Do you need tech writing experience? Write for one of these open-source projects
Recently, I met an Uber driver with a degree in English and experience as a professional writer in Los Angeles who wants to transition into technical writing. She has the skills and smarts to do it, but needs several things to get hired:
- Experience working with software development teams
- Knowledge of particular platforms and technologies
- Doc tools experience
- A portfolio of tech writing samples
I recommended she start by contributing to open source projects; copyediting at first and creating content later. Most open-source projects welcome newcomers with the skills to improve existing content and document new capabilities.
Denis Arh, a contributor on the Corteza project, says “…this work is rarely paid but all contributions and contributors are public. And this makes it a very valuable CV/LinkedIn/Portfolio material.”
Below, I’ve listed a handful of writer-friendly open-source projects. Reader, if you have any project recommendations, please comment and I’ll add them to the following list. If you know a project team is looking for writers, tell me, and I’ll highlight it in bold italics.
If the thought of just showing up and making commits to a repo triggers imaginary scenarios where you’re being shunned for reason x, y, or z, keep in mind that many open-source projects have inclusive codes of conduct and intentionally walk their talk in a variety of ways.
Mia Arh, VP of Services at Crust Technology and Director at Corteza Project says “I’m thrilled the Corteza project is making a step towards fixing a problem of diversity in IT with a majority women in the board of directors and I’m excited to be part of the organization that truly breathes and lives its values.”
Contribute to these open source projects
- Angular (docs repo) — build js apps for any deployment target
- Apache Mesos (docs repo) — a distributed systems kernel
- Corteza (docs repo) — an open-source alternative to Salesforce
- Docker (docs_repo) — a way to run applications securely isolated in a container, packaged with all its dependencies and libraries.
- Fluentd(docs repo#1 docs repo#2) — a fast and lightweight log processor and forwarder
- Kubernetes (contribute, docs repo) — automated container deployment, scaling, and management
