Hello, SUMO Nation!
We’re back to hearing more from you about your Mozillian story. This time, I have the pleasure and honour to share Heather’s inspiring story with you:
Smile!
I contribute to SUMO because it’s something that inspires me and has helped me realize the potential of my writing superpowers. The open source movement and community is why I love Firefox. Where else can you be considered a part of something bigger than yourself and also be seen as a part of the whole picture, even if you are not an official Mozilla employee?
I do it because I want to. I do it because it’s something I believe in. I do it for the connection to Mozilla, its people, the community and its efforts to continue to support and instil the open web practices and privacy beliefs.
I began my involvement with SUMO in November 2014. My search for jobs in the technical writing field is what led me to Mozilla. I had gotten my associates degree and was seeking to gain employment as a technical writer. Little did I know, one does not just become a technical writer because you have taken a course and received your IT degree – silly me :-).
I did my research and saw that experience was an essential need on the path to becoming a technical writer. Well, how do I get experience, if experience is what employers seek? Here’s where I found and pretty much stumbled into becoming a volunteer contributor for SUMO.
Putting things together from my web research by reading and seeing testimonials from those who had began on the same path as I had, the advice I got was to become a volunteer writer for an open source project and when I saw that Mozilla welcomed volunteer contributors with open arms, I stuck my foot in the door. I took a step forward and haven’t looked back since.
It’s been an amazing ride and I feel I have Mozilla employees and contributors to thank for helping me jump start my current path into being a freelance technical writer. Without the community support and engagement I have thrived on as being part of SUMO, I don’t know how else I would have gotten here.
I have done some support for users in the Mozilla support forums, but feel like my writing for the Knowledge Base has been the more substantial part of my contributions. I have not only written original content with the backing of Joni (the brain behind the KB), I’ve also contributed to previously written articles by other amazing contributors and staff. I’ve been able to learn how to use wikis, create and add screenshots to enhance the Knowledge Base articles, and just be part of the team.
I have gotten to work with the amazing Roland on the iOS User Success Team along with other SUMO volunteers and the likes of Madalina and Michal (the other brains behind the scenes). Meeting and collaborating with the SUMO team during the Whistler Work Week in Canada during the Summer of June 2015 was quite an epic thing to take part in as well.
SUMO is more than just being a volunteer contributor to me. It’s been an amazing experience and I continually look forward to being involved with SUMO team for the (un)foreseeable future.
Thank you, Heather! We’re happy to hear that SUMO made it easier for you to do what you like outside of Mozilla :-).
Do you want to write a guest blog post for our blog? Let us know in the comments or contact Michal directly.