Resources: How to teach technical skills

I’ve spent 12 years teaching technical practitioners (subject matter experts), like developers and engineers, how to teach technical skills. We do this through writing, mainly, but there are many ways to share.

Regardless of the method, one thing that often comes up is a little fear.

Sometimes the person isn’t a confident writer or a native-English speaker. Sometimes they doubt what they have to offer. Sometimes they doubt why they’re even doing this at all.

Part of my job is to know this upfront and work with it.

It’s all completely understandable and makes for great questions and conversation during the brainstorming phase of the process as we’re figuring out the best way to how to teach technical skills to their particular audience. This is where all the fun is if you ask me!

So, I’m compiling an ongoing list of resources for technical practitioners who are seeking to share or already regularly share their knowledge, understanding, and skills with an audience.

Whether it’s day 0, day 1, or day 1825, these resources will help you think differently about the sport of technical content creation and hopefully take some of the guesswork out of how to teach technical skills.

During my 10 years as an editorial manager (slash community manager) for Opensource.com (Red Hat), I wrote a few posts on how to get started writing, as did some of my colleagues. 

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In my last post on the topic before I left Red Hat, I touch on getting over mental hurdles, finding your story, and how to get started writing. Would you rather watch a video of me talking about it?

My colleague at the time, Dawn Parzych, wrote a fantastic article for getting started writing about open source software, but these tips are applicable across genres.  

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GitHub gathered a panel of experts to answer questions about different approaches to sharing knowledge, “whether that’s by livestreaming on Twitch, writing blog posts, teaching a class, or something else entirely.”

This Q&A helps make the case for why YOU? Basically, if you know even a smidge more than the audience, you can teach them something. You don’t need to be or feel like an expert. They also share strategies for dealing with questions from the audience (if public speaking, but could also help respond to comments on blog posts).

At the heart of what I take into every meeting with technical practitioners (or subject matter experts) is: “YOU are awesome, you have a lot to give. Just get started.”

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Aaron Francis makes the point that many technical practitioners have “forgotten just how much they know” and “think that they’re not doing anything interesting because they assume that everyone knows as much as they do.” In this article, dude shares tips for how to figure out what to teach and share with others including my favorite: “Projects at work can be a good place to dive into your expertise.”

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Mahmoud Hashemi (Stripe) wrote an article about turning potential into productivity with a focus on how to up-level your consuming habits into a practice that helps you eventually create something yourself.

I love this because, well, here you are reading this. Consuming it.

We all do this daily, and it’s important that we not only take huge and frequent breaks from it but that when we are doing it, we’re doing it in research and critique mode. For me and my clients, this means teaching the technical practitioner or subject matter expert in the company how to share their skills and knowledge. It’s an act of creation. And of art. …more to come.