Day 1: The Art and Business of Technical Writing
Attended the first day of what came off, an amazing Bootcamp about technical writing and I'm sharing what I learned.
Hello everyone! Hope you're having a good day. So, Hashnode's Bootcamp about technical writing started and it being my first-ever Bootcamp by Hashnode, I decided to share what I learn in each session and I hope you learn something too!
What will be covered in this blog:
- Tips by the OG Quincy Larson
- Getting started with Technical Writing by Edidiong Asikpo
Let's start!
Tips by Quincy Larson
- If you've ever wondered that how would you write technical articles about something when you're just a beginner( just like I did ) then what Quincy said might really help you: Beginner's mindset is an asset
When you are learning something new, writing about it not only helps you learn the concepts better but it also might help a beginner like you understand the topic better because other articles might be too advanced for them!
If you're stuck with the question of what should I write or what do people want to know about then you can perform an advanced search on Google to look up topics from any site and about any keyword you want!
Another great way to grow is to write about any kind of problem you faced while learning something or building something cool. This not only puts things into perspective for you but also helps others avoid the same mistakes.
To increase the reach of your articles, one way is to use your social media platforms and share them there! Reach out to the people in the community and you'll realize the magic it does.
Title: To attract an audience using your title, try to be as simple and to-the-point as you can be rather than being clever. Also, the length of the article can be as long as it needs to be!
Onto the next part, where we put things into perspective using AirPods and VLC media player!
Getting started with Technical Writing by Didi
There was so much shared and discussed in this space that I'll have to keep it short here but you can watch the whole session later as a recording :)
Technical Writing consists of:
- Direction
- Instruction
- Explanation
If you want to be good at something, try teaching it to someone else and you'll already be better!
Skills you would need:
- Writing
- Audience Perception - have an idea of your audience for an article/ a series or your blog
- Technical Skills
- Research - google everything!
- A unique voice - to create a community of your own
How you can get started?
- Take a course on technical writing
- Read as much as you can
- Write
- Keep writing :)
Some other things to keep in mind:
- Make shorter paragraphs that cover one thing.
- Seek feedback from experts in that domain to help pick out any discrepancies.
- Stay consistent!
So, hope you learned a thing or two from this! Thank you to Sam Sycamore for being an amazing host, Edidiong Asikpo, and Quincy Larson for helping us learn in such an awesome way, can't wait for what's in store!
If you'd like to connect and have a chat, reach out to me here: Neha Badiani
See ya!