| Interviewer:
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Please take a minute to
provide our readers with a brief introduction/background. |
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| Author: |
**not answered** |
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| Interviewer:
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Where are you from?
How--if at all--has your sense of place colored your writing? |
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| Author: |
I grew up in the
suburbs of Atlanta, Ga., in a town called Snellville. It was a great
town to grow up in, safe, good schools, but not too exciting. So,
television crept into our lives a bit more than it should!
Particularly cartoons. So, I guess you could say that upbringing
colored my writing. |
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| Interviewer:
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When and why did you begin
writing? When did you first consider yourself a writer? |
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| Author: |
I first began
technical writing for projects in college, and then in my first job
out of college, like most techies. My first writing as an end to
itself was course development, mainly for IBM SE’s. The CCNA®
Exam
Certification Guide is my first published work. I never had much
interest in writing for magazines – it never seemed like enough
space to really get into a topic! As far as when I began to consider
myself a writer, I still don’t! My best talents still lie in
explaining technical topics in classroom settings; even if I write
another book, I’ll think of it as a fun project while I do my real
job. |
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| Interviewer:
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Who or what has influenced
your writing, and in what way? What books have most influenced your
personal and professional life? |
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| Author: |
The most profound
influence on my writing was my professor for a technical writing
class while at IBM. I have no recollection of the name of the
instructor, but the class focused a lot on paragraph construction
(exciting, huh?), and how to word sentences so that the theme of the
paragraph is very obvious. As mundane as that sounds, I almost
always think of what I learned in that class every time I start a
new paragraph. As far as books go, certainly Philippians (from The
Bible) has influenced my personal life the most. Professionally,
Enterprise Networking by Dan Minoli has been a great reference for
learning details about the carrier network world that I would never
have known otherwise. |
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| Interviewer:
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Who is the target audience
for your book? What should their level of technical knowledge be? |
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| Author: |
The audience is more
obvious for my book than most, of course. Anyone interested in
passing the CCNA® (routing/switching) exam is the audience. However,
when I wrote it, the folks at Cisco Press and I agreed that the
assumption would be that the reader is someone with knowledge
comparable to someone who has taken the Cisco ICRC course. Those
people probably understood most of what was covered in class, but
they didn’t remember it all, and some things were probably
unclear. So, I covered all topics in the book, but assumed that I
could cover it more succinctly than if I was teaching. |
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| Interviewer:
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How is the book organized? |
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| Author: |
The technical chapters
are organized to match the general topics listed by Cisco in their
list of CCNA® exam objectives. In fact, since the exam is based on
the objectives, the book continually focuses on the objectives,
their meanings, and explanations on the technical details related to
the objectives. The first chapter is designed to help the reader get
the most out of his/her study time, by describing the exam, the
courses related to the exam, what topics are and aren’t on the
exam, and how to best use the book to prepare for the exam. |
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| Interviewer:
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Tell us how your
background and experience enabled you to write about this topic? |
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| Author: |
My technical
background helps a lot - I’ve taught Cisco classes for 5 years,
and other router classes before that, and I’m a CCIE® as well.
However, probably the most important part of my background is that
I’ve always been interested in teaching of some kind. I tutored in
college, wrote internal courses as needs arose at IBM, and have
spent as much time explaining as anything else in my consulting
work. And having met thousands of people who match the target
audience didn’t hurt either. |
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| Interviewer:
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What made you decide to
write this extensively on this topic? |
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| Author: |
Well, that’s an easy
one. I got married June 1998, and I am basically an independent
contractor. I was looking to stay in town a lot more, and writing
this book seemed like a reasonable way to accomplish that. Once the
folks at MacMillan and I decided we both wanted me to write a book,
it was a matter of choosing one of the many books Cisco Press had
scheduled to publish. I decided that a book that would not require
me to stretch a lot technically would give me the chance the focus
on the quality of the writing, which was going to be a much greater
challenge for me. |
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| Interviewer:
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Can your book be helpful
in preparing for Cisco certification? If so, for which
certifications or exams? |
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| Author: |
Well… so many one
liners come to mind. I sure hope it’s helpful for the CCNA® exam! |
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| Interviewer:
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What other projects are
you planning? Will we see another book from you? If so when? |
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| Author: |
Well, right now I’m
working on projects that are out of the public eye, and probably
should stay that way. There are two topics about which I’ve
considered writing another book, possibly in the 2nd half of 1999.
I’ve had lots of experience with SNA, and seldom do I see books
that explain it well, particularly in the context of using router
networks – so I get a lot of suggestions from colleagues to write
about SNA/IP integration. I’m also considering writing about WAN
switching as well. |
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| Interviewer:
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What did you think of the
writing process? How long did it take you to write your book? |
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| Author: |
It took about 5 months
of elapsed time to write the book. The writing was fun most of the
time, although it got boring writing chapter 2 – there’s no way
to make nit-picky user interface details fun to write about. The
editing process was the hardest work, and was frankly the most
important part of the process. The book chapters I turned in before
the editing process was nowhere close to as good as the finished
product. |
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| Interviewer:
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Did you learn anything
from this project? If so what? |
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| Author: |
I learned a lot about
the book business. Did you know that retailers sell positioning on
bookcases, end-of-row space, etc. to the publishing companies? It
makes sense, but I never thought about it before. I also learned
that publishers are very different in how they deal with and treat
their authors; I’m very fortunate to have ended up with MacMillan! |
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| Interviewer:
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If you were asked about
what is the best way to succeed in the field of networking what
would you say? |
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| Author: |
Continuing to learn
new technologies is very important. Planning how to long to stay in
a position, and pursuing a change as the date approaches, is one
key. There are few jobs that allow you to grow technically without
at least changing job titles in the same company. Be honest about
your goals with your current management; give them their money’s
worth for their investment in you, but be ready to quantify how much
time you are willing to stay in a position before needing to move
on. |
