See also the Workshop Descriptions page.
Monday, March 23 Presentations
10:00 am to 10:50 am Presentations session 1
Stephani Clark, Getting Started with DITA
Large enterprises around the globe trust DITA as the standard for their documentation for several reasons: reuse, cost-effective translation, dynamic multi-channel publishing, and more. But it’s not just large organizations that can utilize DITA. In this talk, Stephani Clark will show how teams of all sizes can get started with DITA, even without a large budget. Learn how your team can implement DITA and start writing, managing, reviewing, and publishing content, all from the same structured content system. DITA can be daunting, but it’s easier than ever to get started. Attendees will learn how to:
- Develop a basic DITA implementation plan that’s appropriate for their organization’s size and considerations
- Convert legacy Word files to DITA with the click of a button
- Publish to PDF and static HTML sites fast and easily, without any extra tools
- Scale their DITA implementation to meet new requirements or accomplish new goals
Liz Fraley and Kelly Schrank, Using Warehouse Files to Improve the Overall Findability of Your DITA Contents
Can a comprehensive index be created in a modern DITA XML publishing environment made up of hundreds of tiny files? And how can an editor and indexer be incorporated into the DITA environment for better consistency and findability of content? For your content to be found, you need to ensure your content is indexed and consistent across all deliverables and channels. This means taking advantage of structured metadata and keyword research and the application of consistent terms to boost the findability. This presentation will show one company’s use of warehouse files to bring consistency to index terms and their application to a body of content–a series of published reference books. Learn how a good editing/indexing team, who adopts the same strategies and techniques used by authors, working in modern DITA XML dynamic publishing environments, bring new and improved value, consistency, and efficiency to content findability. Liz is presenting virtually. Kelly Schrank will be the local presenter.
Rob Hanna, Intelligent Microcontent: At the Point of Content Convergence
Content distilled down to appropriate chunks of information in the form of intelligent microcontent take on a new life when they are made available to the enterprise for consumption and reintegration across different business functions in the enterprise. The silos all but disappear when content is rendered to microcontent that is classed, focused, structured, and contextualized. This microcontent then can flow freely across product, marketing, training, and support documentation. Attend to learn more about this transformational opportunity.
Attendees will learn
- Microcontent principles that make content available beyond technical publications to the entire enterprise
- the Enterprise Content Metamodel used to classify content and establish connections and context
- Microcontent structures for the rest of the enterprise
- SME contributions through intelligent microcontent, and
- Microcontent technology used to make content available as a service to the enterprise.
Gretchen Stahlman, Promoting Yourself via Videos
It’s a fact: People love videos. They are far more likely to view a short video than read even a single page of text, such as a website or brochure. We have used both generalized and specific task videos to promote our business and land new clients. And, if you’re an employee, you can use video to promote your own work. We’ll discuss deciding on the content of your videos and finding the best length and style so your videos are entertaining as well as informative. We’ll walk through the process we use to develop a video and provide an overview of the tools we used, including some tips we learned the hard way. Finally, we’ll talk about how to distribute your videos so they get seen by the right eyes.
Wendy Barnhart Ross, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Tech Comm and More
In order to recruit and train the best talent and to bring a diverse set of ideas and perspectives to the work we do, companies and professional organizations need to take steps to create inclusive spaces for employees, members, and volunteers. Even if you aren’t a manager, you make a difference in how your coworkers feel about your company and ability to work effectively. In this presentation, we’ll define the terms diversity, equity, and inclusion, and why it’s so important for you to understand the terms. We’ll also discuss unconscious bias, and I’ll provide a terminology cheat sheet. This presentation is intended to educate and raise awareness. Please come with an open mind and willingness to consider areas where you can grow, but do not fear criticism or blame. Pre-read the DEI article on the Rochester Chapter website if you have time! https://stc-rochester.org/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-in-technical-communication.
