“In order to gain more experience and contribute as a technical writer, I needed an open-source project that I can be a part of”, says the Nigerian-based developer about her start as a Mautic contributor. Favour’s previous contributions and engagement with the Mautic community were a decisive factor in the selection process of GSoD. “My experience as a member of the community has been amazing as I’ve learned a lot from the team”, she rejoices.

Community and open-source

Community has always been Favour’s focus: she defines herself as “specializing in building and creating accessible user experiences”. It is no wonder she joined communities in which those goals were also at the center of attention.

At Devcareer, a non-profit organization that supports African people getting a kickstart with their tech careers, Favour contributes as community manager. “I coordinate and engage over 13,000 tech enthusiasts across Africa in the community. I organize various community events, webinars, programs, and initiatives to engage community members.”

The open-source world followed closely behind, with the technical writer joining Hacktoberfest last year. Enter Mautic. Favour’s first contributions were related to moving the end-user documentation into the new platform.

Mautic, awareness and learning

To the Nigerian technical writer, “not enough people are aware of Mautic as an open-source marketing automation solution”. And she believes that creating awareness should go hand-in-hand with end-user documentation. “It is crucial that we raise awareness of the product and give adequate documentation to those using it for the first time”, Favour sums up.

And indeed, she lives by her words, as she understands documentation as part of the user experience. “Good end-user documentation implies that you care about your users and are taking steps to make things easier for them”, wrote the software developer in her application for GSoD.

Before GSod, Favour was already working with the Education team in moving the end-user documentation into the new platform. “My favorite part about joining this community is that everyone is willing to help you solve a problem when you run into any roadblock. It has been a pleasure to work with the team these past few months”, she recalls.

Contributing, building and rejoicing

Working with amazing people is not the only benefit that Favour and other contributors get from being a part of the community. “You also get immediate feedback on your development and programming/technical writing skills which will help in your career along the way”. For her, this goes beyond an individual perk, as it advanced the industry in general.

Personally, Favour’s goal in life is “to lead a team of creative developers while working together to build an amazing product”. She also dreams of “creating more opportunities for folks to get started in tech and contribute to open source while bridging the gap for women in tech”.

“People should consider contributing to open-source because it is a great way to build your network. You get to join a welcoming community of open-source contributors like Mautic, interact with them in the open-source space, and build relationships along the way”, enumerates the Nigerian technical writer.

If you share Favour Chibueze’s dream and want to know more about the topics she’s working on, you can follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Want to join the Mautic community? Check out our Community and Get Involved sections.

In this article, Favour explains how she became part of the Mautic community, what she has been contributing with and where she sees the project going in the future.

Why Mautic?

​​Favour has always been involved in the open source community, having participated in Google Summer of Code 2019 and 2020 as both a student and mentor respectively. She was also selected to begin working with Mautic through Google Season of Docs 2020.  Favour started her path as a developer, and was transitioning to a technical writer career when she participated in the program.

Her new career was one of the factors that led her to choose Mautic during Google’s program, as she was able to choose to work not with development, but with documentation. In looking for an interesting project, Favour read up on Mautic. “I felt like I resonated more with this community, that here I could make more impact”, she recalls.

Once she started contributing, she met people that were both organised and accommodating. After the program’s three-month period, she decided to stay on, which she credits in part to Mautic “such a nice and impactful community”.

Why documentation?

“A technical writer is part of every project, and I really love writing”, Favour sums up. She remembers feeling anxious at the beginning of her new career, but that changed once she understood better how the daily activities work. “It is just explaining in the simplest way the process of doing something ”, she details.

Favour’s decision to change careers was also motivated by how much she likes to make an impact on the community. She exults how great it feels to be helping people in understanding and making use of tools and resources. In addition to documentation, she highlights that her day to day job includes writing articles, newsletters and other resources that connect users to the program they are working with.

At Mautic, the Nigerian technical writer has been instrumental in documenting new releases and features, as well as in growing Mautic’s Knowledge Base with more step-by-step guides, assets and other high-value contents. Answering users’ questions is also a big part of what she and her peers are contributing with.

What is going on now?

