What did I learn at Hashnode Bootcamp?
What You Need to Know About Hashnode Bootcamp: The Most Valuable Lessons I Learned
Introduction
Hi everyone, I am Shreya, a self-taught developer. While I graduated in Biology, I came across coding and building cool websites while I enrolled myself in a diploma course offered by NIELIT, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India. So, I decided to pivot my career and got into learning web development and documenting it by writing blogs. I came across this tweet in the last days of April about a 3-day virtual boot camp and registered without thinking twice!
Hashnode Bootcamp 2023: 1st day
I got my laptop and logged in sharp at 7:30, Dani Passos, the host of the event, welcomed us and also introduced us to cool features of Hashnode AI which blew me away. Later, the first speaker Ankur Tyagi began his talk and enlightened us.
"The Importance of Writing as a Developer " Ankur Tyagi
Ankur has a decade of experience, he started his career at Accenture and then started writing. Also, he started out as a Java developer and now is one of the finest JavaScript developers. He answered my query which was also the most-voted question in the session.
His advice 📝
Write when the motivation strikes you. Just write your thoughts whenever it comes and then later edit them and publish.
As a developer, it is more important to communicate your thought process while writing down your blog.
Create your own style of writing but also read others' work to get inspired.
Write what your audience likes. Have some good headings and subheadings for grabbing the attention of the audience.
Use social media to your advantage and stay updated with the latest trends to get ideas.
Don't pressurize yourself to write a blog post. Write and share whatever you are learning on a monthly or weekly basis.
"Leveraging Technical Writing to Land Opportunities and Boost Your Developer Career " Swapna Kumar Panda
He started his talk by explaining the importance of documenting in general, and how it is important for us to avoid the same mistakes and also increase productivity and creativity. It also helps future generations to understand the research and development process behind creating a full-fledged application or product.
His advice📝
Write about topics that you are learning or already know.
Include appropriate code snippets and live demo embeds.
Always summarize your article to get a brief understanding of what is discussed.
Encouraged learning in public
Build a personal brand and establish yourself as an expert in their field.
Blogging also helps in critical thinking and develops problem-solving skills essential for the industry.
Hashnode Boot camp:2nd day
"Leveraging Social Media for Monetization " Nader Dabit
Nader introduced himself and how he started in coding 2013 and now works at Aave/Lens as the director of Developer relations. This session was mainly focused on "personal branding".
His advice 📝
Specialization is way more important and showing it in your profiles is beneficial.
Set up your social profile and say it in your bio.
Do a photoshoot for a more professional profile, it will definitely attract way more clients.
Create backlinks to your profile and social media profiles.
"Building Your Personal Brand on Social Media" Ákos Kőműves
Ákos listed out some key points to building social media profile which include:
Simple tools.
Simple to build.
No competition.
No rules.
His advice📝
Don't forget the person in your brand.
Decide the most important socials for you.
Don't care for copycats and gurus. Be authentic and ignore them.
Make use of analytics tools such as Typefully to help you schedule tweets and to track the impressions on your tweets.
Take complex topics and learn and build in public, your consistency will deliver.
Hashnode BootCamp: 3rd day
"Freelance Writing Opportunities for Developers" James Q Quick
This session was all QnA as James answered my query very well and in detail
His advice📝
We should always be learning, building, and sharing in public it will definitely pay off. The best way to learn is to teach, so as you are learning, you become the most relevant person to explain that concept.
Quantity has a quality of its own so initially write down a lot of content.
Make sure to engage in communities by showing up and interacting with like-minded folks on Twitter, discord, or any other platform of your choice.
Cross-post the blogs into multiple platforms to have more visibility.
Note down all your ideas in one place. I generally use Notion it has fantastic AI features to help you out, and it also improves content creation capabilities.
He also suggested- videotapit.com which will take a video and write a blog post for it, later we can rephrase and give it our personal touch.
Conclusion
Thanks to Hashnode for organizing this wonderful boot camp and giving us this opportunity to learn. A huge shoutout to Dani Passos for being a wonderful host, she was so kind throughout the event. Also, I am very grateful to all the speakers who gave us their valuable time to enlighten us and shared a lot of tips and tricks to enrich our journey.