I’m sorry. It’s become quiet on my blog. The reason is that book writing has become my full-time occupation and is going to be all along until I’m joining Zühlke Engineering for all things IoT and data science in September 2016. And believe me: after writing about IoT all day long, the last thing on my mind is writing even more about IoT…

So this is just a brief update on what’s been happening in regards to the IoT book I’ve alluded to a few times (see my rationale why we need a dedicated book for teaching IoT at university level and a brief update after the first part had been written).

Thus, the state of play is now:

  • We got a publisher. I had been contacted by Artech House (UK) if I wanted to write a book about data and information models in IoT. This request was in direct response to my various materials on this blog about ontologies in the IoT and my experiments with Eclipse Vorto. I told them that these topics would be a part of a book I’m currently writing, although a very small one. I’ve immediately had their attention and in contrast to the tedious dealings with some established academic publishers, the paperwork was a matter of a few weeks and the contract just needs signing (…which I haven’t done so far to keep writing fun). I’ve been told it’s no laughing matter, although I frequently make fun of them as one of their flagship publication is the Microwave Journal, but they are a very IT, EE and RF heavy publisher.

  • I got co-authors. Imagine you ask your 1,500 strong followership for assistance online and everyone just ignores you, but then in real-life over beer you mention a book I’m currently writing, and it’s actually happening. My nagging skills have ultimately been successful and I’ve secured Dominik Obermaier from HiveMQ/DC-Square and Paul Fremantle from WSO2/University of Portsmouth as co-authors. Many practitioners know Dominik for his excellent series of blog posts about MQTT, and he is taken charge of Internet messaging and backend pains in the Software chapter of the book. Paul is the co-founder and CTO of WSO2, but at the moment is also doing a PhD in security and access management in the IoT: Who would be better suited to write that chapter? :-)

  • We’ve made progress. Since the last update in February I’ve finished the chapters on the history of the Internet and IoT, IoT applications and IoT/M2M architectures. Including the first chapter on physics and computing, that’s about 40,000 words and nearly 60 figures. About half of the hardware chapter is drafted, and over the next few weeks the first chapters will see some polishing so that they can go out to our external reviewers. I’m confident that the book is going to hit the stores in early 2017.

  • Most importantly, we have a title, as suggested by the publisher: Technical Foundations of the Internet of Things.