From Geek To Peak: Your First 365 Days As A Technical Consultant [Paperback]

Thomas Myer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2008

From Geek to Peak has one goal: transform the cubicle-dwelling wage-slave geek into a successful freelancer. Are you a corporate-bound web developer, QA tester, documentation specialist, project manager, CSS maven, JavaScript guru, Rails expert, or PHP demigod? Are you about to be laid off? Is your job being moved overseas without you? Are you just plain tired of working on the same go-nowhere projects over and over? Are you up to here with all the endless meetings and reporting to a boss that knows less than you do? Do you want to make your own way in the world, but don't know how to start? Then this book is for you! It focuses specifically on: a) problems specific to technical freelancers and consultants b) issues that you will encounter in your first 365 days in business. This book is written by a seasoned technical consultant, and it will give you the inside scoop on what you need to succeed in your first year in business.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Thomas Myer is a technical book author, consultant, and web developer. In 2001, he founded Triple Dog Dare Media in Austin, Texas. Triple Dog Dare Media helps companies in two ways: by writing technical copy (case studies, white papers, articles, and user guides) and by creating CodeIgniter-based applications like content management systems, portals, and ecommerce systems. Thomas Myer is the author of No Nonsense XML Web Development with PHP (Sitepoint, 2004), Lead Generation on the Web (O'Reilly, 2007) and Professional CodeIgniter (WROX, 2008). He has also authored dozens of technical and business articles for IBM DeveloperWorks, Amazon Web Services, AOL, Darwin Magazine, and others. Since founding Triple Dog Dare Media in 2001, he's made every single mistake in the book as concerns business, but learned valuable lessons along the way. His friends and spouse encouraged him to collect the hard-won wisdom of consulting and put it into a book-thus, Geek to Peak was born.

Product Details

• Paperback: 146 pages
• Publisher: Nimble Books LLC (September 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934840564
• ISBN-13: 978-1934840566
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,712,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in the Republic of Panama to an American father and Panamanian mother. My mother's side of the family is ginormous--she had 7 brothers and sisters, and each of them had at least 3 or 4 kids (good Catholics!) so it turns out that there is a plenitude of cousinage.

I went to school in what was known as the Panama Canal Zone, graduating from Balboa High School shortly before the bombs fell on Noriega in 1989. I attend Panama Canal College before transferring to UT San Antonio, where I earned a bachelor's in English and met my lovely wife Hope.

After graduating from UTSA in 1992, I attended SUNY-Binghamton in upstate, frozen tundra New York to get my Master's degree (part Medieval English Lit, part Linguistics, part Comparative Lit). Then we returned to San Antonio where I started my career as an editor for The Psychological Corporation, a division of Harcourt Brace.

In 1996 I got my big break in hi-tech, joining a little startup called WheelGroup Corporation, where I was part-time Webmaster and full-time technical writer for a UNIX-based intrusion detection product line. What an education! Wow.

We were acquired by Cisco Systems in 1998, which meant a move to Austin TX. The first thing we noticed was how different Austin was from the rest of Texas--like light and day. I don't think Austin has ever voted majority Republican for president in the last 30 or 40 years (okay, maybe Reagan).

I had been involved with XML before Cisco, but within days of becoming a Ciscoite, I got roped into various XML-related projects and undertakings. I learned a lot about XML document analysis and the pure politics of markup languages.

In 1999 I moved on to Vignette Corporation, where I was a technical writer and information architect. There we worked on various portals and CMS engagements. That lasted until 2001, when I left to go out on my own full time.

I've been running Triple Dog Dare Media ever since. In 2004 I was approached by SitePoint to write a basic XML book, and that eventually became No Nonsense XML Web Development with PHP.