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Eventual SKILSTAK courses (book + video)

Roughly in order of priority:

  1. Beginner Boost, High-Octane to Launch Your Tech Career
  2. Activate Your Autodidact, Learn Like the Best
  3. Conquer the Command Line, Become a Shell Native
  4. Just Enough Networking
  5. Polyglot Programming: Learn to Code in Python, Go, and JavaScript
  6. Homelab Init, Starting Your Own Learning Lab at Home
  7. Terminal Tools in Go
  8. Modern Microservices in Go
  9. Cozy Coworking, Building a Supportive, Motivational Community Online
  10. Culture Journalism, IRL Streaming as an Art Form
  11. Outdoor IRL Streamers Guide
  12. Fullmetal UNIX, Single-Board Computing with the World’s Most Powerful Operating System
  13. Parsing with PEGN, Developing Domain-Specific Grammars for Fun and Profit
  14. Body by Bike, Lifelong Fitness and Fun on Two (or Three) Wheels
  15. Urban Exploration by Bike
  16. Yoga for Nerds, Techies Need It Most

Copyrighted

I suppose these titles are now copyrighted. And I suppose putting this out on Twitter and in GitHub will be the first step to eventually publishing them. Polyglot Programming already has the first two chapters finished. Just found them in my old SKILSTAK stuff and they are pretty damn good. I think it failed in the classroom because we didn’t have enough time and the teens were too distracted to focus enough to get through the material, but the organization is very sound.

Singular voice

I thought of having these books be a collaborative effort and getting them published through a community, but that defeats what has become obvious to me is the single greatest advantage of any book: a singular voice and tone. I will have people contribute to the editing and such and be sure to list them on the collaborators or credits page, but the book will be from me as the sole author. Hopefully, it will inspire others to take up writing their own as well.

Publishing

I’ve toyed with the ideal of creating my own SKILSTAK Publishing. I’ve done publishing before (back in college) when I ran Sterling Scholastic Aides, a company I formed to create learning resources that accompanied courses. But I could be convinced to use Nostarch or some other publisher if approached. We’ll see. I might also be able to get backed by some local investors who are already intent on making a local tech hub. Self publishing is so easy these days that if I have the marketing covered there is really no reason not to. I learned early, however, that big orders require the ability to absorb a large number of returns. For example, when I provided all the learning materials for a specific course in college the bookstore called me after the semester ended and wanted to return the surplus items expecting me to be able to absorb those costs. Only a big publisher can pull that off and if I want to get really big I need to approach the college bookstore market. Getting a book picked as the center of a course is the holy grail of publishing. It I do it right, I can create an approachable book or two that also checks the “instructional technology” boxes required for college courses to pick it.