by Jennifer Walker, STC Four Lakes President
I’ve been replaying the annual summit over in my mind for nearly two weeks now, excited by the information I took home and eager to put it into practice. I’ve also been looking forward to sharing this information with you!
I attended events, spoke with vendors, and networked with fellow technical communicators with three interests in mind: myself, my employer, and each and every member of the Four Lakes chapter.
The Four Lakes board has provided surveys at chapter meetings to find out what topics you’re interested in. With the topics you’ve mentioned in mind, I attended sessions on DITA, job hunting and resume building, single sourcing, and content management. I also spoke with several vendors about their products, ranging from content management systems to translation to screen capturing and recording. I plan to bring vendor materials to the next chapter meeting (May 20) to share with you, so if you haven’t already, please sign up for the event by commenting on the Next Chapter Meeting post!
DITA
While I do not use DITA, I attended a session about putting it into practice. Mark E. Wallis of IBM walked us through the steps of DITA implementation. Several factors contribute to successful DITA implementation, including management support, the right opportunity, a content plan, effective architecture, layered deliverables, a DITA toolkit, proof of concept, etc.
Have you thought about implementing DITA, or have you already begun to do so? Stay tuned! The Four Lakes chapter is working with neighboring chapters to plan a “3M” (Madison, Milwaukee, and Minnesota) DITA tour this summer. Dates, times, costs are all to be worked out, but we’re hoping to provide three seminars, including DITA in a Day, Modeling (marking up content), and Production (application, next steps) in Wisconsin and Minnesota, led by Leigh White. If this topic interests you, let me know! Comment on this post, or send me an email at jwalker@glhec.org.
Job Hunting and Resume Building
Here are a few great tips from Jack Molisani at ProSpring Technical Staffing:
- Follow submission instructions!
- Don’t apply for a position when you’re not even remotely qualified.
- Make sure there are no errors (typos, grammatical/punctuation mistakes) in your resume.
- Highlight your strengths, minimize your weaknesses.
- People will not read your resume; they’ll scan it.
Single Sourcing & Content Management
The session I attended provided information from people who responded to the survey who use/do not use single sourcing and/or content management.
Some respondents noted that screenshots are problematic when using content management systems/single sourcing due to translation costs.
The biggest noted driver for use of a content management system/single sourcing was speeding the development cycle.
Respondents who use content management systems and/or single sourcing noted these problems: bugs and glitches, awkward production, difficult or slow transition, learning curve, team member resistance, slower production, tech support issues.
Keynote Speaker
Without a doubt, my favorite part of the summit was the keynote speaker. David Pogue, author of Macs for Dummies (and other Dummies books), was extraordinary. Pogue focused most of his presentation on simplicity of design and talked about several gadgets (cell phones and video cameras, for instance) and their design/navigation complexity. A few pointers: “Easy is hard,” and “it’s not what to add, it’s what to leave out.” By providing the right amount of humor and information in his speech, he captivated the audience, just as STC promised he would.
Conclusion
While STC did their best to keep costs down for the event, the airfare, hotel, conference, and meal expenses were simply out of the realm of possibility for most Four Lakes members, particularly as fewer employers are paying for STC memberships and are limiting costs, like for professional development, in this challenging economy. Only three Four Lakes members were able to attend the summit this year. I have asked the other two members to share their experiences with you by commenting on this post.
I feel very fortunate that I was able to attend the 2009 summit. This was my first summit, but it’s hopefully not my last. The summit will be in Dallas, TX in 2010, and I look forward to finding ways for more Four Lakes members to attend the event next year. Have ideas? Post your comments here, or send me an email at jwalker@glhec.org.
Thanks,
Jennifer Walker