Favour has been working on standardising some of the documentation, as well as keeping it up-to-date and useful. “People use Mautic in different countries, and we have new releases every quarter. It is essential that these users can get the information that they need”, she mentions.

The fact that Mautic is a free tool is also, in Favour’s view, an important aspect that may draw people to this resource. “Documentation helps users to really get how a program works and how to use it”, she details. The technical writer argues that having up-to-date, easy-to-understand information readily available is also part of what makes Mautic accessible.

What does the future hold?

To Favour, great documentation is a very valuable resource to users. Along with spreading the word about Mautic, upgrading those assets and the Knowledge base is her way of helping with Mautic’s growth, as well as contributing to the marketing field altogether.

“It is not just comercial business that can benefit from using Mautic, but many people don’t use marketing automation tools because they don’t really know how. So we are working to bridge that gap, to raise awareness as to what Mautic can do and how people may benefit from it.”

Favour and her team (Leon-Elias Oltmanns, Favour Chibueze, Pragati, Destiny, Robin M) are also working on a new website, which should be released in 2022. This involves migrating both the documentation and the Knowledge base into platforms that will make it easier for Mautic users to get all the information that they need at ease.

“I’m really happy for everyone’s contributions and effort towards this goal. We want Mautic to be on top, to let people know about this open source tool for marketing automation.” 

What about the Mautic community?

To Favour, the best part about the Mautic community is that people can fully be themselves and can contribute in whatever capacity they feel comfortable with. “Everybody has day jobs, they are busy, and everyone in the community appreciates whatever time people can take to do one or two things”, she compliments.

She, for one, rejoices in every little contribution, which she credits to the hard work of each and every member. In her professional life, Favour’s goal is to work as a project manager, with creative teams. “I want to be in a team that works together towards a goal, a team that grows together”, she explains.

Favour is also a co-organizer of the Mautic Meetup Lagos. The Mautic Meetup Lagos takes place once a month, and has different speakers who lecture participants on various Mautic-related topics – as well as any other topics in the open source ecosystem.

Why contribute?

“If you love challenges, you gotta be out there”, Favour sums up. In her opinion, contributing to an open source project such as Mautic is a way of “touching the lives of people and of organisations”. She also points out that the experience in itself is a great benefit, and one that can figure on contributors’ resumes as well.

For those who like to write, having the basic skill is enough to get started, Favour incentivises: “if you can explain something, you can write about it”. She also highlights that contributing to an open source project can kick start people’s careers and land them jobs, as they will be in contact with a great team, full of experienced professionals. “There’s plenty of opportunities, and any contribution you can make will be very valuable”, she pleads.

If you want to know more about technical writing and Favour Kelvin, you can read her blog at Medium or check out her GitHub repo, @fakela.

Want to join the Mautic community? Check out our Community and Get Involved sections.
 

You may have heard of the Google Summer of Code before – this is a similar program but applies specifically to documentation.  The goal of the Google Season of Docs is

To provide a framework for technical writers and Open Source projects to work together towards the common goal of improving an Open Source project’s documentation.

For technical writers who are new to Open Source, this presents an opportunity to make your first contributions and get started with supporting an Open Source project. For technical writers who might already be contributing in Open Source, the program could be a new way of working together, or an opportunity to explore new projects. 

The program brings together technical writers with an Open Source community for a period of a few months, bringing their writing expertise to the project’s documentation while learning about the project, community and technology behind it.

Together, we raise public awareness of Open Source documentation, of technical writing, and of how we can work together to the benefit of the global Open Source community.

The Education Team are excited to be proposing three projects for consideration by the Google Season of Docs team.  All three projects are key to helping our users – whether developers, end-users or marketers – better understand how to work with Mautic.  Read more about the project proposals below, and if you’re interested in learning more do join the Education Team channel on Slack!

Project proposals

Developer documentation

Project name

Create a Developers Portal for the Mautic Community

Project description

Refactor the existing Developer Documentation at https://developer.mautic.org to provide an improved user experience and create a more user-friendly portal for developers.