11:00 am to 11:50 am Presentations session 2
Phylise Banner, Learning Environment Modeling (LEM)
Creating a vision that is shared among designers, subject matter experts, clients, and leaders is one of the fundamental challenges that content professionals must overcome. In the learning design space, many project stakeholders lack the background knowledge, experiences, or “language” to relate their vision in ways that instructional designers can effectively implement. This session will introduce Learning Environment Modeling (LEM) — a unique visual language created to enhance communication and foster collaboration between instructional design professionals and diverse stakeholders. During the session, you will learn how to visually communicate the correlation of specific design elements to learning results and use Learning Environment Modeling (LEM) to collaborate effectively with blended learning project teams. We will explore ways to facilitate more effective communication throughout the design process, and how to use a learning environment design system and tools to remove or reduce ego-centric behaviors and attitudes during the design process.
Alisa Bonsignore, Sustainability is Everyone’s Business
European companies have long led the charge towards integrating sustainability into daily business practices. Now, as climate change and social pressures intensify, U.S. companies are starting to bow to public pressure to disclose what they’re doing when it comes to sustainable business and climate resilience. In this talk, we’ll discuss how to seamlessly integrate necessary information into all communications channels – from supply chain policies to help desk support. No matter where your organization is in its sustainability journey, there’s a story to tell. Take a leadership role in this growing communications channel to position yourself and your organization for the future, because sustainability is everyone’s business.
Judith Shenouda, Showcasing a Variety of Genres: Technical Communication Is More Than Manuals
Gone are the days when technical communication is simply writing manuals. The genres go beyond manuals, guides, and online Help. When working for employers or clients, or promoting one’s own services, technical communicators are capable of creating so many more genres. Judy will show off some products the Shenouda team has created, including print books, an ebook, word clouds, an infographic, and a timeline. She will share her team’s involvement creating short and sweet promotional videos that have found a home on a YouTube channel. In this session, we’ll explore the many possible genres that you, too, can create.
John Freiberger, Communicating in the “At a Glance Society”
We are deluged with information from countless sources. Mike Parkinson, author of Billion Dollar Graphics, refers to today’s culture as the “At a Glance Society.” How do we effectively and efficiently communicate when attention is lost in the blink of an eye? To answer this question, we will look at who lives in the “At a Glance Society,” the impact of emerging technologies, and what we as technical communicators can do to bridge the gaps.
Velizar Demirev, From Word Processing to Structured Content
MS Word is the default authoring tool for many organizations. Legacy file format concerns, pilot program costs, and the number of alternatives make any move a scary one. But sometimeswhat seemed like a great solution in the beginning is starting to cost you big time. MS Word is easy to use, but it lacks the foundational requirements for most technical documentation teams: structured reuse, low cost content maintenance, simultaneous collaboration, and ease of SME reviews.
But what’s next? In this presentation, Velizar will show alternatives, and they might not be as distant as once feared. Attendees will learn about:
- How to evaluate other systems
- The benefits of structured content
- How to train your team for a new tool
- What to consider when formulating a content and reuse strategy
- How structured content can expand your publish capabilities
- Whether or not structured content is the right move for their organization
1:30 pm to 2:20 pm Presentations session 3
Kirk St. Amant, User-Experience Design in Health and Medical Contexts: From Cognitive Theory to Workplace Practice
This presentation examines the cognitive dynamics affecting usability in health and medical settings based on an audience’s cultural background. It also explores how addressing such dynamics can enhance the design of materials used in health and medical contexts for different audiences – from patients to physicians. The presentation will review how such factors can affect usability and design in different health and medical contexts around the world. In covering these topics, the presentation will discuss strategies for researching the cognitive factors affecting the usability expectations of different cultures in order to design effective materials for them.
Dale Waldt, How Smart Content Enables Content Reuse and Robust Application Functionality
Publishing content has evolved dramatically over the years, from print and layout-oriented systems, to structured content systems, and now to semantically rich Smart content that supports sophisticated online delivery capabilities and relationships. You may ask, “What is Smart Content, really, and how do I get some?” This talk will describe what makes content smart, how it is driven by user and customer requirements, how to enrich content to provide new functionality, and give a peek under the hood at the technologies and techniques driving this exciting trend. This talk is aimed at both technical and non-technical folks who are interested in understanding how smart content can help deliver new products and capabilities.
