HomeAuthor InterviewsWeslley Moura shares his experience of authoring AWS Certified Machine Learning Specialty...

Weslley Moura shares his experience of authoring AWS Certified Machine Learning Specialty 2020 Certification Guide.

Q: What is/are your specialist tech area(s)?

Weslley: Data Science, Machine Learning.

Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?

Weslley: I have been writing machine learning articles for a while on my blog and I found it interesting how we can learn from sharing knowledge. Writing with (not for, because it really was a team work) Packt was just an awesome opportunity to keep learning, sharing knowledge and know more people, hopefully at scale.

Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?

Weslley: Prior to writing the book, I took my AWS Machine Learning Specialty certification, same topic of the book. So, the content was fresh on my mind. I spent maybe just a few days to decide how to structure the book in the best possible way.

Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?

Weslley: Sure, I had to find a way to give as much context as possible to the reader, so that he/she could deeply understand my points in the book. Sometimes we feel the content is clear, but instead, it is actually lacking some important information or context. Packt reviewers helped me a lot to put the things in the right place.

Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?

Weslley: I think machine learning and cloud computing are playing a very important role on modern businesses. In the future, I believe these types of services will keep demanding high skilled professionals that will be able to make difference using machine learning and cloud-based skills.

Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?

Weslley: This is not a “heavy” book and we do care about the readers. While writing, we tried to be on their position, so we focused on things that matter for the certification. Also, this is not only a book to prepare for AWS exam, but also to be used as reference on many daily activities of a data scientist.

Q: What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away from the book with?

Weslley: Feel prepared to get certified and open their minds to create great data products.

Q: What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?

Weslley: Things are always, somehow connected. So, the top tip I do is trying to abstract the content we learned. When we do that, it will be easier to connect different topics/tools/services and create better products.

Q: Do you have a blog that readers can follow?

Weslley: I do: www.hackinganalytics.com

Q. Can you share any blogs, websites and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?

Weslley: No question this is the best one: https://machinelearningmastery.com/

Q. How would you describe you author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?

Weslley: It was just a great and smooth journey. We really worked as a team, with no judgments, just collaborations. This is a great opportunity to know smart people and get to know yourself.

Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?

Weslley: I like some specialized AI blogs, such as https://ai.googleblog.com/

Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?

Weslley: I set my weekend mornings and some nights to work on the book.

Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?

Weslley: Write something that you like.

You can find Weslley’s books on Amazon by clicking on the cover image:

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AWS Certified Machine Learning Specialty 2020 Certification Guide – Available on Amazon.com