J. Our 2009-2010 Events
December 7, 2010 - Panel: Donna Timpone, Ross Squire and Lisa Benne
Bright Lights, Bright 2011!
Tips and Predictions from Top Recruiters
Our December event features a panel of favorite recruiters from the Greater New York region. They will "tell us a few things we should know" to get ready for next year. What's your outlook for 2011?
About the Panel:
Donna Timpone - http://useredge.com/our-staff/
Ross Squire: http://learningcareers.blogspot.com/
Lisa Benne: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/lisa-benne/a/13/a2
November 4, 2010 - Ray Gallon
New Look at Technical Communications: Moving Forward by Looking Backward
What if the first hypertext document dated from the fourth century? What if today's informational environment resembled 15th century schemas more than those of the industrial revolution? And if so, why should we care? As communicators, we are often called upon to be testers, designers, cultural moderators, even arbiters of taste! Our job is often to connect things that have no apparent relationship.
Culture is the key to it all. As our profession evolves, we are incorporating other disciplines such as user-centered design, content strategy, or information architecture into our central profession, that of communication.
Let's expand our perspectives on technical communication and look into communication and information sharing in a larger cultural context. The different visual and textual representations of the world in different eras help us to understand how to function in this virtual, multi-tasking era.
This is not theory, it's what I do every day at my job. Vive le Communication!
AboutRay Gallon: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rgallon
Presentation: Ray Gallon: New Look at Technical Communications: Moving Forward by Lookng Backward
October 10, 2010 - Alan Porter 10 Questions You Must Ask Before Implementing a Wiki
Alan is a prolific writer, comics guru and pop culture whiz, with two engineering degrees (including Aeronautics), who also happens to be a social media expert. AND he's an STC colleague! See Alan's article in Intercom Writing Technical Comics Feb. 2010.
If Alan's accomplishments as a technical communicator makes you curious or green with envy, come meet Alan on October 12, Tuesday ! The evening will be a practical overview of best practices in social media and is targeted at all levels of practitioners.
About Alan Porter: President and Founder of the 4Js Group LLC. (http://4jsgroup.com/)
Presentation: Alan Porter: 10 Questions You Must Ask before Implementing a Wiki
September 23, 2010 - Don Moyer Building Visual Explanations: Practical Advice for Writers & Presenters
Don Moyer continues to make a SPLASH because he dares us to pick up a pencil and DRAW. Yes, DRAW. Turn off our computers and draw. Just like in Kindergarten. Read more about Don (See Summit 2010 Feedback) and why he is a favorite at STC webinars.
About Don Moyer: Principal of Thoughtform, Inc. - http://www.thoughtformdesign.com/web/site/
Presentation: Don Moyer: Building Visual Presentations: Practical Advice for Writers and Presenters
September 23, 2010 - Don Moyer
WORKSHOP: Building Visual Explanations - Practical Advice for Writers
Don continues to make a splash among Technical Communications circles because he dares us to pick up a pencil and DRAW. DRAW. Yes, DRAW. Turn off our computers and draw. Just like in Kindergarten.
Don declares:
Text is wonderful, but there are many messages that are hard to communicate with text alone. If you have to communicate those messages, visual explanations can help. This presentation looks at what writers can do to develop more effective visual explanations by building on skills and knowledge that most writers already have.
Bring your favorite pencil. You’re going to need it.
He was a hit at STC Summit 2010 and STC webinar favorite. Read the review!
Who should attend?
This session is ideal for writers who believe that visual explanations could be a better way to present challenging topics to their audience but feel intimidated about drawing or just don't know how to get started. You'll learn how visual explanations can fit into the work process that writers already understand. You'll see that it is not about art or beauty. It's all about thinking.
If you want to go deeper into the topic of developing effective visual explanations, sign-up for this workshop where you'll have an opportunity to work on exercises and practice new skills.
Participants in the workshop will receive a copy of Don's visual explanation workbook.
Topics include:
Visual literacy review.
Examples of visual explanations and where they came from.
14 basic building blocks and how to add blocks when needed.
How to turn big ideas into vivid vignettes.
The power of magic vision.
An 8-step visual-explanation building process that works.
The Buddy™ Exercise (expanded version).
Structures and when to use the classics.
Checklist of common mistakes you'll want to avoid.
This fast-paced session will include five mini exercises to help reinforce the ideas being addressed. There will be time along the way and at the end for questions.
About Don Moyer
Don Moyer is an award-winning designer and writer whose job is helping businesses make important ideas clear by making messages visible. Don has 40 years experience finding the essence of a message and turning it into something tangible and useful. Don and his team have created countless visual explanations for clients like AARP, Caterpillar, Deloitte, McDonald's, McKesson, Steelcase, and many others. For six years Don wrote and designed the Panel Discussion column monthly for Harvard Business Review. Don received degrees from the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts) and Yale University.
Don is the Principal of Thought form, and a professor at Carnegie Mellon where he teaches a course on Visual Explanations with content similar to what he is tackling in the workshop.
June 22, 2010 - Steven Jong STC Certification
A Reality Chairman of the STC Certification Committee, spoke about certification for technical communicators. Steve stated that "STC Certification for Technical Communicators will be a reality this year." Cindy Currie announced this in the recently concluded STC Summit last May 1-5. The Certification Committee has been working on the issue for over three years, and Steven came to our chapter meeting in June to present the status of the effort and answer your questions.
