Background

Yay, I got in for the Outreachy internship program!

I would like to share a little bit about my background before I discuss my Outreachy experience so far.

Early in the year, I transitioned into the technology industry as a web developer and technical writer. Before delving into web development and technical writing, I worked as a lawyer and property manager.

My core values are curiosity, community, and competence. I refer to these values as my "three Cs," and they are in no particular order. Yes, I know that you wonder what the rationale behind these values might be.

First, having a curious mind has many benefits. In the course of my new career as a web developer and technical writer, I have seen how much one can achieve by being curious. The truth is that the quality of the knowledge one can get by being curious is so undermined.

Now about my second "C," community. My belief in belonging to a community stems from the fact that I have seen how easy it is to speed up one's growth just by being an active member of a functioning community. Being part of a community can help with acquiring valuable skills. These skills will be useful at every stage of one’s career. Among these skills are collaboration, mentoring, organization, and networking. Also, I know that being part of a community can help you find the right mentorship that will aid you in landing your first job.

Working within a team requires my final "C," competency. Your team needs to know that you are who you say you are. Hence, one must show that they have the skills required to complete their tasks without constant monitoring.

Outreachy: The project so far

Getting an internship opportunity eleven months after transitioning is an incredible accomplishment for me. With the Outreachy internship, I have my first paid opportunity in my new field. This means a lot if you come from a country like Nigeria, where there are very few opportunities at the beginning of your career.

In my first article on Outreachy, I described what the program is all about and how I got started. I also wrote about the motivation behind my project choice: Improve the user guide documentation for Wagtail.

As part of its commitment to the smooth completion of the project, Wagtail has enlisted the help of experts. They are Coen van der Kamp from Four Digits, Storm Heg, Stephanie Brown, Jonny Peacock, and Thibaud Colas from Torchbox.

We used the first week of the internship to set up goals and schedule weekly meetings and stand-ups.

This week I completed five tasks, and they are as follows:

• Learned how to use Vale, a prose linting tool. This will help in ensuring consistency in the style and grammar of the Wagtail user guide project.

• Got introduced to the subjects, user research, interviews, surveys, and screening by Jonny Peacock.

• Researched the different writing style guides that I can adopt to complete the project.

• Wrote an internal report about my research on writing style guides. The report shows the top two style guides and which should be the final choice for the Wagtail user guide documentation.

• Prepared a draft of the likely questions to ask during the user research interview.

Final note

The first week of my internship has shown me that I will need to do a lot of research and learn new skills to complete my tasks.

I’m looking forward to completing the user research so that the project can move on to the next stage, which is to propose a content outline. I also look forward to writing a report on the current state of the user guide documentation.

Overall, I had a great first week and remain motivated. I'm hoping to keep the momentum going throughout the internship.