7 Simple Steps to DITA

By Lori Jamieson

At our November meeting, Tim Grantham from Front Runner Training offered a practical training session on what might be considered herding ducks – making documents line up nicely into a row so they can be moved into and managed in DITA.

In his “7 Simple Steps to DITA” talk, Tim acknowledged that simple rarely means easy, but encouraged us to cling to the goal of using DITA to achieve productivity gains. “There’s a lot of wasted energy in managing conventional documents,” Tim says. That includes manually reformatting translated documents, manually copying and pasting content from one document to another, manually updating copies of content in multiple documents and manually converting documents from one proprietary format to another.

So what’s Tim’s recommended starting point? “Identify a common document type. Really dig in to find the documents that belong together... the shorter and more commonly used the better. His next steps?

Step 2 – Identify the structural elements common to most instances of the document type. For a product brochure, this might be title, product, value proposition, features and benefits, contact information.

Step 3 – Identify common content.

Step 4 – Identify unique content. Example: product name will be different from one brochure to the next.

Step 5 - Define a form or content template for each document type.

Define variables/ properties for fragments of content that occur frequently within an instance of the document type.

Step 6: Once you have standardized structure, then standardize content. Find chunks of content that are the same everywhere they are used.

Step 7: Standardize formatting. Keep paragraph, character, table styles as simple as possible.

Other hints for beginners: Use only defined styles. Define the number of text styles that you really need and resist every urge to start customizing. Define styles for structural elements – titles, images, terms, cross-references.

Tim’s recommendations for additional investigation: DITA Open Toolkit, a software add-on that can apply formatting to content. Tim says it is fast and reliable but that customizing the default formats is complicated for non-technical users. He also recommends Introduction to DITA, a new book by JoAnn Hackos.

2011: A Year of Renewal

By Robert Cundari

With the final days and weeks of 2010 winding down and the heavy weight of the global economic crisis finally becoming less detrimental to our recognized way of life, ask yourself “Have I chosen the right professional tools to promote my career in 2011?”

As technical communicators, we recognize and seize opportunities to enhance our skills as often as we can. With that in mind, the STC is once again encouraging all current members to renew their memberships for 2011 as soon as possible - to receive the most “bang for your buck”. With several head-office run initiatives and our local chapter incentives, there simply isn’t a better time to renew your STC and local chapter memberships.

Here is a summary of the joint incentives:

1. STC-sponsored Community Horse Race – prizes are awarded to the chapters that achieve the highest renewal rate in the first quarter of 2011.

2. Prize giveaways upon membership renewal including iPods, Kindle e-readers, etc.

3. Member-Get-a-Member referral program to receive up to $50 off your membership (See STC's Member-Get-a-Member page for recruiting tips, sample emails to send to colleagues, talking points, and more.)

4. Southwestern Ontario Chapter-sponsored Participation Contest – points are awarded for membership renewal, referrals, event participation, etc. – Prizes will be handed out at the AGM to the top three “point-getters”. Monthly results of the contest will be posted on the STC-SOC website.

Time is Running Out ....

Current members, remember that your membership expires December 31, 2010. Membership renewals have begun in earnest and for those considering renewal, you can do so by clicking on the RENEW button at:

http://www.stc.org/membership/renew-your-stc-membership.asp

Renew your STC membership with the Southwestern Ontario Chapter before December 31^st and receive 50 points towards the Participation Contest.

What are you waiting for?

Technical Communication Tools Education Evening

By Sam (Suman) Saha

The Southwestern Ontario Chapter of the STC presented an Education Evening on Tuesday, September 15th 2010 featuring many of the common applications that technical communicators use at their jobs. The SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) readily answered questions related to the tools, highlighted the relative strengths and weaknesses of these tools, and provided tips and tricks for their use.

The Education Evening was held in "progression" format, where each expert hosted a table, and attendees choose the table based on their level of interest. The attendees switched between the various tables according to the degree of detail desired.

The presenters were:

Julia Oulette - Adobe Illustrator

Peter Kehoe - Adobe Photoshop

Shannon Lerner - Adobe Acrobat

David Jaarsma - Microsoft Word

Jessie-Lee Schwartz - Microsoft Word

Bernard Aschwanden - Framemaker

Christine McKarney - Robohelp

Feedback received from some of the attendees is below:

Fei Min:

Advanced MS Word

The coolest thing that I learned is that there is a RefStyle in the field codes. If you create a unique paragraph style, then a template user can type in that paragraph and whatever they type will appear wherever you’ve used the RefStyle field. This makes filling in document information like the author, date and version really easy, and that information can be displayed on every page in the footer. Jessie-Lee and David had plenty of neat tricks to show.

