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
Great job summing up the summit, Jennifer! I, too, feel very fortunate that I could attend.
Here’s a brief summary of the top education sessions I attended:
- Introduction to Blogging: A New Technical Communicator Role – Tom Johnson of LDS Church and idratherbewriting.com spoke about how writing a blog can help your corporation connect and communicate with your users, while providing them with useful product knowledge. While corporate blogs help your corporation connect, personal blogs help YOU connect with fellow technical communicators and employers. Tom encouraged bloggers, regardless of the type of blog, to: make blogs accessible, inform your users of the face behind the blog, and get others to link to your blog (and link to theirs)–it’s how the world can find your blog in search results!
- Quick Reference Guides: Short and Sweet Technical Documentation – Tom Johnson of LDS Church and idratherbewriting.com and and Ben Minson of LDS Church provided some great tips on how to make quick reference guides, including: look at magazine layouts for quick reference guide layout ideas, make sure all your content is aligned, and strongly contrast headers from regular text. Visit Tom Johnson’s blog for some great examples!
- Starting and Building a Freelance Business – Katherine Nagel of MasterWork Consulting Services and Ruth Thaler-Carter gave some excellent information on starting your own freelance business. Katherine and Ruth promised to send their PowerPoint presentation to those that wanted it (me!), so if you are interested in this topic, email me at lsanderson@glhec.org and I can pass this PowerPoint along to you once it is sent to me.
Lindsay Sanderson
Comment by Lindsay Sanderson — May 19, 2009 @ 6:51 am
I, too, was afforded the opportunity to attend the 2009 STC Summit and am grateful for the opportunity. The summit sessions provided me with editing, usability, content, and design knowledge. Networking throughout the summit provided me with less tangible, but perhaps more valuable, assets. Networking opportunities reveal common struggles, questions, and goals. The expertise gained from these relationships (even though short) outfitted me with more confidence in my position and authority.
The Keynote
I definitely concur with Jennifer regarding keynote speaker, David Pogue. His insightful commentary provided a perfect introduction to the STC Summit. For anyone who is unfamiliar with Pogue, check out his columns for the New York Times in the “Technology” pages: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/technology/index.html.
My Key “Notes”
As a relatively new member to the STC and technical communication, the use of jargon and buzz words at the conference surprised me. So, I kept a (very long) list of terms, phrases, and products to research further. Here are some of the most popular and/or interesting summit words I encountered:
*BRIC Markets
*Controlled vocabulary
*Digital Rights Management
*DITA
*Iterative
*PNG files
*SnagIt & Camtasia
*Translation memory
Some of the terms I knew a little about and some I knew nothing about. In either case I knew I needed to research further…That’s why I attended – to gain knowledge.
Noteworthy
Lastly, my noteworthy conference highlights:
Choosing the Right Usability Technique
This presentation provided a plethora of valuable information. The overall message was that user goals should drive usability techniques. To do this usability techniques should be effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, and easy to learn.
Helping R&D Help You
This presentation focused on the designer feature checklist in an agile environment. If anyone works in this environment I suggest considering using this checklist.
Quick Reference Guides
Lindsay also mentioned this presentation and it was one of my favorites. I would just like to add that if you are thinking of creating (or already create) quick reference guides, check out the examples from the presenter’s website: http://www.idratherbewriting.com.
I, too, feel fortunate in my attendance to the conference. The amount of information available overwhelmed and impressed me. Thank you STC for organizing this informative and beneficial event.
Are you interested in attending next year but unsure? Don’t hesitate to contact me with questions about the summit.
Comment by lstauss — May 20, 2009 @ 8:24 am