About Steven Jong: http://stevenjong.net/WordPress26/
May 20, 2010 - Hal Christensen How to Make the Workplace Smarter so Employees Don't Always Have to Be
Hal Christensen of Christensen/Roberts Solutions. Hal argues that organizations should invest less in stuffing knowledge into employees' memories and more in making the workplace itself smarter, in making the work easier for employees to do correctly. He will present an alternative scenario, one that shifts the focus from upfront courses to just-in-time knowledge, from Training to Technical Communications. Learn what a smart workplace looks like and examine the significant results achieved-usually in less time and for considerably less cost than the more traditional approaches.
About Hal Christensen: http://www.linkedin.com/in/halchristensen
Presentation: Hal Christensen: How to Make the Workplace Smarter so Employees Don't Always have to Be
April 22, 2010 - Scott Abel Intelligent Content Meets Intelligent Hardware and Software: How Devices, Communities, Standards and Mobile Applications can be Leveraged to Provide Smart Content Solutions
He will be speaking about how to leverage content to provide smart solutions when intelligent content meets hardware and software. Location awareness, social networking, mashups, and mobile communications are changing the way we interact with business-critical information - and with one another. Attend this session with content management strategist and social media choreographer, Scott Abel, and you will learn how iPhone/iPod/iPad applications, eBooks, analytical search engines, pattern matching technologies, smart web browsers, augmented reality, and location-aware devices are helping us provide intelligent content solutions to our clients. Discover how smart web browsers, smart devices, smart organizations, and smart content marketers are using technology to provide value-added intelligent content services to customers. Find out how some organizations are leveraging content technologies to differentiate themselves from the competition. And, learn what the absolute dumbest type of content is and why. Real world examples will be used and a question and answer session will be provided. Abel:
About Scott Abel: http://twitter.com/#!/scottabel
March 25, 2010 - Michael Priestley DITA: Content Strategy for the Enterprise
He will be speaking about DITA: Content Strategy for the Enterprise and how standardized content and taxonomy initiatives such as DITA are changing the way we think of content across industries, disciplines, and media.
Michael Priestley is the lead DITA atrchitect for IBM, and coeditor of the OASIS DITA 1.0 and 1.1 specifications. He is an experienced information and XML architect, and has presented and published proplifically on information development processes, information design principles, XML development techniques, structured authoring and Web 2.0, and, of course, DITA. He is currently supporting new DITA projects and working on DITA 1.2. Michael Priestley is co-editor of the DITA Specification, and IBM's representative on the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. He is one of DITA's original architects at IBM and is currently coordinating taxonomy initiatives across several IBM communities. He has written numerous papers on subjects such as hypertext navigation, singlesourcing, and interfaces to dynamic documents. He is currently working on XML and XSL for help and documentation management. You can read his blog at http://dita.xml.org/blog/25.
February 25, 2010 - Joe Ganci Top Ten Blunders in Developing E-Learning (And How to Avoid Them)
Can smart designers ever produce bad e-learning? Unfortunately, YES! We can come up with courses that are hardly used, quizzes that are too difficult or too easy, and end up quickly shelved and archived. If things go wrong, can we blame mistakes, errors, or "goofs" mainly on "tight deadlines"? Joe Ganci will share with us the ten most common blunders that doom any e-learning or instructional design project. Hear him talk in-depth about how these blunders can be avoided, whether you are in the midst of a project, or preparing to start a new one.
Joseph Ganci is President of Dazzle Technologies Corp., a custom training and learning company located in Ashburn, VA, outside Washington. D.C. Since 1983 he has been involved in every aspect of multimedia and learning development. Joe holds a degree in Computer Science, and is a published author, having written several books and articles about e-Learning.
An expert in e-Learning development, he has taught classes and seminars in many organizations and at many industry conferences. He is on a mission to better the quality of e-Learning with practical approaches that work.
Joe is a frequent speaker in several industry conferences, among them: The eLearning Guild annual and semi-annual gatherings and online forums (where Joe is a favorite); Society for Applied Learning Technology (Keynote Speaker), American Society for Training & Development, Federal Highway Administration, User Assistance Annual Conference, Society for Technical Communication, The Mayo Clinic, and others. Joe is a Member of the Adobe eLearning Advisory Board and Adobe Captivate Advisory Board.
About Joe Ganci: http://www.joeganci.com/
Presentation: Joe Ganci, Top Ten Blunders in Developing Elearning
January 22, 2010 - Bernard Aschwanden Moving from Unstructured Content to Structured Content
Bernard will be speaking about the key benefits of structure, the best practices to follow, and how and why to move from unstructured content to structured content. Organizations that implement content management systems before their content is ready often end up using the systems as expensive file servers with version control - making it difficult to successfully achieve an optimum return on investment from the systems. Preparing your content properly beforehand can ensure that the content management system is used to its best capacity and enable your organization to achieve an ROI in a year or less. Harry will be available before and after the meeting for any questions.
Bernard is a senior member of the STC and the President of the Toronto STC. He has helped hundreds of companies implement successful publishing solutions. Bernard Aschwanden is a recognized publishing technologies expert. He is an Adobe Certified Expert, a Certified Technical Trainer, and the author of numerous articles on xml-based publishing and single sourcing. He is the founder and President of Publishing Smarter. In addition to his publishing background and speaking tours, Bernard teaches a variety of courses. These include XML, DITA, CMS tools and related technologies, best practices for structured authoring, content management, and tools such as FrameMaker and XMetaL. He also works with clients to convert legacy content, analyze documentation, review workflows, and identify best practices in technical communications.
About Bernard Aschwanden: http://www.publishingsmarter.com/Home