Information Design and Management in 2005: Revolutionize Your Career!

The second James River Chapter STC regional technical communications conference occured on the weekend of January 17, 2005 in Williamsburg, VA. The Four Points by Sheraton hotel in Historic Williamsburg again hosted our staff, speakers, and participants. We were again able to attract world–class speakers to this event, including:

• Saul Carliner
• Ann-Marie Grissino
• Richard Evans
• Kay Ethier
• Bernard Aschwanden

The Honorable Mark Warner, Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, issued a proclamation declaring the week leading up to the Conference as Technical Communication Week, recognizing the value technical communicators provide to the economy and communities within the state and the role the James River Chapter plays supporting our profession and colleagues.

 Governor's Proclamation 2005 1.10 Mb

Keynote Speaker—Saul Carliner

Saul Carliner is an internationally known expert on e-learning, information design, and technical communication.

As a consultant, he advises managers on strategic issues in online learning and communication, evaluation metrics, and general management issues. He also designs learning programs and communication materials. He is probably best known for his popular seminars on the management of training and communication groups, e-learning, and instructional and information design. Clients include Berlitz, BellSouth, Georgia-Pacific, Guidant Corporation, IBM, Microsoft Corporation, ST Microelectronics, 3M, UPS, and several state and federal government agencies. He serves on the editorial board for the European-based Document Design + Information Design Journal.

Saul is an Assistant Professor of Educational Technology at Concordia University in Montreal, and serves on the executive of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance. His research focuses on emerging genres of online communication and the management of workplace learning and communication groups. He also has interests in museum exhibit design and the development for volunteer leaders of community organizations. Saul has served on faculties of the University of Minnesota—Twin Cities, and Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts, and as visiting faculty at the City University of Hong Kong and the Pan African Institute for Development in Buea, Cameroon.

An award-winning author, Saul’s books include Advanced Web-Based Training Strategies: Adapting Real World Strategies in Your Online Learning (written with Margaret Driscoll), An Overview of Online Learning (second edition) (HRD Press), Training Design Basics (ASTD Press), Designing E-Learning (ASTD Press), and (with Carol Barnum) Techniques for Technical Communicators (Macmillan). He is also the author of over 60 additional articles that have appeared in publications such as Training and Development, Learning Circuits, Technical Communication, Intercom, Performance Improvement Quarterly, Home Computing, Performance Improvement, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Encyclopedia of Software Engineering, and the Training and Development Yearbook. He is also a popular speaker on technical communication and training. He has hosted the Training Director’s Forum and Online Learning Asia, and keynoted conferences such as TRAINING, Online Learning, Society for Technical Communication Annual Conference, American Society of Indexers, and E-Learn London. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and The Gazette (Montreal), interviewed by CNET radio, CNBC, and Voice of America, and featured in articles on the Monster Board, Jerusalem Post, Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Online Learning Magazine, and Lisa Gundry and Laurie LaMantia’s Breakthrough Teams for Breakthrough Times (Dearborn).

Saul is a Certified Training and Development Professional (CTDP) through the Canadian Society for Training and Development, Research Fellow of the American Society for Training and Development, and Fellow and past president of the Society for Technical Communication and past president of the Atlanta chapter of the International Society for Performance Improvement. He received back-to-back Best of Show awards in 2000 and 2001 for his articles in Technical Communication. He also earned the Keith Wharton Award for dedication to teaching from RASTEC at the University of Minnesota. His books, user’s guides, and marketing communication materials have received recognition in various publication competitions.

Saul holds a Ph.D. in instructional technology from Georgia State University, a Master’s degree in technical communication from the University of Minnesota, and a Bachelor’s degree in economics, professional writing, and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University.

Sessions

Information Architecture: Content Management

Content management is being hailed and criticized by both experts and practitioners. How and where are we succeeding at managing content effectively? How can we reuse content to maximize efficiency and promote consistency? Larger companies are investing thousands of dollars in content management systems. But, the speaker asked, how can the smaller companies take advantage of content management without budgets to support these enterprise systems? She examined the types of content that we can reuse, methods of storing that content for reuse, file naming conventions that promote quick searches, and more. This session helped participants promote content reuse by standardizing informational elements. The speaker led the participants through an examination of examples from award-winning projects.

About the Speaker

Ann-Marie Grissino is President of Keypoint Consultants, Inc., a technical writing firm specializing in online communication design and delivery. Ann-Marie has provided services to small and large organizations, including SAS Institute, Carolina Power & Light, Tufts, Nortel, A4 HealthSystems, First Union, BankBoston, Merant, Siemens, and Intel. Ann-Marie has won numerous awards from the Society for Technical Communications (STC) for writing and designing technical information, including a Distinguished Award from Boston and Northern New England, an Excellence and Best of Show award for e-learning course development, an Excellence award in the STC International competition, and an Excellence award for e-learning development from APEX. She also earned the Distinguished Chapter Service Award for initiative in regional communication activities and has judged for both regional and international competitions. She has served as a judge for Brandon-Hall e-learning competitions. Recently, she presented at the STC international conference in Dallas and the Teaching and Learning with Technology Collaborative conference at the University of North Carolina. Ann-Marie is currently the Chairperson of the regional STC Online Communications Competition. Ann-Marie teaches beginner and advanced classes in FrameMaker, online help systems, and e-learning development.

