Conference Roundup
Thanks to all those who attended the 2012 Mid-Atlantic Conference! View slides and biographies of the presenters below.
KeynoteThe power of stories
Stories are how we make sense of the world. In UX and technical communication, they let us imagine an experience through our audience’s perspective. From personas to design scenarios to usability testing, they help us create lean, global, accessible and usable products. Whitney, co-author of “Storytelling for User Experience and Global UX: Design
and research in a connected world” will look at ways stories can help us bridge the gap between ‘what is’ and ‘what might be’ – and change the world.
Workshop
Tell me about that: personas and storytelling
This half-day workshop will explore ways of using personas throughout a project – from audience analysis through usability testing. We’ll look at the story of the personas themselves and learn how to interview a persona or channel one for a user-centered review. Then we’ll write stories to introduce personas to the whole product team, explore
new design ideas from the persona’s perspective, or write an open-ended usability scenario.
Who: Anyone who wants to integrate what we know about users throughout the process. Knowledge of personas is helpful, but not required.
You will:
- Write stories for different purposes and learn how to craft stories for each.
- Try exercises you can use on your own projects, like interviewing personas or writing a quick story to put a review in context.
- Explore how much (or how little) detail a story needs to introduce a new design idea.
Speaker Information
Whitney is a user experience researcher with a passion for clear communication. She has worked with organizations such as the National Cancer Institute, IEEE, Sage, Amtak, and the Open University on design research and evaluation, and coaches developing UX teams.
She has been president of the UPA, a Fellow of the STC and served on two national advisory committees for usability and accessibility. Her current challenge is the Accessible Voting Technologies Initiative, working to help everyone vote.
She is the author of “Storytelling for User Experience” (with Kevin Brooks, Rosenfeld Media)
and “Global UX: Design and Research in a Connected World” (with Daniel Szuc).
Whitney enjoys meeting people around the world and using those insights to design products where people matter.
Brief Description of Presentation Today, we create content that might go out as online help and PDF. Tomorrow… Mobile? Dynamic online help? Perhaps some output being developed now? Who in 1992 foresaw the growth of the web?
In the past, we used control files incorrectly, set up projects inefficiently, and violated standards and got away with it because we had time to make mistakes and fix them. But today’s project pressures require us more and more to create content that can be used on whatever display devices the future may bring.
Many features and technologies needed to do this have been built into our tools for years, but haven’t been used correctly (or at all), or are little known because few people needed them. Others are just emerging. So to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, this presentation looks at what control features and standards we need to use to future-proof our content.
Speaker Information Neil has 33 years of experience in technical communication, with 27 in training, consulting, and development for various online formats and tools including WinHelp, HTML Help, JavaHelp, WebHelp, CE Help, Doc-To-Help, RoboHelp, Flare, and many now known only in legend. Neil is a columnist for Intercom, a frequent speaker for STC chapters, regional and annual conferences, and other professional groups. He is a member of STC’s New England chapter, started and ran the chapter’s EDoc SIG from 1993 to 1996, created and manages the Beyond the Bleeding Edge stem at STC’s annual conference, represented STC for the W3C (WorldWide Web Consortium) for three years in the early 2000s, and is an STC Fellow.
Neil is Madcap-certified for Flare and Mimic, Adobe-certified for RoboHelp and Captivate, and Viziapps-certified for Viziapps Studio. He provides training, consulting, and development for online documentation and help, Flare, RoboHelp, Captivate, Mimic, XML, single-sourcing, structured authoring, and mobile app development through Hyper/Word Services of Tewksbury, MA, www.hyperword.com. He can be reached at nperlin@nperlin.cnc.net, and blogs and tweets periodically about technical communication, amateur astronomy, and barbecue at NeilEric.
Brief Description of Presentation On-demand, web-based publishing has many potential applications in the technical communications field, especially when dynamic customization of rendered content is necessary and/or real-time updates from a continuously-changing source are required. Using real examples with commonly-available web server technologies such as Java Server Pages (JSP) and Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP), this session will cater to the do-it-yourselfer who is curious about escaping the shackles of static published content. We will include considerations for content reuse, as well as multi-channel publishing. The session will conclude with a real-world case study of one such homegrown system that has saved (and continues to save) one company significant amounts of money through increases in efficiency (while simultaneously improving quality to boot).
