There are many people in Sri Lanka who are passionate about technical writing, and who are very keen on keeping abreast of the latest trends and technologies in technical writing. Unfortunately, technical writing is a solo journey for many, because many organizations generally only have a single technical writer to handle the documentation for multiple products. The Vice President of Technical Content and Certification at WSO2 - Jackie Wheeler together with her team, which includes myself, laid the foundation to build a community for the technical writers and people who are interested in technical writing as a profession in Sri Lanka, and we now have a group on Facebook and Linkedin that allows us to engage with each other virtually in order to share experiences, challenges, tips, and even to ask questions on technical writing. We have taken the liberty to brand our newly built community as “Technical Writers Sri Lanka” (TWSL).
TWSL Meetup
I together with my colleagues at WSO2 had the pleasure of organizing TWSL’s very first meetup, which was hosted by WSO2 at their Palm Grove, Colombo 3 office in Sri Lanka, on the 26th April 2018. The meetup started off with Jackie Wheeler’s welcome speech where she touched upon her initial experiences as a technical writer and how it has evolved over the past 27 years during her career in technical writing.
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| Welcome speech by Jackie Wheeler |
Talk #1 - Importance of Content and Quality in Technical Writing
Shavindri Dissanayake, who is a Senior Technical Writer at WSO2, took over the stage at the meetup thereafter and delivered a speech on the importance of content and quality in technical writing. During her speech she highlighted the importance of content, the history behind technical writing, why quality matters in technical writing, and how technical writing has evolved over the years in Sri Lanka. She also explained how technical writing goes beyond the old framework of simply drafting, reviewing, publishing, and updating content. She went on to emphasize as to how technical content and training is interconnected, and how training is the missing piece in the puzzle that helps end-users learn more about our products. Overall, her speech was very informative and helped us understand that we as technical writers play a vital role in the whole software development ecosystem. She finally drove her point home by leaving us with a profound quote - “Successful technical writing helps the reader understand the content, not present challenges to understand it.”
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| Talk #1 by Shavindri Dissanayake |
Talk #2 - GDPR
The next speaker at the meetup was Sherene Mahanama, who is a Technical Writer at WSO2. During her speech she explained to us as to what Personally Identifiable Information (PII) meant, and how our personal information can be stored, shared with third-party applications, analyzed, and used in various ways. She further went on to make her point clearer by giving us real life examples on how Target and Facebook together with Cambridge Analytica (Facebook - Cambridge Analytica scandal) had abused personal data. Thereafter, she explained some key concepts behind the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that are important when handing the documentation impact, and also as to how we as technical writers can keep an eye out for GDPR violations. Overall, GDPR was quite a hazy topic to the audience at the beginning, but Sherene managed to turn tables and enlighten everyone on this topic once she was done with her speech.
Read Sherene Mahanama’s blog post for more information on GDPR.
Read Sherene Mahanama’s blog post for more information on GDPR.
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| Talk #2 by Sherene Mahanama |
When Sherene opened the floor for questions, Nirdesha Munasinghe, who is the Director of Technical Content and Certification at WSO2, asked her a very useful question - How is GDPR applicable in Sri Lanka?
After the presentations that were lined up for the evening had finished, Nirdesha invited everyone to grab some refreshments and join the breakout sessions based on their areas of interest, which I together with my colleagues at WSO2 were steering. We had three separate breakout sessions that focused on careers, technology, and training. These breakout sessions gave everyone a chance to actively participate in them by asking questions and voicing their opinions and ideas.
After the presentations that were lined up for the evening had finished, Nirdesha invited everyone to grab some refreshments and join the breakout sessions based on their areas of interest, which I together with my colleagues at WSO2 were steering. We had three separate breakout sessions that focused on careers, technology, and training. These breakout sessions gave everyone a chance to actively participate in them by asking questions and voicing their opinions and ideas.
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| Breakout Sessions at the Meetup |
We had a fantastic turnout at the meetup that comprised of people from twenty different organizations and two universities. The meetup included people who were currently in the technical writing profession, undergraduates who were interested in looking at venturing into technical writing as a profession, and even student counsellors who planned on promoting technical writing as a profession. Overall, it was simply awesome to meet and engage with people from various different backgrounds who all had one interest in common, which was technical writing.
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| TWSL Meetup |
Future
Our team of technical writers at WSO2 hope to actively nurture the TWSL community further and have regular meetups - once every quarter. Don’t forget that this is a community effort, so please do engage in the TWSL community through our social channels - Facebook and LinkedIn, and let us know whether you would like to present a talk at the next meetup or whether you would like to host the next TWSL meetup in our organization. In addition, let us know the topics that you would like to hear at the next meetup.
Let’s all work towards building the TWSL community further, by inviting new members who are interested in technical writing to the TWSL community, so that we all can use the TWSL social channels to share experiences, challenges, tips, and to ask questions on technical writing.
Related Links
- Read Shavindri Dissanayake’s blog post to see what she has to say about Technical Writers in Sri Lanka and their community.
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