I signed up for the Hashnode Bootcamp so that I could bring some kind of focus to my #100DaysOfJoy / #100DaysOfCode journey. The first talk was "The Counterintuitive Secret to Shipping Better Articles Faster" by Sam Julien).

I knew my problem wasn't actually doing the thing, I've studied journalism enough to have minored in it if I wanted to finish college, and I love the idea of Twitch streams, but as an autistic person, routines and systems are my passion, and finding a way to make these things a habit is part of my #100DaysOfJoy journey, since it would give me great joy to know I put these things out into the world.

The major takeaway for me from this talk was Sam's advice for building a content creation system. During my journey into learning how to code, I wanted to start a blog. I honestly love to write, but my struggle became how to make my journey exciting enough to give me enough content to last past my initial inspiration.

Enter Sam Julien.

STEPS TO CREATING MEANINGFUL CONTENT:

CREATION PHASE:

Sam broke this system down into two core parts, the Creation Phase and the Post-Publication Phase.

DRAFTING:

This is where you gather notes, create an outline and write your first draft.

CREATING:

In the "creating" phase of creating content, Sam says writing/recording, but what I took from this are two things that I would like to spend more time on in the future:

• Adding images. This makes sense to me. As a fashion designer I think people should look pretty, it only makes sense that the things (blogs) I put out into the world should look pretty too.

• Code samples. I know that so far in this journey, code samples are something I haven't done much including, but deeper into that I thought, I realize that so far in my journey I've picked topics that involve coding, but don't interact very much with actual code. That will change very soon (Thanks Sam).

Sam also spoke about finding a space to take care of notes. Sam mentioned a few, and I look forward to delving into this further in my 100 Days journey.

PUBLISH:

In the publishing phase, you publish to your website (in this case for the next 100 days, this Hashnode blog), add social media images and cross post in relevant spaces.

The thing I would like to work on here is the "cross-posting" section. I know Twitter is an amazing space for me to post, but I would like to work on finding other spaces to get my work out there.

POST-PUBLICATION:

The Post-Publication phase is probably the phase most people don't see, but I can admit that I didn't consider this any of the steps Sam mentioned, but they are probably the hidden secrets to success.

PROMOTE:

This phase is all about getting the word out there about what you wrote. Promoting means finding appropriate photos to market your work, do all the SEO stuff (and I plan on writing a blog on that later on).

GARDEN:

Gardening means keeping up with your content. Technologies change, things change and that means your blogs need to change when the industry changes. Sam pointed out that there is a cost for content creation (which is the time it takes to maintain and keep them relevant) and to be cognizant of this.

TODAY I LEARNED

During Sam's talk, he speaks about the "Today I Learned" way of creating content, which has 4 steps:

1. Intro Take 1-2 sentences to talk about the problem, then go off and do your research. 2. Body Talk about your journey to the solution. 3. Final Solution What is your final solution. Try to involve your finished code 4. Conclusion Recap the problem and the solution.