystem continues to expand. Today ~90% of the market is being held by single orchestration engine that boils down to engineers need to master only one container orchestration engine.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
K: Book follows unique pattern where in readers would be introduced the concepts then followed by hands-on tutorial followed by best practices, guidelines etc., Furthermore, there is no book which covers this topic and how it could be applied to IoT/Edge platform.
Q: What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
K: Like I mention on my blog, “Learn something new every day” is the way forward. Keep upskilling and get adapted to ever changing world of Information Technology industry.
Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?
K: Learn the concepts of Kubernetes, how they can apply it to real world use-cases of IoT/Edge workloads. Best Practices, Guidelines are covered for each concept. Additionally, for each concept hands-on is covered in detail so that readers can try it on their own and gear up for real world use-cases.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
K: Yes, blog – https://www.upnxtblog.com
Q. Can you share any blogs, websites and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
K: InfoQ, DevOps, ContainerJournal, LinkedIn Groups, various Industry influencers etc.,
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
K: My author journey has been excellent, I learnt new tips/tricks in writing, content preparation, presentation etc., I would definitely recommend Packt for aspiring authors.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
K: Between Fulltime job and writing book is tough & needs to be planned thoroughly. I write mostly on the weekends. I would jot down the topics to be covered first hand and start working towards it. Also the environments that are required to setup would need to be planned upfront and screenshots of the steps needs to be taken.
You can find Karthikeyan’s book on Amazon by following this link