Building Usability into Your Company … One Step at a Time

The speakers premise was that, for many companies, usability tends to come only at the very last part, if at all, of a product’s cycle. Most of the time, usability is misplaced and undervalued and is in constant limbo as to who actually “owns” it. This presentation helped participants see that usability can be a structured part of a product cycle, allowing many different teams to take an active role in promoting and implementing usability. The speaker explained what usability is, how it works within her company, the internal and external resources we use, and how to implement usability at all times during a product cycle without feeling overwhelmed or spending a lot of money.

About the Speaker

Ellyn Hassell is an independent technical writer then employed by Blackbaud, Inc. of Charleston, SC. Ellyn presented the topic of usability at the 2004 STC Conference. She has been very active in the James River Chapter; she chaired and directed the 2005 Technical Communication Competitions for us. Ellyn and her family live today near Williamsburg, VA where she cares for her child and works from home in a true teleworking environment.

Creating Usable Indexes: Editing Indexes for Quality and Usability

This presentation was designed for:

• Editors who evaluate indexes prepared by others
• Writers who inherit indexes and want to know whether the quality is up to par
• Those who work in a shop that publishes periodic releases of a set of manuals
• People who analyze the state of their indexes

The material presented examples from real-world technical indexes that illustrate common flaws. Participants did not leave knowing everything there is to know about indexing, butwere better able to review an index and identify common errors without ever having to read the indexed material.

During this session, participants learned, among other things:

• Proper formation of entries
• Correct use of cross references
• Providing multiple access points to information
• Drawbacks of computer-generated indexes
• Logical organization of topics

About the Speaker

Richard (Dick) Evans has over thirty years experience in the computer industry. He has been, at various times, a computer operator, programmer, systems analyst, technical writer, and human factors engineer. In that last role he became interested in indexing while conducting usability tests on indexes for telecommunications manuals, though he contends that his interest goes back much farther, to his earliest computer experiences when he struggled to find critical information buried in volumes of computer manuals.

Evans retired from corporate life in 1992 and started Infodex Indexing Services, Inc. Now he specializes in indexing computer books for both corporate clients and publishing houses, as well as providing workshops that teach technical writers about indexing.

Dick, a senior member of the Carolina Chapter of STC, received the Distinguished Chapter Service award in 1999. He is a past president of the American Society of Indexers (ASI) at both the chapter and national levels.

Adobe FrameMaker & Microsoft Word: Template Development

Those who develop or manage templates using tools such as Adobe FrameMaker™, Microsoft Word® and more benefited from this presentation. Participants learned tips and techniques to deploy templates for rapid reuse in the real world.

Harvard Business Review, Rogers Media, Frank Russell Company, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, General Dynamics, Boeing, Canadian Standards Association, Celestica, and more have seen a valuable return on their documentation by using standard templates. These templates have been developed using the same techniques demonstrated in this presentation.

The speaker’s objectives included teaching participants how to better:

• Set up and apply numbering for chapters, sections, tables, figures, procedures and more
• Define dynamic header and footer content
• Develop character, paragraph and table formats correctly utilizing all available features
• Set up complex references between sections and documents
• Create watermarks that are easy to dynamically update with new content
• Develop complex tips, warning, cautions and notes as stand-alone paragraphs or through the use of tables
• Convert stand-alone files into templates for rapid reuse and deployment
• Use creative methods to layout documents while working with limitations of software tools

About the Speaker

Bernard Aschwanden, of Publishing Smarter, is a recognized publishing technologies expert. Bernard presents at conferences and events across Europe and North America. BernardHe is an Adobe Certified Expert, a Certified Technical Trainer and the author of numerous publications on publishing and single sourcing. A dynamic and entertaining speaker, Bernard tailors his presentations to the audience and welcomes participation.

Aschwanden is a Senior Member of the Society for Technical Communication and past president of the Computer Trainers Network. He has helped hundreds of companies implement successful publishing solutions. Bernard is focused on publishing better, publishing faster, publishing smarter.

Introduction to DITA: Darwin Information Typing Architecture

DITA is an XML standard for developing modular, extensible, topic–based information, particularly technical information developed as user assistance. In the not–too–distant future, authoring and content management tools will tout “DITA” support. The speaker believes that your company or clients may soon ask for DITA-compliant documents. This session covered the basics abou DITA for participants so that, when DITA comes their way, they’ll be prepared to speak intelligently about it. This session was also helpful for those considering structured document publishing and who are not sure how to begin creating or selecting a structure.

About the Speaker

Kay Ethier is a Senior Trainer & Consultant with Bright Path Solutions in Durham, NC.

Kay is an Adobe Certified Expert in FrameMaker™ and a certified trainer with the Quadralay WebWorks University program. As an expert in both XML and FrameMaker, Ms. Ethier instructs training classes, performs consulting services, and provides hotline support for clients in a variety of industries. In 2000, Ms. Ethier co–authored XML Weekend Crash Course. Kay has most recently been the lead author on Advanced FrameMaker (TIPS, 2004) and author of XML and FrameMaker (Apress, 2004).