My Technical Writing Journey
Hello, welcome to my blog.
This article would be slightly different from the others, it is more of a story.
A little back story...
Before I became the tech enthusiast I am today, I had my sights set on medical school. Everything was planned out: I would stay in a medical facility to watch and partake in proceedings, and then apply to university for the course I wanted.
I did this for three years, earning money on the side and garnering experience-lots of it-only to realize it was not what I wanted to work on as a potential career. I got admitted to study another course though; plant science and biotechnology at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Fancy name, fancy title, but my family didn’t quite get the gist of it, and I was confused too.
I still am, although I understand what it means to be a biotechnologist better now.
My Tech Journey...
I played around with the idea of building a dual career path, and settled for software engineering, after weighing a lot of pros and cons.
Uncountable Google searches and aimless Twitter scrolling helped me find three tech communities that held me down and taught me all I know to this day.
DevCareer
AltSchool Africa
She Code Africa
The first ushered me into a world of developers; newbies like me that thought java and JavaScript were the same (I am well aware they differ now, I assure you), to the big boys who had every conceivable project in their GitHub repositories.
The second offers alternate university teachings, all of which hold online, and has two sections; school of product and a school of software engineering. I am enrolled in the latter, to specialize in cloud engineering.
The third holds a special place in my heart, firstly because it is a community of driven women in tech, and more importantly because there are campus chapters that ease communication amongst members.
How it began...
Due to the indefinite strike announced by ASUU, the governing body of universities in Nigeria, I went back home. My campus chapter then introduced a one-month Bootcamp-the first ever!- to help us acquire soft skills while waiting out the strike. Three tracks were introduced;
*Front-end development,
*UI/UX design and
*Technical writing.
I enrolled and chose technical writing because I had experience with writing before, and I wanted to be able to document my progress from AltSchool Africa in a proper way to benefit others.
The Bootcamp...
Our first meeting was held on May 17th, a few weeks after the announcement of the Bootcamp, moderated by Chidinma Oduenyi, our track lead. Our classes were held virtually on Google Meet every Tuesday, after which we were given tasks- technical writing pieces, to work on.
The weekly tasks were uploaded every week by each participant to their respective Hashnode accounts, then a Google Docs sheet and reviewed in a class by Cynthia Peter, a technical writer who writes flutter as well. She taught, coaxed us out of our shells, and corrected our mistakes.
At this point, you might think, “it's no big deal, is it not writing?”
It is a big deal, a very BIG deal.
Here’s what I learned...
1.
You cannot just publish technical articles anywhere. Some websites are equipped with the software to aid the articles to reach your target audience. Examples include Hashnode, dev.to, and Medium.
2.
It is important to give credit to websites that pictures are taken from. Better still, Canva could be utilized in designing minimalistic yet intriguing blog covers and other visual effects if the afore mentioned proves to be a hassle.
3.
To maintain and increase reader time retention, chunky paragraphs needed to be broken down. That way the article would be easier to read and comprehend.
4.
Plagiarism is a big no.
5.
There are writing style guides to follow when writing for a particular company or organization.
6.
There is no need to accumulate a ton of articles before applying for jobs as a technical writer.
I cannot possibly tell everything I learned within the past weeks but it's evident that it has changed my perspective on technical documentation. I can never look at a technical article the same way again.
Now...
This article is the last I'll write as a participant in the Bootcamp and I'm grateful for this wonderful opportunity. I will make sure to utilize everything I learned properly.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Just kidding.
Below are links to the articles I wrote as a participant in the Bootcamp.
The Importance of Community in Building a Tech Career Path
How to top Google search results
Kindly leave a comment, question, or compliment. Look out for my next post!