Ed Tittel founded LANWrights in 1990 as a "dba" under which to house his freelance writing activities. Since that time, Ed has written over 130 books (of which about 60 remain in print), and hundreds of magazine articles. In addition, LANWrights has consulted with high-tech companies, such as Novell, Key3Media, Microsoft, GTE, Symantec, and others, performing a variety of writing, training, and research services for these organizations. By the middle of 1996, LANWrights had written over 25 books, and was using a team of over a dozen contractors, some quite regularly. In 1997, LANWrights wrote 28 books; in 1998, 36 books; in 1999, over 40 books (all figures include new titles plus revisions). Since 2000, our activity level has hovered between 40 and 50 books or book-length projects per year.
In July, 1996, Ed incorporated LANWrights, and hired his busiest contractors, Michael Stewart and Dawn Rader (and himself), as full-time employees. In September, the company added its fourth employee, Natanya Pitts, who had been working for the group as its part-time Webmaster. Today, Michael is a named co-author on more than thirty books, Dawn on two books, and Natanya on over a dozen titles. In early 1999, Natanya left LANWrights; in September, 2002, Michael also left to start his own business (he's now teaching for TechNow, and continues to write books, magazine, and Web articles).
In January, 1997, LANWrights hired Mary Burmeister as a full time administrator and Jill of all trades. She's since proved herself an able writer and editor, and has contributed to numerous books, articles, training materials, and appendices. In June, 1997, we added Bill Brogden, PhD (Chemical Oceanography) to our crew as a full-time programmer and writer (he's already contributed to eight Java-related books), in addition to his service as a Systems Operator on the JAVAUSER forum on CompuServe. In May, 1999, LANWrights hired Chelsea Valentine as a full-time employee. She managed our Web site, handled our online training for Austin Community College, and contributed to numerous HTML- and XML-related books during her tenure. Chelsea left LANWrights to attend graduate school in October, 2001.
From 1997 to 1999, LANWrights helped launch two major series of books: The MCSE Exam Cram series, and a related series of Exam Prep study guides on similar topics, both for the Coriolis Group (some of these titles also appear under the Course Technology imprint, retitled as A Guide to Networking Essentials, for example). LANWrights has also delivered Windows NT-related training at a number of conferences, most notably NetWorld + Interop and The Internet Security Conference (TISC). Also, LANWrights not only helped Austin Community College define a "Certified WebMaster" curriculum and certificate program, but we also developed four of the nine required core courses for that curriculum—for both classroom and online delivery. Finally, LANWrights now offers a development toolkit that allows organizations to repurpose training materials for Web delivery, with associated testing and feedback mechanisms, and to deliver interactive tests or surveys online.
In January, 2000, LANWrights was acquired by a privately-held company named LeapIt.com (now called iLearning, Inc.) to develop Web- and certification-related content.
In April, 2000, Kim Lindros joined LANWrights as a full-time employee. She worked with us for over a year as a part-time consultant, providing editing, document design, and layout services. Kim brings her ten-plus years of industry and editing experience to her job as a project manager/editor. She's been involved in over 30 books, including the Exam Cram Certification Success title, iLearning's Certification Essentials, and numerous Course Technology books.
In early 2002, LANWrights took on the enormous task of writing, editing, and doing production on five books for Gateway computers. Upon completion of these projects in mid 2002, LANWrights celebrated its accomplishments with some much needed vacation time for the employees.
As of October 2004, LanWrights parent company was bought over by Thomson NetG. If you require any of the training material resources mentioned and previously provided by the former LanWrights Company you should visit the Thomson NetG.com website,a leading WorldWide Company in Learning and Training Resources, at www.netg.com
In early 2007, Thomson NetG sold it's learning arm, NetG to Skillsoft.
The Lanw.com website is not owned or operated by Thomson NetG but is still providing many quality resources.
HOME | BOOKS | TRAINING | CERTIFICATION | JAVA SHOWCASE | About LanWrights | Overview
NOTICE:
You can signup for the new lanw forums, and begin contributing to our new look website during spring 2007.
Last edited 1st March 2007.