Adobe Photoshop

This program has so many cool things that it’s hard to pick just one. I guess my favorite was using Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights to fix a photograph when the lighting was too dark or too bright. It works better than using Brightness/Contrast. Julia demonstrated this on a picture where there was a black lump on a sofa, and with one click on the Shadows/Highlights dialogue, you saw that the black lump was really a dog.

RoboHelp

Christine showed me how she is using RoboHelp at work right now, and pointed out what it can and can’t do. Their source files are in HTML, and they use RoboHelp to organize the HTML files into an online help system, with a few special features courtesy of Java scripts. RoboHelp also promotes the re-use of text by supporting shared text with “snippets”, conditional text and variables.

Sam:

Robohelp

I was amazed to see that Robohelp has progressed so much since the time I last worked on it, which was about 5 years ago. It is much more user-friendly, and comes with a lot more functionalities. Christine demonstrated the various ways Robohelp can be manipulated to produce awesome documents, which was really great!! I look forward to working with Robohelp again very soon.

Adobe Illustrator

Although I never had a chance to work with Adobe Illustrator before, going forward I would definitely love to work with this particular tool. The features and functionalities are a great help for any writer in the business of creating user friendly documents. Never knew that a picture can be broken down and manipulated in so many ways to suit the end user’s needs. Really awesome!!

Debbie:

I don't know quite what I expected from the Tools progression, but it provided everything I wanted and more. I attended the Adobe Acrobat, Advanced Word, and Illustrator sessions.

The Adobe Acrobat session was an eye-opener. Most of my exposure to the product was for creating PDFs. Little did I know that there were so many other functions that I had never even explored. I watched as presenter, Shannon Lerner, walked through the process of having multiple authors provide feedback on one document. She also demonstrated the steps to creating forms. While I have seen forms created in other applications, I have never seen it done in Acrobat.

As for Word, I have just started to use Word 2007 so I figured I would be learning something new about this version. I was not disappointed. For example, while I know about macros I have not used them very effectively. David Jaarsma showed me the light. He demonstrated several macros that he had created. Frankly, I hadn't even considered developing a macro so that I could create a table to meet the company standards and in only one step. Jessie-Lee Schwartzalso offered her expertise. It was great how she worked with David so that the information they provided complemented each other so that you were doubling the amount of information received in a relatively short time.

Illustrator and Photoshop are not applications that I use every day. In fact, they are applications that I would love to use. Presenter Julia Oulette showed me why my interest is justified. While my focus has always been on Photoshop, it was great to see what Illustrator can do. I could immediately see how it could be extremely useful for technical communication. While I am used to looking at a picture as a whole, I have a new found interest in vectors and what you can do once a picture is broken into parts.

Overall, the Technical Communication Tools Education Evening was definitely an eye opener about the various tools that are used in producing high quality user friendly help guides and documents. For more information about the Education Evening, please visit http://stc-soc.org/calendar/Sept13Bios.php

What has the STC – SOC Council been up to?

Meeting monthly, Council and chapter members discuss and plan activities that promote the STC mission and help support the chapter’s vibrant membership with events and education evenings.

Briefly, here are the highlights of what has happened over the past two months:

The community partnership with Communitech is now established: Included in this partnership is joint meeting participation, joint website promotion and dedicated liaisons who ensure an ongoing communication link.

The Participation Game criteria will soon be finalised: The game’s objective is to track and reward member and non-member contributions to chapter activities.

The Technology Spotlight: Look for our chapter’s advertisement in the Who’s Who section of this publication.

Social Media: We plan to set up chapter profiles in Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Groups to help improve our visibility and offer you more flexibility in obtaining your chapter updates.

2010/11 STC Regional Competition: We’ve joined with the Toronto chapter again to determine the region’s best technical publications and online communications.

Heidi Thiessen Memorial Award: There are revised rules; promotion will begin in November and the entrant deadline will be set for January 2011. Final details will be advertised shortly.

Education evenings: The November evening will feature Tim Grantham as he talks about how to get all the benefits of DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) without the pain. The agenda for January’s session is being developed.

Spring Workshop: Planning is underway for our annual workshop in the spring. Think about budgeting for this event now. Stay tuned for details!

As you can see the Council, chapter members and volunteers have been busy getting things done. Check back shortly to see where their hard work and dedication is leading the chapter.

2010/11 STC Regional Competition

This year’s competition is now open!

We’ve joined with the Toronto chapter again to determine the region’s best technical publications and online communications in these categories:
• Informational Materials
• Instructional Materials
• Promotional Materials
• User Support Materials

The simplified categories should make entering and judging the competition easier, allowing judges to give great feedback on each entry.

