Annual CNSV Dinner Meeting: Your Life in Your Pocket – Motivations for Writing a Book about the Storage Technology that has Enabled the iPod Revolution
Just as many technologies converged to make magnetic disk drives ubiquitous, a similar but much more accelerated process has happened with the use of flash memory in the overwhelming success of todays consumer electronics (CE) devices. This success is best exemplified by the Apple iPod. Tom Coughlin’s book Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics: The Essential Guide presents the technical details behind the myriad kinds of storage technology used in today’s CE devices, including flash memory and optical storage.
Tom’s book was recently published by Newnes Press, a division of Elsevier. Being an author or editor of a published technical book by a respectable publishing house probably won’t get you on the New York Times best seller list or make you rich. However, a published book can be a great addition to your consulting marketing, and is also very satisfying personally.
Tom will discuss what motivated him to write the book, how he choose his topic, how he found a publisher, how he organized the book, and how he found reviewers and help in gathering information and checking for errors. He will also talk about how he was able to actually finish writing the book, including the processes he went through with his publishers, and what he and his publisher have been doing to publicize it. Tom will also present technical information about the most popular storage technologies used in today’s CE devices.
This presentation will be of interest to anyone who has either tried to write or thought about writing a technical book. The author’s personal experiences will be used to provide suggestions for other authors or would-be authors on what a book is good for, how to actually finish it, and how to use it to further your consulting practice.
Tom will be bringing some copies of his book to sell and autograph.
About the speaker, Tom Coughlin, Coughlin Associates IEEE-CNSV member Tom Coughlin is the Founder and President of Coughlin Associates. He has over 30 years of experience in the data storage industry as both a working engineer and high level technical manager. In addition to regular technical and management consulting projects, he is the publisher of reports on digital storage in consumer electronics content creation and distribution.
Tom has many published reports and articles on digital storage and its applications. He has six patents on magnetic recording and related technologies, and is the founder and organizer of the annual Storage Visions conference (a partner to the International CES).
Tom is an IEEE Senior Member, and was the 2007 Chair of the Santa Clara Valley IEEE Section and SF Bay Area Council. He was Chair of the Santa Clara Valley IEEE Consumer Electronics Society in 2006, and has been Chair of the SCV IEEE Magnetics Society. Tom is also a member of the IEEE CE Society Adcom, APS, AVS, IDEMA, SNIA, AAAS, TCG and SMPTE.
Location: I Restaurant
20007 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino, CA 95014
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