Speaker Information Russ Ward is an experienced technical writer, structured technologies developer, and avid developer of plugins for Adobe FrameMaker. He has spent many years working with structured content to maximize efficiency in the techcomm environment, both as an employee and as an independent consultant. He is also an experienced trainer and speaks periodically at conferences and other peer events.
russ_ward_pmc_2012_slides
Brief Description of Presentation How many times have you seen presenters “lay an egg” while speaking to an audience? They break every rule and you, having attended, felt as if it was a waste of time. This program discusses seven communication mistakes many presenters make while speaking in front of an audience.
As a result of this presentation, participants will be able to:
- Deliver more dynamic presentations
- See what NOT to do (that they may presently be doing)
- Walk away with new-found CONFIDENCE as to how to more effectively present
- Have more people come up to them afterwards to speak one-on-one
- Do more business
Speaker Information Frank Felsburg is an account executive with Magnum Group. He works with organizations that want to communicate globally and optimize their international presence. A large percentage of his clients are in the Training & Development sector. Magnum translates and localizes their training content for non-English speaking learners.
He’s worked with organizations to help them produce foreign-language versions of online training modules as well as presentations and workbooks for instructor-led training. He’s Past President of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of ASTD (the American Society of Training & Development) and currently serves on ASTD National’s Chapter Recognition Committee.
Frank has delivered stand-up training in the areas of customer service, sales and communication skills and has also worked for a custom eLearning development company. A graduate of Villanova University, he is the author of numerous articles and a book on listening.
Brief Description of Presentation Depending on the complexity of a Captivate project, the time required to develop an hour’s worth of training content can range anywhere from 90 to 240 hours according to current published measurements and standards. In today’s fast-track project environment, project mangers and development budgets are not prepared to accommodate lengthy multi-media training development efforts that require large blocks of time. In developing a recent multimedia project using Captivate, this presenter was able to utilize some lesser-known techniques and shortcuts for using Captivate to complete a one-hour project in less than the recognized standard for development time. During this session, the presenter will demonstrate some of the most effective tips, tricks, and shortcuts that will enable you to fast-track a Captivate project without having to sacrifice quality.
These techniques include the following:
- Making the best use of templates and styles
- Using Placeholders
- Using batch processing
- Exporting and importing text
- Using a combination of capture techniques for the best image results
- Making the best use of popup and rollover captions
- Determining and using the best narration methods
- Editing, inserting, and deleting content
- Using buttons and interactive objects
- Setting the best timing
Speaker Information Dave Peirce is a Senior-level Technical Writer/Documentation Specialist and Instructional Designer who has worked with multimedia and computer-based training since its earliest days. Recent assignments have enabled him to produce multimedia-based training materials using a variety of applications including Authorware, Camtasia, and most recently, Captivate. Using these applications, it is important to have a good understanding of an application’s capabilities and limitations to produce the best possible result. During this session, Dave will share with you information about some of the most important characteristics of Captivate that will enable you to produce the best results in the least amount of time.
In their second year of co-presenting, Barrie Byron and Ann Grove will shed light on topics such as how to:
- Leverage your listening and analysis skills to assess your options
- Deal with conflict when you feel powerless
- Become more comfortable with conflict
- Use feedback from your coworkers to improve your performance, and the quality of your work
You will be empowered once you understand the dynamics of this common experience.
Speaker Information
About Barrie
With dedicated offices in two states, Barrie Byron is an award-winning information developer for software products with more than 20 years of professional experience. Barrie is a consultant with a keen interest in new technologies and tools. She is past president of the STC Palm Beaches Chapter, an STC Associate Fellow, the competitions manager for STC’s Philadelphia Metro Chapter, and a senior STC member. With more than 12 years of Toastmasters experience, she is Past President of Princeton Toastmasters and has earned the Advanced Communicator Gold and Advanced Leader credentials.
About Ann
A 12-year work-at-home veteran, Ann is president of and lead consultant for Logical Writing Solutions, Inc., a communications consulting firm she founded 10 years ago. Logical provides compliance assistance, documentation project management, business analysis, technical writing, marketing, instructional design, and training services. Ann is a senior member of STC and has served in various volunteer and leadership roles, including Past President of the former Susquehanna Valley Chapter. She is a member of the New York Metro and Philadelphia Metro STC chapters. She serves as co-chair of the Health Information Technology Group of the Technology Council of Central Pennsylvania.
Brief Description of Presentation Content is King, but adding a measured dose interactivity to your online Help will increase readability and usability, as well as make it more compelling. This session will demonstrate a number of simple ways to improve your Help, even if you are single sourcing.
We will:
- Discover the options available for interactivity, including expanding/collapsing text, image maps, glossary popups, Google Maps, and more.
- Discuss how they can improve readability and usability.
- Learn how to implement them in a single sourcing environment.
