STC Awards Banquet April 2000 Meeting

By Mike Sharp Originally published in News & Views June 2000 issue. Copyright 2000 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

Forty chapter members gathered at the DoubleTree Guest Suites in Plymouth Meeting to honor twenty-one people who submitted entries for the Society's 1999 Online and Publications competitions. Of these entries, five won Distinguished and seven won Excellence awards, the two highest levels of recognition. Cindy Smith, Online Competition chair, emceed the program, introducing presentations by each winner of a Distinguished award on what they think made their entry a winner. The presentations Charlotte Leonardis, of Sonic Foundry, used popup graphics to provide information at several levels of density for users of a complex music editing software application. When a technical concept or term appeared in the help text, Charlotte provided a link that would pop up a diagram that either explained or supplemented the concept. An extensive glossary provided easily- found definitions of the many technical terms that appear in the user interface. Vertex, Inc. publishes tax accounting software, including CBT training modules that show new employees or in-house staff how to use their products. Brian Winter thinks that the most important factor in their winning entry was the strong vision of the end product that they pursued relentlessly. He also sought help from as many people in appropriate departments as possible. They used a page template to build consistency into the presentation. For example, navigation buttons and explanations appear consistently in the same relative positions. The effective use of humor helped the team liven an otherwise dry topic; but humor can backfire. Test it carefully with your intended audience. John Napolitano, of the Institute for Scientific Information, demonstrated the use of moving popup callout boxes in the ISI Discovery Agent Tutorial. These boxes show users of ISI's new Discovery Agent how to complete an input form as they move from field to field. Finally, Marcia Jacquette, of FCG Corporation, described how she produced a large pharmaceutical industry document on a low budget, but with a highly professional look. Her tips: Use many illustrations with explanatory text Keep step-by-step procedures short Have a strong table of contents, index, and navigation icon set Next year Now is not too early to begin planning your own entries for the 2000 Online and Publications competitions. Early October is the deadline for submissions. [Editor's Note: the application and rules for next year's competitions will be in the September issue of the newsletter.] You stand to gain tremendously valuable feedback from your peers. If you cannot submit an entry, consider serving as a judge. For the time you contribute to review several publications or online entries, again you can get valuable insight to guide your own activities as a technical communicator .

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Last updated: January 18, 1999 (mvh)