MEETINGS:

The So. Nevada Chapter meets on the first or second Wednesday of each month from 6:30-8:30 pm at the Clark County Library. A list of meeting dates for 2007 can be found here.

Local STC-er's View of the 2007 Conference

by Sue Sims

Sue is a Senior Technical Writer with IGT Systems in Las Vegas

Pre-Conference

I arrived in Minneapolis Sunday night. It was after dinner time, so I checked into the hotel and ordered room service. I was excited to be at my first conference and was anxiously anticipating the next three days.

Monday morning, I headed to the conference to register and obtain all my seminar information. I spent a little time going through the seminar list to match up what I had already planned. There were a few changes, but not many. I'm glad I took the time to plan out my schedule beforehand.

First Timers' Session

I spent a few minutes in this session, talking with veteran attendees. They had a few helpful suggestions, such as trying not to overdo my seminar schedule, save some time for walking the vendor area, and save some personal time. They were right. Trying to squeeze in one seminar after another was very exhausting. I got my First Timers' ribbon!

Keynote General Session

I didn't expect this to be as interesting as it was. The president spoke for awhile about STC things and then introduced the Keynote speaker, Simon Singh. I had heard of him before, but didn't know very much about his work. He spoke mostly about his documentary, Fermat's Last Theorem, and showed many clips. It was fascinating and enjoyable. Mr. Singh is a gifted public speaker and I am eager to see this documentary in full. Who knew math could be so much fun?

Web 2.0 101: Understanding Web 2.0 and Its Impact on Technical Communication - Scot Abel:

My first educational seminar. Not knowing much about what Web 2.0 was, I was interested to find out. Web 2.0 really isn't much more than the next wave of web technology. They are calling it the Semantic Web. It seems to me that this is a natural progression for the Web and never really thought of it as Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. How very clever of someone.

Presenter: Scot Abel, The Content Wrangler, Inc. http://www.thecontentwargler.com

Web 1.0

• publishing to the web
• users surf and "read stuff"
• writers create content

Web 2.0

• Brings service to the web
• Helps users "do stuff"
• Syndication allows users to remix content
• Structured content makes it possible

Mr. Abel described the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) functionality and how it can be used to provide structure and semantic value to content. Linking to RSS sites can keep content fresh and it doesn't have to by manually updated. One site creates the content and many others link to the content for their own pages.

Wikis - web-based collaboration tools
Forums, Blogs, etc. - users help users; users create their own documentation
Podcasts - gives a voice to the writer

The entire presentation can be seen at the above address.

Adobe: Making Sense of the FrameMaker and XML Alphabet Soup - R.J. Jacquez

I was disappointed in all the Adobe seminars. They spent more time advertising their product than they did anything else. I know their products. I wanted to learn more about them. This seminar was pretty much the same as the eSeminar I saw a couple of months ago. They talked about structured vs. unstructured documentation, but never really got into the meat of the differences between the two. They showed us how easy it is to do structured documentation but never told us why we'd want to. I already know what FrameMaker can do, why not tell me why I should do it this way or that, or why I'd want to get into DITA or XML. I guess that's another seminar.

They spent the last 30 minutes of the seminar showing us the new FrameMaker and RoboHelp.

Adobe FrameMaker Advanced Template Features - Bernard Aschwanden

Again, I was disappointed, although not as much as the previous Adobe seminar. The presenter, Bernard Aschwanden, was from Bright Path Solutions, not Adobe. That might have had something to do with not beating the FrameMaker application over our heads.

Mr. Aschwanden showed us some nifty functions in FrameMaker for creating and importing templates. He mentioned a few plug-ins that we might consider when we migrate to Frame.

Plug-ins from West Street Consulting
Import Utility from frameexpert.com
IX Gen - indexing plug-in

Writing for the Web 2007 - Ginny Redish

Great seminar! Ms. Redish began by showing us stats on how little time people actually spend reading web pages. People use the web to find information, not read, for the most part. Because of this, web page content should be as brief and concise as possible. We did a couple of mini-workshops to shorten verbiage used on real web pages. I ordered her book, "Letting Go of Words."

Increasing ROI When Migrating from Word to FrameMaker - R.J. Jacquez and Maxwell Hoffmann

I was hoping to learn some tricks and pointers for migrating our Word documents to FrameMaker. Unfortunately, the seminar was mostly about localization and how FrameMaker is better for translation than Word. We already knew this! Mr. Hoffman spent most of the seminar showing us figures on how to save money by using FrameMaker for translated documents. Interesting, but not very relevant to me.

Distributed Writing: A Psychology of Social Computing Practices - Johannes Strobel

I sort of stumbled into this seminar because I had nothing else to do at the time. I was so very pleasantly surprised by the content and presenter. The seminar was over before I was ready! I wanted more information.

Mr. Strobel covered the widespread use of social computing tools such as blogs, wikis, and forums. He covered various features of Web 2.0 and stressed how layout of web pages is no longer that important. It's the content that people read and what is delivered. He stressed how blogging, wikis, etc. have fostered a new form of literacy and how it demands a different cognitive process for writers.

What's Psychology Got to Do With Style? - Dan Jones and Gail Lippincott

This seminar was mostly about persuasion and how to read your audience for effective writing. The information presented was interesting, mostly references to tons of books on the subject. They touched on the different types of personalities, using references to psychological theories such as Gestalt and Schema. They talked about applying subtle psychological techniques dealing with "multiple intelligences." They also covered the different "generations" in the work place and the psychology of each.

Wrap - up

It was an interesting three days. I'm very glad I had the opportunity to attend my first STC Conference. I would do it again. I wish I would have steered away from the Adobe seminars and attended the non-vendor type stuff.

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