Learn Elasticsearch from my liveProject at Manning

I like to share my knowledge. I have written 100s of blogs, performed 10s of talks at conferences, and trained 100s of people during onsite training programs. This week I reached a new milestone in my knowledge-sharing endeavor. This week I finalized my liveProject at Manning called Elasticsearch for a Search API. You can read my experiences creating this liveProject in this blog post. If you only want to know what it is, jump to the end of this post.

How I became an author for Manning

I had the idea of writing a book for a long time. How do you start with such an endeavor? To gain experience, I began reviewing books from Manning and Packt publishing. A few years ago, Manning asked me to help with the book Elasticsearch in Action. The author couldn't finish some chapters, and I had the chance to rewrite them. The book has my name on the cover as a technical editor, which makes me proud. I never got to writing a complete book, but in May 2022, Manning contacted me and asked if I would like to create a liveProject. I liked the idea and checked with Yuma if it was ok, which of course, was no problem. On the contrary, they loved the idea.

How does it work

I started with writing an overview of the project. The outline gave an idea of what the students would learn, the different projects in the series, and the tools students would use. After the concept was approved, the second step was a detailed plan for the complete series. For a live project to succeed, students must feel connected. I came up with an online shoe store called "Sneakers To The Max". The student is a search relevance engineer responsible for the search service used by customers through the website and the mobile app. Some domain experts reviewed my proposal; they were all very positive. After approving the detailed plan, I signed the contract and got started. I started writing the boilerplate code to get students underway. I wanted the student to lose as little time as possible and begin learning by running the code. The next step was breaking up the solution into multiple assignments grouped into four projects, projects into milestones, and milestones into steps. Each milestone ends with a short examination. Besides the code, the questions, and the texts, I created a few images. A design artist then transformed these, and I like the sneaker created from an elementary sketch of mine. Infographics are available for each project, and I recorded the audio descriptions for these infographics.

Testing the project

At first, one person acted as an alpha tester. This tester was the first person to give feedback on the project. My alpha tester had some excellent suggestions. In general, he was positive about the project. After some corrections, it was time for the beta testing phase. During beta testing, more people get to try out the project. Communication was through the discussion board, with lots of review comments. I was lucky with the beta testers. Again, there is a lot of positive feedback and excellent suggestions for improvement. I learned that one of the projects was too easy. I took a few weeks to create a new milestone for one of the projects.

Now it is your turn

With the liveProject finished, it is time for students to start working on it. Try out the series if you want to sharpen your Elasticsearch skills and are not afraid of a bit of Python. For now, the first project is free to try. I hope to see you in the discussion group or during the online call to pass the certification exam after completing all projects. https://www.manning.com/liveprojectseries/elasticsearch-for-a-search-api-ser  Cover image for the series at Manning

Questions about search, Elasticsearch, AWS OpenSearch, Solr

If you don't want to learn Elasticsearch yourself but have questions about your search solution, feel free to contact us. We have the knowledge and experience to build the best search solution for any situation.