Speaker Information Nicky Bleiel is the Lead Information Developer for Doc-To-Help and a Doc-To-Help trainer. She has 17 years of experience in technical communication and is a Director At Large of the Society for Technical Communication. She has presented talks at STC’s Summit, STC regional conferences and chapter meetings, and WritersUA, tcworld, LavaCon, CIDM/DITA North America, and DocTrain. See http://www.nickybleiel.com/ for a list of her talks and articles.
5PlusWaysOnlineHelp_Bleiel_MidAtlantic 2012
Brief Description of Presentation With ever-increasing globalization, more and more technical materials are destined to be localized in at least one foreign language. Preparing materials with translation in mind can save a great deal of time and money during the translation process itself and make you a hero at your company or to your client.
But what does this mean? It’s not just the writing itself that is involved; things like the authoring tools you use, controlled language and terminology management, organizing your materials for ease of reuse, and choice of graphics and icons.
This presentation will introduce technical writers to the nuts and bolts of the translation and localization process, the kinds of costs that are typically involved, and to a variety of things that they can do as authors to facilitate and help control the costs of that process.
Speaker Information Myriam Siftar is the president of MTM LinguaSoft, a professional language services company, which she founded in 2003 after a successful career as an information technology consultant. Myriam was born in Paris and received degrees in computer science and management in France, before coming to the United States where she also obtained an MBA from Drexel University.
Her cross-cultural experience and her knowledge of business and technology proved a strong basis for building her own language company. Her background has also made her an engaging and effective speaker on topics such as multicultural communication and website globalization for many organizations, including the World Trade Centers of Greater Philadelphia, Central Pennsylvania and Delaware; the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and the US Export Assistance Centers of the Department of Commerce in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. She is active in various other business and professional organizations. She has also spoken previously on translation-related topics to the Philadelphia Metro Chapter of the Society for Technical Communications and at the Practical Conference on Communication (PCOC), a regional STC conference in Tennessee.
Myriam Siftar slides
Brief Description of Presentation Customer Journey Maps (CJMs) provide a visual framework that puts you in your customer’s footsteps when using your product or service (hereafter referenced as simply service). These maps help you understand your customer’s needs and intentions that bring them to your company’s service. Also, Customer Journey Maps help you identify customer touch points using your company’s service.
In this session, we’ll define Customer Journey Maps and identify their general components. We’ll discuss how to create them. We’ll review the benefits of Customer Journey Maps. As your understanding of your customer’s journey using your service becomes increasingly clearer, you can design interactions or content that better supports customer success. You can also identify new opportunities for customer dialogue.
Speaker Information Donn is an award-winning technical communicator dedicated to enhancing customer experiences through clear, engaging content. He has 25 years experience developing software documentation. Currently, he is a Senior Information Developer with Vertex, a tax technology company in Berwyn, PA.
Donn is an STC Associate Fellow. He has been a featured speaker at local conferences since 2003 on information design and user experience-related topics. He has been active in the Philadelphia Metro Chapter competitions for 13 years. In addition, he is involved with the STC Community Affairs Outreach Committee (CAC) and the Usability and User Experience (UUX) SIG. He is a member of the Usability Professional Association (UPA), the Institute for Information Architecture (IAI), Philly Chi, and the Interaction Design Association (IxDA).
Donn holds an M.S. in Technical and Science Communications from Drexel University and a M. Ed. in Instructional Systems from Penn State University, Great Valley, PA.
View his presentation Customer Journey Maps DDeBoard March 2012 and CustomerJourney Maps Exercise DDeBoard March 2012 (1).
Brief Description of Presentation Help cards, Quick Reference cards or Job Aids have traditionally been used over the decades to assist in learning new tasks, or as refreshers for tasks performed infrequently. The mobile platform is perfect for these performance support tools but the question is – how do you convert them to mobile and ensure their legibility and functionality?
This presentation will address a number of issues:
- How to format Help card (etc.) information for mobile devices so that information is legible and usable. Specifically how do you handle the fact that most of these documents are in a tabular format which may not work well on a small device?
- How to edit content to reduce the amount of text needed to convey the message.
- How mobile performance support tools can be made interactive without much (or any) programming.
- Technological bells and whistles that can be added.
Speaker Information Before starting TechWRITE in 1985, Nad managed documentation departments for several large corporations. She is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, an Associate Fellow at the Society for Technical Communication, on the Board of Directors of the Plain Language Association InterNational, and a Past President of the Philadelphia Metro Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. You can contact Nad at twnad@techw.com or 856-848-6593.