You can get all the information you need by clicking the Competitions link on the STC-SOC website.

The deadline to enter is December 3rd, 2010.

Judges are also needed – please contact Nancy Halverson competition@stc-soc.org if you’re interested.

STC - SOC - First Annual General Meeting

This June we held our first Annual General Meeting at the Heuther’s Boardroom. Members and non-members were welcomed. Since only chapter members have voting privileges, the 12 members in attendance comprised quorum for the business component of the agenda. Fei Min Lorente opened the evening with a recap of our accomplishments this year. It’s an impressive list - 16 activities long. These are just the highlights!

1. Registered as a non-profit organization
2. Wrote our bylaws which were approved by head office
3. Hosted four education evenings and four web seminars
4. Ran a successful student award competition
5. Jointly held the technical publications and online competitions with the Toronto chapter
6. Held our wine and cheese awards night
7. Organized two days of workshops
8. Published the newsletter
9. Launched a Blog and events discussion list
10. Sent a council member to the International STC conference to participate in the leadership day
11. Revised the International Affiliation Agreement and sent it to head office
12. Mounted a membership renewal campaign
13. Presented the benefits of the STC to the editor’s group at RIM
14. Organized regular meetings and correspondence with the other Canadian chapter Presidents
15. Signed a limited partnership agreement with Communitech
16. Moved the website to a new host

We’ve also started planning for next year, and are investigating technology to allow our members to be more involved. The new Blog and the events list permit more timely and interactive communication. We’d like to expand this forum into a discussion area for questions and answers and increase the number of web casts and teleconferences so members who live and work at a distance can be included. We’re also working with other chapters on various issues. At the Canadian level, we’re working on a re-write of the International Affiliation Agreement and producing a Canadian Salary Survey.

Financially, our chapter is in the black. Our Treasurer, Jim Bousquet presented the audited financial statement for 2009. Details are available on request.

From the business side of the annual meeting, the members in attendance approved the bylaws unanimously. Then we held the Board of Directors elections. Fei Min Lorente continues as President, Jim Bousquet as Treasurer and Carol Lawless as Secretary.

That wrapped up the General Meeting agenda, but not the evening. Aside from enjoying a scrumptious dinner, and great company, we announced our partnership with Communitech. It’s a great opportunity for us to tap into their large local membership and Communitech now has another professional offering for their members. We also officially presented Lori Jankowski with her Distinguished Services Award.

Finally, Fei Min thanked the many volunteers who have made the year a success through their hard work. And of course, Fei Min deserves much thanks and credit for her hard work. Debbie Kerr, Past President took the floor to acknowledge everything Fei Min has done.


We wrapped up the evening with Wilfred Laurier University’s Nashifa Carter, who gave a very interesting and informative talk on persuasion and working with Subject Matter Experts and other colleagues. See Working effectively... for a summary of her talk.

Annual General Meeting Guest Speaker: Nashifa Carter

Working Effectively with Subject Matter Experts


Technical communicators usually share a common contradiction between their position in an organization’s hierarchy, and the job they have to do. For the most part, they are not in positions of authority. From this powerless position, they have to get information from co-workers (SMEs and managers) who are busy with their main duties, and convince them to adhere to the documentation schedule.

In an engaging and entertaining discussion, Nashifa guided the audience through the obstacles to working with people who have a higher status than technical communicators. We discussed some of the challenges to working relationships: people have different ways of communicating, they often misunderstand each other, they sometimes don’t respect each other, and in the case of technical communicators, we are often bearing bad news, such as “This description is unintelligible” or “I found another bug”. We also talked about the best way to present bad news, which is to state the problem in a way that does not accuse the SME of doing something wrong, but puts the emphasis on difficulty we are having. We compared “you don’t make any sense” to “I don’t understand”.

Conflict between people can be caused by generational gaps. People of different ages often have different expectations and attitudes with respect to acceptable behaviour at work, what constitutes good work ethic, and how to be compensated for productivity. Different corporate cultures, or simply different cultures, can cause conflict, too, for the same reasons as generational differences. And there are still many basic gender differences that have nothing to do with equality, but everything to do with the fact that male and female brains operate differently. (At this point, Nashifa reminded the audience that our discussion of differences and their causes are sweeping generalizations, but are still useful in a broad sense because they raise awareness about the source of interpersonal differences.)

To gain the co-operation of SMEs, technical communicators might try working on their interpersonal skills. They can look at the problem from the SME’s point of view. From there, a technical communicator and SME can try to find common ground.