Alisa Bonsignore, Won’t You Please, Please Help Me: Finding Paths to Leadership
While there once seemed to be one professional path — paying your dues and moving up the corporate ladder — today there are many non-traditional paths to leadership. In this talk, we’ll look at some examples of people who have taken a different route to find personal and professional success, and how they can help you find the right way to grow your own career.
MaryKay Grueneberg, Working with Developers, not against them: How I went from: “What do you do?” to “We can’t release this without you”
In this presentation, I will share my experience as a user assistance developer (technical writer/editor) embedded in a software development team. We literally started out with them asking “What do you do?” as they had never worked with a writer before. And, after all, “anyone can write”, right? It was clear that I not only had to explain to them what a user assistance developer does, but what I could bring to the table. Tech Comm professionals do a whole lot more than just write user manuals and it was my job to show them all the possibilities. I will share tips and advice that I used to not only win over the Development team, but to prove my worth, my ROI, and my place within the team. So, join me as I share how I went from “What do you do?” to “We can’t release without you.”
2:30 pm to 3:20 pm Presentations session 4
Liz Fraley, Yes you can have it all! Technical accuracy and marketing pizzazz!
Traditionally, stylized DITA output has been clunky and code-editor driven. But it doesn’t have to be that way. See how one tool is taking features from other user experiences and bringing them in to a world that has been neglected. You can create styling libraries like you create content libraries. Change it once and change it everywhere. Design faster. Implement faster. Save yourself time and bring value to your company. In this presentation, we will cover the basic principles from the canons of page design. We’ll talk about “ugly” complaints, so you know which are tool-related, which are cost-related, and which are truly hard problems. Liz is presenting virtually. Kelly Schrank is serving as local facilitator.
Rob Hanna, Microcontent and the 5 Moments of Need
Microcontent is an extraordinary point of convergence between all types of business content including product, marketing, support, and learning. At the microcontent level, the context of business function fades allowing microcontent to move more fluidly between functions. This is particularly evident in the development of performance support and microlearning. Intelligent microcontent is designed to scale from traditional book-based publishing down to voice-enabled responses using the same source of content. This strategy translates into new ways of designing learning materials that scale down from classroom instruction to just-in-time microlearning covering the spectrum of the 5 moments of need.
Participants will learn the
- story of microcontent and information 4.0
- 4 principles of intelligent microcontent
- 5 moments of need, and
- collaborative authoring and publishing practices to support the learning needs of the organization.
Dale Waldt, Turning InDesign Articles into Rich Sematic Web Content
Many magazine and newsletter articles are prepared for print delivery in Adobe InDesign. While there is some XML support built into InDesign, these features are often not used in preparing the content. It can be difficult, even, to export raw text files accurately, much less in structured XML output. This talk will describe a process used to quickly extract and capture legacy content and enrich it to a rich semantic form of DocBook articles robust enough for delivery to a portal with metadata, concept tagging, and other key features that drive Web functionality. The process uses mostly automated processes, inexpensive and easy-to-use tools, and can be easily be extended for ongoing production capture of published content as part of the normal production workflow.
Ben Woelk, Introverts and Leadership: Succeeding as a Quiet Leader
Many introverts struggle to succeed in the workplace when asked to “think on their feet” or to make decisions without an array of facts in hand. Some introverts may look for leadership opportunities, but feel stymied when trying to figure out how to move up. Although not every introvert may assume a formal leadership position, every introvert has the ability to become an influencer. The presentation discusses how to identify our strengths and become influencers when we don’t have positional authority. We’ll discuss strategies that work for us and how to make sure we’re not passed over for leadership opportunities. The open and honest discussions with leaders in the Hope for the Introvert podcast have revealed practical solutions to many of the challenges introverted leaders face. This presentations shares proven strategies for success, leveraging our introvert strengths to excel in the workplace.
