Visit to WSO2

Technical writing

On the 12th  of September us, the 2nd year batch of software engineering degree program visited WSO2 company which is one of the leading software companies in Sri Lanka. It is kind of a dream  that most of the software engineers has to work in WSO2. It was a good experience to start our new semester.

At the entrance we were given a very nice note book and a pen. What I first notice at there was they were well prepared and has organized every thing before hand. We went there at 8.30 am because we wanted to give them a good impression on Software Engineering students in Kelaniya University as it was our first workshop at WSO2.

In the first session they gave us an introduction about what the technical writing is. It is kind of a very interesting job. Though it calls as technical writing, a technical writer has do writing only about 5% from their total job. All other things deal with requirement gathering, study about the product etc. There are lots of job positions associated with the technical writing.

 A user manual should be in a very simple manner with clear and correct language which should help the user to understand the product and product functionalities. To attract a customer it is really important to have a good user manual. A technical writer has to think in user perspective and compose the document. A technical writer should posses a good writing skills with clean and clear language and with the ability to quickly learn and deals with new technologies. It is really challenging thing to learn about new technologies, new products etc.

 We learnt about some grammar parts in English which we ignore most of the times. It is really important use the correct words at correct places. A single full stop can change a meaning of a sentence upside down.

Most of the times workshops get boring with the time. But the technical writing crew at WSO2 did some games associated with the workshop which everyone actively and happily participated. The winners were given very attractive gifts like t-shirts and chocolates. And also they provided us with refreshments.

This workshop showed me some new areas which I should improve in myself. It is okay, we can write in English, can deals with subject verb object. But it it hard to become a professional in writing. We have to read a lot. We have to write a lot. Blogging will help us to improve our language.

As under graduates it is essential to learn about the industry. By having workshops in companies, industry visits it makes us to adapt to the professional background. Those places were really clean and all the works were done on time. The WSO2 crew was really friendly which showed the ares that we need to improve to become a professional.