We got a chance to sit down with Sonali and find out more about her experience of writing with Packt for her book Intelligent Document Processing with AWS AI/ML.
Q: What are your specialist tech areas?
Sonali: Machine Learning AI, Cloud.
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Sonali: We all know how tedious it is to process paperwork manually, but we are still doing it. Technology is there to help us, but it is still evolving. To help someone easily get started with and accelerate document processing use-case I wanted to share technology capabilities with the users. And that motivated me to write a book on document processing. During the process I was looking for a trusted, experienced publisher in technology industry and fortunately partnered with Packt to publish my first book on “Intelligent Document Processing”.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Sonali: I already had more than a decade of experience in cloud. But first time I started focusing on document processing use case in 2019, while working with customer for claims processing use case, and published my first blog on claims document processing. Subsequently, that paved the path for me to be a specialist in Machine Learning and AI to solve industry problems. I spent years learning technologies before commenting to write the book in the year 2022.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Sonali: The main challenge is finding time to write the book. I have two young kids, a full-time job, and a home to care for. I had to find creative ways to get it done, like, at spare time, late night, while running errands. I would recommend to have a book plan and word/paragraph writing goals per day at the beginning, to stay on plan. As a first-time author, Packt helped me structure it, and stay on track.
Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Sonali: This book describes AI/ML for document processing use case. In initial days, AI/ML used to be a concept, but very quickly it has become an integral part of our everyday activities. Despite digital transformation, we are still dealing with paperwork, and this AI/ML technologies helping to automate extraction from these papers. Considering the significant exponential growth in unstructured documents, we need AI/ML to not only automate this process, but also re-invent the process for better usage.
Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Sonali: You will be surprise to see limited available resources to learn Intelligent document processing use case. This book is one of the first book to take you through the use case with simple easy to understand examples. Even though readers will learn in-depth about technical AI/ML solution, but this book will guide them how to apply those technical solution to business problems specific to its industry.
Q: What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away with from the book?
Sonali: Key takeaways for the readers to first understand the challenges in document processing use case to extract, and derive insights from documents, then learn various AI/ML options to find a solution to the problem. This book will help you quickly learn intelligent document processing with sample vertical specific examples.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Sonali: Technology is evolving, and constantly changing. One thing I would like to emphasis is to invest in yourself and set aside some time to learn new concepts and technologies. Make sure to learn with a motive, and apply your learning to solve a problem.
Q. How would you describe your author’s journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Sonali: I thought about, “I want to write a book on Intelligent Document Processing, and where should I start?” That is when I first got introduced to Packt, and its meticulous, experienced, professional team. Packt first vetted my book idea, and helped me come up with a book plan with timeline. Not only they supported me with writing samples, but also had professionals helping, and guiding me in each step of the book milestone, such as pre-review, technical review, content review, legal review, creating final documents and more. As a first-time author, I am thankful to have Packt as my publisher, who was always there to guide me in this journey until publishing the book.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Sonali: The first thing you have to be very clear on your goal, and what you want to achieve. Bring in Structure, and discipline to get there.
Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Sonali: I think the main thing is, just go for it. At some point you just have to dive in, once you get the momentum just don’t stop, keep going until you reach the goal.
Q. Would you like to share your social handles? If so, please share.
Sonali: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonali-sahu-b1338620/
You can find Sonali’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here
