Yesterday I had the amazing pleasure of leading a workshop for women and non-binary folks in tech as part of Write/Speak/Code's Own Your Expertise event in Chicago. I was so nervous, but at the same time excited to help out fellow programmers by bringing my previous career expertise — writing — to bear in my new profession.
Basically, the idea of the OYE workshop was to pump each other up, believe in our own knowledge and the value of our thoughts to the broader tech community, and produce some kind of deliverable based on that knowledge. After a half-day of talks and brainstorming topics, participants could choose between a couple of different workshops in each area of writing, speaking, and coding.
My workshop was titled "Design Patters for Bloggers," which I was inspired to put together after having set out to watch all of Christopher Okhravi's videos on design patterns (I'm still not even halfway through them, but I highly recommend — super accessible and fun).
After expanding on each of four basic writing templates with the group, I challenged each participant to choose one of these design patterns (or make up their own, if they so chose) to apply to their topic. I had them start with an outline, a way of mapping the pieces of the design pattern to the various facets of the topic. Then we went around and gave feedback on those choices, and then there was about a half hour left for free writing.
I was so proud of each and every one of the folks who attended this workshop. I could tell that they were invested in making their ideas shine and bringing them to a larger audience. And by the end of the workshop, they all had a draft of a blog post ready to go! (Or revise, and then go, but I digress.)
What was equally powerful for me, though, was when I asked for their feedback at the end of the session. I asked them if these few, in my eyes, paltry examples of How People Write On The Internet were helpful to get their creative juices flowing.
The response was overwhelmingly positive. I honestly couldn't believe it! I expected them to be like "sure, this was fine," or something — I wasn't sure what I expected. But it really fed my soul to be able to own my expertise for the good of the tech community. 10/10 did not regret stretching myself to do this nerve-wracking thing; would do again.
P.S. Here are the design patterns I presented:
Informer
- Starts with a "lede" or main point
- Support/evidence/arguments (2-4)
- Provide counterpoints at end
- Not suspenseful, but straightforward
- Exe. What Library X is most useful for
Storyteller
- Has a beginning, middle, and end
- "First ... then ... next ... finally"
- It's a story though, not a tutorial!
- Exe. Your journey through a software upgrade
Iterator
- FANCY WORD FOR LISTICLE, Y’ALL.
- Start with a couple of sentences explaining the relationship / relevance
- Exe. Five things Framework X can learn from Framework Y
Explainer
- A broad-strokes how-to (or like a recipe!)
- Give code examples if applicable, but don’t get too granular/specific
- Exe. How you can use that fancy new feature in React for X purpose