OS X Lion Server Essentials 10.7 Workbook is Available!

For those of you who are looking for Apple training for OS X Lion, particularly if you have a Server, the classes are now available for registration, and the workbook is available for those classes. And while I am excited that the classes are available and are being taught (some by me, of course), there is another reason: I contributed to the writing of the Workbook. I can share this now with the publication of the workbook, and I'm excited. It's the first time anything I have contributed to has been published, and it's a very good book.

The process was longer than I expected for such a small contribution, but it was a great experience. I was contacted by the project manager/official author of the book to help with the exercises. I chose one chapter, and got to work in my spare time rewriting the exercises to work with the release of Lion. My contributions, with screenshots, were then sent on to the technical editor for review, and he made a ton of excellent suggestions and corrections. I'm not the best at taking criticism, but every one was correct, though not all the suggested changes needed to be made (instead different changes were made). It then went on to editing, where more screenshots were taken, updated, etc. My part ended with the Beta class where Mac OS X experts who had more experience than I did got together and tested out the workbook. More suggestions and corrections were made by the Author, and the final book was compiled.

The publishers and editor at PeachPit were excellent to work with, and the staff at Apple were fabulous. Arek Dreyer, the author of the Workbook and the Reference book, was great to work with, as was Adam Karneboge the technical editor. I loved the experience and would do it again in a heartbeat.

For those of you who are interested in purchasing the workbook, I'm afraid to say the price may be more than you think: It's only available from Apple Authorized Training Centers, and only distributed to students that take the Lion 201 training course ($1500.00). But you get three days of training in the bargain, learn how to use Apple Server to manage a domain, website, file sharing, and Mobile Device Management for Macs and iOS devices. Classes at the University of Utah start in the Spring.  Check them out!