Oluwole Fagbohun is the author of Tensorflow developer Certificate Guide we got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Oluwole: My part to becoming an Author with Packt began with me acing the TensorFlow developer certificate as well as sharing my passion and knowledge with others. When Packt Publishers reached out to me to write a book on the exam, it filled me with excitement as I always wanted to write a technical book under a reputable publisher like Packt. I prepared my book proposal, after a thorough review and a series of meetings and my proposal was accepted and that was the start of this Journey. My main motivation for writing this book was borne out of the desire to provide an easily digestible, well-structured resource to provide ML enthusiast the require skills to pass the 5-hour hands on developer exam. And with the help of Packt we designed a hands-on learning book that covers all aspects of the exams, taking readers from zero to mastery of TensorFlow. Writing this book has been nothing short of challenging and extremely rewarding, it gives me great joy to be able to contribute to the ML community and support people from all over the world in their aspiration to becoming TensorFlow certified and become well sought after experts. I am extremely grateful to Packt and the team who have worked assiduously on helping me put this book together and I can only hope this book serves its purpose as a valuable resource to anyone aiming to become certified and build a career in deep learning.
Q: What is the name of your book?
Oluwole: TensorFlow developer Certificate Guide.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Oluwole: In writing this book I devoted a signification amount of time to researching, and my research process was made of up networking with the ML community, speaking to those who took and planned to take the exams, the idea was to learn what challenges they faced in preparing and during the exams, what resource they used and how helpful it provided to them when they took the exams and secondly content research. In terms of content research, my goal was to firstly ensure this book content was up to date and in line with the current TensorFlow Developer Certificate exam requirements, covering every topic and checklist required for the exam. Secondly, I explored various online courses, books, articles and blog relevant to the exam, identifying their strengths and finding the gaps that needed to be addressed to ensure readers of my book had a fire proof guide to success.
Q: Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Oluwole: Unfortunately my schedule is packed so I don’t have a blog at this time, soon enough I will.
Q: What key takeaways do you want readers to come away with from the book?
Oluwole: By the end of this book, readers should be confident enough to take and ace their TensorFlow developer certificate exam and start building real world applications with TensorFlow.
Q: Can you share any blogs, websites and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Oluwole: https://www.deeplearning.ai/blog, https://machinelearningmastery.com .
Q. Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Oluwole: Just like any other author I faced several challenges in putting this book together. Firstly I had just completed my master’s degree when I began this book, so fatigue was an issue and it was also during the peak of covid and I fell ill twice. Also, like other writers, I occasionally suffered from writers block and there were also times when balancing writing a book in combination with my professional and personal responsibilities was a real challenge. To overcome these problem, I discussed it with my team at Packt, they provided insights into how other authors where able to overcome these challenges, they also made my deadlines more flexible and easily achievable, this proved very helpful on the long run.
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Oluwole: My journey to becoming an Author with Packt has been extremely rewarding and fulfilling. Packt has an excellent team that provides guidance, support and feedback throughout the writing process. Also, the editorial and technical review team are nothing short of fantastic, they ensure everything is spot on and they work tirelessly to bring out the best in the book. I will gladly recommend Packt to anyone who is serious about becoming an author. They truly care not only about the readers but about you as the author, they arm you with everything to make you shine.
Q. Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Oluwole: There are many reasons why this book stands out: 1. Hands on approach: This book teaching TensorFlow by doing. You learn by building from simple regression and classification models to more complex models used to solve real world image, text and time series problems. You learn by a combination of examples and exercises, and this will broaden your understanding of TensorFlow. 2. Comprehensive coverage: This book takes you from zero knowledge of ML to masters of core ML fundamentals and covers extensively every requirement of the TensorFlow developer certificate. This makes this book appeal to both beginners and experts as well. 3. Step-by-step guidance: This book adopts a step by step approach of breaking down difficult concepts with into easy to follow explanations and hands on examples, drawing case studies for learning from real world scenarios, this way you don’t only get enough for the exams but you can also build a suite of portfolio projects to position you as a top candidates to recruiters. 4. Exam-focused approach: The primary goal of this book is to ensure readers ace the TensorFlow developer certificate in one attempt and advance their careers. 5. Author’s expertise: As a machine learning engineer and certified TensorFlow developer, I have put together my experience in combination with lots of practical tips and tricks to help you become a better developer with TensorFlow.
Q. What is/are your specialist tech area(s)?
Oluwole: Machine Learning.
Q. What advice would you give to readers jumping into this technology? Do you have any top tips?
Oluwole: Be kind on yourself, learning a new technology can be a daunting task however if you are consistent and dedicated you will prevail. There are lots of resources to use and there is a vast amount of information on TensorFlow’s official website. Also learn by doing, knowing the theory is not enough learn by building, challenge yourself. It is also important to stay up to date with the latest development and also don’t forget to network or join a community. Also, for you to have a steady journey to learn TensorFlow I have written this book so I hope it helps you.
Q. What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Oluwole: TensorFlow is a house hold name both in academia and the industry as well. It will continue in this line as Google is constantly innovating and providing improvements to it, ensuring it stays relevant and making it more user friendly in modelling, tracking experiments, evaluating and deployment of ML powered application across various domain and on a wide range of devices.
Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Oluwole: I belong to a number of ML communities on LinkedIn 1. Machine Learning Community (Moderated) https://www.linkedin.com/groups/961087/ 2. Data Scientists https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2013423/ 3. Big Data, Data Science, AI, IoT, Cyber Security & Blockchain https://www.linkedin.com/groups/3990648/ 4.Data Mining, Statistics, Big Data, Data Visualization, AI, Machine Learning, and Data Science https://www.linkedin.com/groups/152247/.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Oluwole: 1. By making a detailed outline it was easier to plan each chapter in a logical way ensuring there was a good flow, breaking down the book into sections, chapters and topics and key take aways from each chapter. 2. Setting realistic deadlines. By setting attainable deadline it was easier to combine writing with work and family. 3. Research: I spend a substantial time researching each topic and reviewing contents on the TensorFlow official website and documentation and mapping them to the exam requirements. 4. Writing and reviewing routine: I developed a writing timetable and set up my writing space to help me stay focused and maintain my writing momentum. Usually I start each chapter with a draft and I spend the weekends review and updating it.
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Oluwole: Journal of Machine Learning Research, Springer International Journal of Computer Vision and Elsevier Information Sciences.
Q. Would you like to share your social handles? If so, mention them below.
Oluwole: Please find me on Twitter & LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/wolehat/ – LinkedIn , https://twitter.com/wolefizzy – Twitter.
Q: What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Oluwole: Structure your writing. Break it down into chapters, topics and sub topics it helps you in putting your thoughts together better. Take it easy do it one step at a time.
You can find Oluwole’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here.