Background

Mautic is the world’s first Open Source Marketing Automation platform. Launched in 2014, it has grown from strength to strength and has a thriving community of contributors from around the world.  Learn more about Mautic and Marketing Automation. Spin up a sandbox or check out the Github repo.

The Mautic Community Developer Documentation has typically existed in isolation from the end-user documentation and has focused largely on the REST API.  It is currently using Slate and can be found on Github.  

The Product Team would like to implement a more user-friendly approach by creating a developers portal which will signpost people to the relevant resources, whether they need help creating a theme, using the API, or writing their first plugin.

This project will refactor the Developer Documentation to implement these ideas in collaboration with the project mentor and wider Product Team. 

Depending on available skills and time, the project could also involve refactoring the API to facilitate OpenAPI/Swagger based documentation and deploying a new platform for the API documentation.

You can read more about the proposal on the Trello card here.

Related material

• Background on Mautic: https://www.mautic.org 
• Mautic on Github: https://github.com/mautic/mautic
• Developer Documentation: https://developer.mautic.org
• Developer Documentation on Github: https://github.com/mautic/developer-documentation 
• Project proposal on Product Team’s Trello board: https://trello.com/c/1EjNIhBn/27-write-concept-for-developer-docs-revamp 
• OpenAPI Initiative: https://www.openapis.org/
• Swagger: https://swagger.io/  
• Technical writing styleguide: https://contribute.mautic.org/education-team/technical-writing-styleguide

Project Mentors:

Dennis Ameling – Email Slack Forums Github
Norman Pracht – Email Slack Forums Github

End-user documentation

Project name

Review and update the End-User documentation for Mautic

Project description

Review and update existing documentation, including updated instructions and rich media (video tutorials, screen captures etc).

Background

The Mautic Community recently re-platformed the end-user documentation which can be found at https://docs.mautic.org.

The documentation has been somewhat neglected over the past two years, and some resources are out of date, need revising, and could be greatly improved with more effective use of rich media.

The Education Team would like to conduct a thorough review of the documentation and systematically work through a programme of updating and improving the resources available.

When this is complete, there will also be a translation project kicked off to empower community members for whom English is not their first language to translate the documentation into other languages.

You can read more about the proposal on the Trello card here. 

Related material

• Background on Mautic: https://www.mautic.org 
• Mautic on Github: https://github.com/mautic/mautic
• Mautic Documentation: https://docs.mautic.org 
• Docs or KB?: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HfrTCUE0vsbzYYDQoYmvMcWEAyMVc_tWDbPH-NIAq3s/edit?usp=sharing 
• Technical writing style guide: https://contribute.mautic.org/education-team/technical-writing-styleguide
• Documentation style guide: https://docs.mautic.org/en/home/contributing

Project mentors:

Norman Pracht – Email Slack Forums Github
Ruth Cheesley – Email Slack Forums Github

Knowledgebase

Project name

Create resources for the newly created Mautic Community Knowledgebase

Project description

Write a series of how-to tutorials and guides which will help Mautic users be more effective with setting up, configuring and using the application.

Background

The Mautic Community is in the process of launching a knowledgebase which will live at https://kb.mautic.org. The purpose of the knowledgebase is to be a central repository for tutorials, how-to guides and best practices on topics related to Mautic – whether directly (e.g. how to do things in Mautic) or indirectly (e.g. more general marketing strategies).

See this Trello card for an explanation of what sits in the documentation, and what sits in the knowledgebase.

We have identified a number of tutorials and resources that should be included in the knowledgebase. This project will focus on writing those tutorials and creating supporting content – e.g. videos, images etc – in collaboration with the Education Team.

Related material

• Background on Mautic: https://www.mautic.org 
• Mautic on Github: https://github.com/mautic/mautic
• Mautic Knowledgebase: https://kb.mautic.org 
• Docs or KB?: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HfrTCUE0vsbzYYDQoYmvMcWEAyMVc_tWDbPH-NIAq3s/edit?usp=sharing 
• Technical writing style guide: https://contribute.mautic.org/education-team/technical-writing-styleguide

Project mentors:

Leon Oltmanns – Email Slack Forums Github
Kevin Rundle – Email Slack Forums Github