Marco Tamassia is the author of Cloud Computing Concepts and Tech Analogies, 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)?
Marco: Databases and Cloud Computing.
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Marco: One of the other authors of this book – also a colleague of mine – decided to directly contact Packt to propose our idea and organize a meeting.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Marco: We all knew the technical content covered in the book. We just had to find ideas about analogies that could be used to explain the technical concepts.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Marco: Because this book was written by six hands (three authors), writing the first three-four chapters took time because we needed a method, a strategy to organize ourselves and decide who does what, which we didn’t have at the beginning. Once we defined it, for the subsequent chapters everything was easier and each of us was pretty independent in the writing
Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Marco: I think Cloud Computing is currently an important reality in IT and I don’t see right now a technology that could substitute it. We focus on AWS technologies and I personally think that AWS is the top Cloud Computing platform.
Q. Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Marco: I’m not aware of books that use so heavily analogies to explain technical concepts as we did with our book. I think that the use of analogies makes the book more fun and easy to read and understand. I also think that could be pretty useful to “teach” as well.
Q. What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?
Marco: I would like readers will understand that moving to the Cloud is a good thing, but it’s a journey, exactly like the one the characters of our story made; last but not less important: before starting to build things, you need to study and learn first.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Marco: Don’t try to study all of the services at the same time. Focus on the foundational ones first and then go more in-depth with the ones you need for your project.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Marco: Unfortunately not 🙁
Q. Can you share any blogs, websites, and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Marco: Here readers can find information about how to learn AWS services with a proper training: https://aws.amazon.com/training/ and then, I would recommend also the AWS Skill Builder platform which contains many free digital pieces of training they can attend immediately: https://explore.skillbuilder.aws/learn/signin
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Marco: Yes, absolutely, they were flexible and always supportive.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Marco: Writing the book was an act of passion, and my job as a trainer always got the priority. I simply dedicated several nights to get the book done.
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Marco: Mmm, I just use Linkedin. I have a pretty large network with people posting very interesting stuff about what I like and about the technology I teach
Q. Would you like to share your social handles? If so, mention them below.
Marco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcotamassia/
Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Marco: Be sure that you write your book because of passion. This is the only way, in my personal opinion, to complete successfully such a journey.
You can find Marco’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here
