The weather is turning, birds are chirping, and Spring is here! Along with it brings CONDUIT 2019, and we’re officially ONE WEEK away from registration closing up.

That’s right, registration is closing on March 29th at noon. Now is the time to register! If you usually find yourself waiting until the last minute—DON’T! There will be no extensions, and we don’t want you to miss out on informative talks, intriguing workshops, and networking opportunities with some of the best tech comm minds the Philadelphia area has to offer.

Register today!

Learning, networking, and socializing at CONDUIT 2019 continues even after the convention is closed! A post-con social will take place at the Kite & Key, located on 1836 Callowhill St., Philadelphia, PA (215) 568-1818.

The pay your own way group gathering will begin at about 5 pm on Saturday, April 6th. Continue interesting conversations you began at the convention, discuss talks you’ve seen, and take advantage of a lot of tech comm experience and know-how in one room!

If you haven’t already, register for CONDUIT! There’s only 9 days to go!

The 2019 Class of STC Fellows and Associate Fellows has just been announced, and we can count former STC-PMC President Tim Esposito among its ranks. Mr. Esposito, pictured above third from left, has been a longtime member of STC-PMC in a myriad of roles, culminating in a chapter presidency that earned us the Platinum Community Award for 2017.

Becoming an STC Fellow isn’t an easy task. From the Class of 2019 announcement post, the rank of STC Fellow “is conferred upon Associate Fellows who have attained such eminence in the field of technical communication that the Board deems them worthy of being singled out as one of the select few who have distinguished the Society and the profession.” I can think of few people who deserve this distinction more than Mr. Esposito.

He has earned this distinction “for his leadership through mentoring and his ability to combine the technical with the human to build bridges and bring people together.” That couldn’t be more true. It’s because of Mr. Esposito that STC-PMC Treasurer Madison Hughes and I are here in the first place. It was his patience and willingness to talk to (and nerd out with) complete newbies like the two of us that lead us to an incredible professional organization and a vast network of people wherein he remained near the epicenter. He’s a great mind and a cool guy all at once.

When reached out to for comment, Mr. Esposito responded, “I am honored to be named an STC Fellow this year. STC has given me so many wonderful opportunities for personal and professional growth, and I am glad that I was able to help others through the Society.”

He’s certainly returned those opportunities he had been given a hundredfold, to the entire chapter’s benefit. Thank you, Tim! We’re proud of you, Tim!

One of CONDUIT2019’s biggest sponsors and supporters is Adobe Tech Comm, and we wanted to give a little peek into what kind of information they’ll be bringing to the conference and the preceding workshops.

Their man of hour is Bernard Aschwanden, pictured right, and he’ll be heading up one of the workshops on the 5th and one of the talk on the 6th. (For the full overview and to sign up, please go here!)

Bernard is the founder of Publishing Smarter, and he’s also an Associate Fellow of STC and a Past President of STC. He has over 20 years of presentation experience, and his focus is on publishing better, publishing faster, and publishing smarter.

He brings those skills to his workshop: And… (Deliver More, Do More, Ask For More).

“Just asking “and” seems like such a small thing. You deliver PDF, they say “and…” to which you need to reply “HTML5, Apps, eBook, etc”. You offer to create a User Guide, they say “and…” so you include Admin Guide, Reference Guide, Tutorials, and Support Docs. Push back. See how you can deliver more, and do more, regardless of tools or tech. Show that you add value to sales, support, marketing, IT, and every department in the organization. Then leverage that to ask for (and get) more. More conferences, more resources, more vacation time, and more influence. Show up, learn to deliver more, do more, and get more. While there, ask what else you can get. “And…”

Includes content strategy and topic based writing. Determine people, process, tools, output, then plan and create content. We play the roles of a few groups as well. End of the day we plan, write, publish. “

Bernard’s talk the following day, Back Then. Here And Now. Around the Corner. Sharing The Content Lifecycle, similarly brings his skill and expertise to tackling the move from unstructured to structured content.

“Can we take what we’ve done in the past and use it to move to the future? Sure! Microsoft Office uses XML behind the scenes. How do you move from unstructured to structured content AND make what you create as accessible to others as possible? In this session Bernard explores a bit of what we’ve done in the past (write unstructured content) and explores how to think about re-working that information. We’ll take a Word file, perform quick analysis in Excel, rework the content, then migrate it to structured DITA content. Once it’s converted we’ll upload it to the cloud and showcase edits, reviews, and publish to multiple channels. See and participate in the workflow taking ideas of the past and applying them to content for the future. ”

Thank you so much to Bernard and to Adobe Tech Comm for adding so much to CONDUIT!

On Tuesday, March 19th, please join us for a webinar from 7pm to 8 pm, EST.

Maybe you’ve heard about DITA, but you’re not sure what ‘DITA’ means or what it is. If so, this is the webinar for you. In this webinar, we cover the big picture of what DITA is and how it works.

To register, please go here!

The topics we address include:
– The meaning of ‘DITA’ and the origin for the name
– Structured authoring
– Semantic tagging
– Basic DITA topic types
– DITA reuse
– How technical writers can apply DITA attributes to their content

Viewers will gain an understanding of how these aspects relate to a holistic DITA strategy and how they can best take advantage of DITA’s benefits.

About the Presenter:

Rafi Pryntz-Nadworny is an experienced market researcher and inbound marketer. He’s been working in the structured content industry for almost 4-years. He has a fascination with fostering creativity and often will pull from an array of disciplines to improve an outcome. Outside of work he enjoys acroyoga and cooking.