Tag: blogging

Where have I been?!

Well, it would seem a year has gone by….

Most of that year was spent commuting back and forth to Glasgow from London each week for ThoughtWorks. I was working with a client up there from late April 2014 to early March this year, first as a developer and then as an Agile Coach, leading the enablement stream on a transformation programme. It was the most amazing experience being a full time coach again and has given me lots of fodder to share my learnings and ideas around. Scotland is beautiful and I made some great new friends and colleagues. Stay tuned.

I’m now back based in London, and have taken on a new role, working in a supporting role to the senior techie groups at ThoughtWorks and our CTO. So far it’s been fascinating, and am looking forward to getting into that more. One of the things that I have just put together in that role is this, the ThoughtWorks Technology Radar! More about that at some point.

I’ve been back for another round of amazing leadership coaching from Stacey Sargent of Connect Growth and Development, it was my last session today, and really made me realise that I should get back to writing. So will be working on a round up of my learnings soon.

Oh, I’ve been in a book! My good friend and colleague wrote a book called “Talking with Tech Leads” which is a bunch of interviews and insights from tech leads on various stages of their journeys. One of them is me!

I’ve been on some fun trips, we spent Christmas with the Canadian half of our family, got lots of skiing in, had weekends up in Scotland, sunny weekends in Devon, hung out in Munch and Venice last autumn, friend’s weddings, and just got back from my first time to South America, I spent a week working in São Paulo, Brazil.

I ran my first 10K race and even spent and evening learning Curling (it was amazing, do it!)…

So, here’s to making the space to returning to blogging!

– Anne

The fear of blogging about technical topics…

I rarely blog about technical topics, despite my main trade of being a developer. The prospect has always scared me, and from others that I’ve talked to I’m not the only one.

The irrational thoughts that tend to go through my head are:

  • What right to I have to blog about technical stuff?!
  • Major case of Imposter Syndrome
  • What do I know that the internet doesn’t already?!
  • Will people judge me about what knowledge I do have?
  • What if  I’m wrong?!

Wonder if anyone else finds this too?

Well, we have to embrace whats scary to grow. So I have set myself a target of at least one technical blog a month.

These are my mantras to help me feel more confident about it

  • We are all always learning. There will always be people that know more about something than you, but there will always be people who know less. Things that I find useful when I am learning WILL be useful for other people who are learning.
  • If I had to hunt about on the internet for half an hour to find out how to do something,  if I can give an example that might save someone  haf an hour of googling, then I have made a tiny difference.
  • I must embrace feedback! If people leave comments, and share other ways that I could do things better, I should embrace and learn from these.
  • I am not ever pretending to know everything… these are just things that have helped me and I hope they might help others.
  • I can put things down here, so I can remember them for next time.

Here goes!

I’d love to hear any thoughts if you feel the same about technical blogging, or even better if you used to, and how you got over it.