Resources to Get Practice in Technical Writing
To break into technical writing, you need to create a portfolio with samples of your best work. But how can you gather samples if you are a novice in technical writing? Well, there are many free resources where you can practice — check them out below.
GitHub is the developer company. They make it easier for developers to be developers: to work together, to solve challenging problems, to create the world’s most important technologies. They nurture a collaborative community that can come together — as individuals and in teams — to create the future of software and make a difference in the world.
So, how to help people with their documentation? Open popular repositories, choose one and just start working. But before contributing, read this guide.
Link Silicon Valley (LinkSV), is the place where you can easily find and connect to the people, companies and capital that make up Silicon Valley. Their curated database has more than 12,000 companies, including public companies, startups, acquired or liquidated companies, and VC firms. It covers companies involved in biotechnology, communications, computers, environmental, internet, medical, outsourcing, peripherals, semiconductors, semiconductor equipment, software, storage sector and more.
Their database is updated daily and includes company descriptions, key management, outside board members, customers, strategic partners, VCs, angels, overall funding, and other information that can help to “connect all the dots.”
So, you can find a startup and help people with their documentation.
There are different documentation teams operating somewhat independently on PHP.net subprojects. Only a few people are involved in more than one documentation project currently, and that limits the know-how sharing, which would otherwise be possible and desirable. All of the documentation teams use an early fork of the original PHP manual build system. These systems evolves independently, and takes over some improvements from the others on an occasional basis (the PEAR documentation team uses a variant of the revcheck developed for phpdoc, for example).
This site is aimed at getting documentation efforts closer, and provides more tools and information for manual authors and translators. The developers of PHP extensions all have access to the PHP documentation modules, although the different projects have different policies of accepting contributions. Here is PHP Manual Contribution Guide to start right now.
Docker is the leader in the containerization market, combining an enterprise-grade container platform with world-class services to give developers and IT alike the freedom to build, manage and secure applications without the fear of technology or infrastructure lock-in. Today’s organizations are under pressure to digitally transform their business but are constrained by a diverse portfolio of applications, clouds and premises-based infrastructures.
Contributing to the Docker documentation can be a rewarding experience. When you offer feedback, questions, edits, or new content, you help people, the projects you work on, and the larger Docker community. How to contribute to the docs? Have a look!
Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. Built by experienced developers, it takes care of much of the hassle of Web development, so you can focus on writing your app without needing to reinvent the wheel. It’s free and open source.
Django is a community that lives on its volunteers. As it keeps growing, they always need more people to help others. As soon as you learn Django, you can contribute in many ways that you can find here.
iFixit is the service for students where you can write documentation for devices and help people to repair them by themselves. I’ve already described this resource here.
Coursera is a service that provides people with different courses but you can also practice there in technical translation. You can create the account on Coursera and help Coursera Global Translator Community to translate some courses and create subtitles. Here are more details.
Some other articles of mine that you may find useful:
What helped you create your portfolio? Please, share your experience in the comments below.