Writing has always been something I enjoyed doing. Mostly as a hobby, but also in the form of essays and articles here and there. The idea of sharing my thoughts through writing and possibly influencing others through my writing was all very interesting.
Getting into tech last year, one of the first things I did was research on the various tech tracks in order to choose the one I was interested in. Blockchain development immediately caught my interest but I was also naturally attracted to technical writing.
Not knowing where to begin, I tried my hands on writing a few articles on web3. But none of that made me a technical writer because I knew little to nothing about technical writing. Yet I knew I had to learn the art!
Imagine my excitement when on the 10th of May 2022, the She Code Africa (UNN Chapter) announced an upcoming bootcamp on the WhatsApp community. The bootcamp which was to run from May 16 till June 16, would feature a technical writing track. I was more than happy to get started already.
On May 17, I and 38 other amazing ladies began the bootcamp in the technical writing track and our mentor was none other than the amazing Cynthia Peter, who taught us the rudiments of technical writing. She provided a lot of resources too. Her article on A beginners' guide to get started with Technical Writing was indeed very helpful to us who were just getting started.
The four-week bootcamp was structured in a way that the first three days were used for an expository workshop. We had weekly tasks to write on and weekly call-in sessions to review the tasks from the previous week. It was indeed a project based bootcamp, which gave credence to the saying that "you learn to write by writing" (replace write with any verb and it is still valid).
The articles I wrote during the course of this bootcamp include:
- Week One: The Importance of Community in building a Tech Career Path
- Week Two: The Metaverse
- Week Three: Understanding Search Engine Optimization
- Week Four: My Technical Writing Journey
I have so much to be grateful for because of my participation in this bootcamp and I will highlight a few of them here:
- I finally created a blog on hashnode and started writing
- I met a lot of amazing ladies: my fellow bootcampers and mentors/leads
- I learned and am still learning the art of technical writing.
Because of this opportunity, I can officially refer to myself as a technical writer and I can finally add the title to my LinkedIn and Twitter profiles (yay!!!). I understand that it does not end here, in fact my journey has only just begun, but I remain committed to engage in continuous learning and to get better.
Truthfully, it was not an easy journey. I encountered a lot of challenges and I almost fell off at some point. Which is why I am incredibly proud of myself that I saw it to the end and I will receive a certificate too (super yay!!!).
I sincerely appreciate the She Code Africa (UNN Chapter) community, led by the ever supportive Cordelia Ukpai, for putting this bootcamp together; the technical writing lead, Chidimma Oduenyi, for being an empathic leader; our mentor, Cynthia Peter, for sharing her wealth of knowledge with us; and all the amazing ladies who I started this journey with. It has been a good ride with every single one of you and I look forward to what the future holds for us.