Let’s Discuss Technical Writing — Event Recap
It was a great time sitting with Joel and Olamide and learning about technical writing.
Want to watch the video instead? Watch the video here.
Ingressive for Good, Unilag Circle hosted a virtual event on technical writing with two guest speakers. The event was held on Saturday, January 22, 2022 beginning at 12-noon prompt. The MC — Foluso Ayodele — started by welcoming all attendees. He then gave some introduction about the community and introduced the guest speakers.
Meet The Moderator: Foluso Ayodele is a Computer Engineering student at the University of Lagos and a Product Manager. Foluso is also the co-lead ambassador for the community, He has interests in building products, nocode tools, and communities.
Meet the Speakers
Joel ‘Wolz-codelife’ Adewole — Software Developer at Tunga & Technical Writer at LogRocket. Joel is a software developer, with a knack for writing. Joel also writes guest articles for companies.
Joel took us through understanding the little details of technical writing, why we engage in it, overcoming the difficulties, and starting one’s path in technical writing.
He defined technical writing as a process of creating and managing written content about a particular subject that requires a guide, instructions, explanation, or analysis for readers to relate or interact well with the subject.
He highlighted the various types of technical articles we could engage in, some of them are; Software/ end-user documentation, QA Solutions, How-to guides and tutorials, Business proposals, Project requirement documents, Research papers and reports, White papers, Product recall, and Résumés.
He went ahead to state the benefits of technical writers, for writers and the general audience.
When Joel spoke about the difficulties, he used this funny slide we could relate to.
He listed some of the challenges in writing and how we could beat them. Some are grammar — by making use of grammar tools, plagiarism — by making use of plagiarism checkers, audience boredom — by writing creative and engaging content, etc.
On starting one’s path towards being a master at technical writing, Joel noted to read, write, take feedback, rinse and repeat.
He also listed some professional writing tools at the end of the session.
You can get Joel’s slide here.
After Joel’s session, we dived into QnA with Olamide.
Olamide ‘Pearl’ Makinde — Technical Writer and Editor. She currently works as a Content Editor and Quality Assurance Tester. She is also the lead for SheCodeAfrica, Unilag Chapter.
- How did you get started as a technical writer? — Before getting into technical writing, Olamide had been writing. She was working as a QA tester and then moved into content writing at a firm she worked at. After working on a website, the team needed to write a guide on the website and someone suggested she could do it, and she did it. That was like the start for her. And due to her former experiences, she didn’t take any courses whatsoever.
- Challenges you’ve faced and how you’ve beat it — First, she was scared of writing rubbish. She didn’t want to write something that wasn’t very correct and have people point it out on social media. She beat this challenge by learning to take feedback. Another challenge she faced, was not knowing what to write, and she beat it by taking surveys from communities on what people wanted to read and she wrote on it. Sometimes she felt like a scam because technical writing wasn’t lauded like other tech roles, but she has learned to place value on herself. Another challenge is making money from it, it was a major fear for her. Sometimes even though she wasn’t in the right field seeing how much counterparts in software development and design were earning.
- How can technical writers be consistent with writing — Olamide says “Just write”. There are different reasons people could be inconsistent. Olamide advised that we get accountability partners, have a content calendar, and join challenges.
- How does one get paid technical writing opportunities — You need to prove that you’re worth investing in. You need to show growth and consistency. And when pitching, one has to be concise. The why for the article, the article’s target audience, and why they need it. Recruiters don’t need long articles, but very concise.
- How can a technical writer get visibility — Start by having a blog. When you write, carry it on your head. And post all around social media. And the more quality stuff that one posts, the more people lookout. And after writing, engage your audience.