To gain the respect of the SMEs, technical communicators must establish credibility by demonstrating competence in the job, good work ethic, and professional behaviour. Technical communicators should make the extra effort to say “thank you”, and be confident enough to say “I’m sorry”, showing that they take responsibility for their actions. Most of all, they must form relationships with the SMEs.

As for how to form relationships, we had two different methodologies from the audience. One person uses the “bring cookies and buy them a coffee” method. She found this inexpensive form of bribery to be effective, especially when you can get information from the SME over coffee. Another attendee deliberately avoided the cookie method and chose instead to go out for a beer with the guys, and share in their jokes. In both cases, these women formed relationships with the SMEs, and gained their co-operation.

The audience left with the encouraging message that although technical communicators are often in powerless positions, they can still wield influence. Nashifa also kindly offered her contact information in case anyone has more questions or would like to discuss a particular case. You can contact her at ncarter@wlu.ca.

----------------------------------------

Nashifa has over 10 years' experience in Human Resource Management, focusing on recruitment and selection, performance management, training and development, and organizational development. Her experience encompasses both the private and the public sectors, and she has taught at Laurier’s School of Business & Economics for the past 13 years.

Her management and consulting experience includes both a strategic focus: reviewing and recommending changes to organizational systems; and a tactical focus: implementing change. Her strengths lie in training and development, downsizing and reorganization, performance management, and recruitment. She assesses needs and develops materials for management and staff training programs that she delivers on a variety of subjects, including:

• Communication and interpersonal skills

• Conflict management

• Problem solving

• Customer service

• Human Resource Management (HRM)

In addition, Nashifa has undertaken several communication projects: creating and writing training materials, HR manuals, employee handbooks, brochures and newsletters. Currently she is the Harassment/Discrimination Coordinator at WLU.

Education Days 2010

It’s nearly impossible to explain two days of workshops in less than a thousand words; you just had to be there! As a result, I decided that this article will contain the main points that I took away from the workshops. If the other attendees noticed different things, I hope they’ll add their comments to this blog.

Topic-Based and Structured Authoring – Neil Perlin

We learned to write in topics instead of documents. A topic is a self-contained piece of information about a subject. If it is self-contained, it can be re-used or put in a different order. It encourages minimalistic writing, forces writers to organize their writing, and allows many different writers to contribute to a “document” without overwriting each others’ work. If your target documentation format uses an online help paradigm instead of a book paradigm, it’s much easier to think and write in topics.

We learned to develop a structure and use it consistently. Structure provides standard sectional, syntactic and stylistic rules. The structure can be unenforced and simply defined in a template or style guide, or you can enforce structure using various tools such as XML (eXtensible Markup Language).

We learned how to plan and manage the project of implementing topic-based writing and structured authoring, such as becoming aware of the company’s goals and promoting how this project can contribute to those goals. Neil was especially helpful with tips on dealing with the political situations that can develop between departments when implementing such a project.

We learned that the answer to all questions begins with “It depends…”

As he taught, Neil illustrated his points with stories from his extensive consulting experience. For example, sometimes he recommended the same conclusions that the employees reached, but since he’s a consultant, management listened to him. If you’re having trouble convincing management to do something, a consultant can be helpful in this regard. Sometimes he’s called in to review two competing proposals and choose one. If you’re looking for the best way forward, a consultant can provide an objective, knowledgeable opinion, but you don’t have to hire a consultant to do all the work.

In the afternoon, we did some hands-on exercises with our own work samples. We practiced looking at common elements, identifying the topic type, and creating an appropriate structure that would encompass all instances of this topic type. It was an interesting exercise to apply all the theories from the morning to actual documents.

After all Neil’s hard work, we took him out for dinner at Hog Tails BarBQue to satisfy Neil’s other professional interest…. See Neil’s blog for a restaurant review. You’ll have to scroll down to find Hog Tails.

DITA from legacy to the future – Bernard Aschwanden

Building on Neil’s information about topic-based authoring and structured writing, Bernard taught us about DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture). DITA is a standardized XML (eXtensible Markup Language), so it enforces structure and uses the topic paradigm. Since DITA is a standard, all the tools that support DITA can exchange information seamlessly. At the end of the hands-on section, Bernard proved this to us by taking topics we wrote in FrameMaker or XMetal, and opened all of them in both tools.

In a nutshell:

·         Information is written in topics, and the topics fall into three basic categories: task, concept and reference.

o        Task is a procedure; how to do something

o        Concept is what something is, and why it’s useful.

o        Reference is quick access to detailed facts when the user already knows how and why.

·         A map defines the organization and hierarchy of the topics. It creates relationships between them.

·         A reltable is another organizational component of DITA that allows you to create cross-references between topics that don’t depend on hierarchy. Gathering cross-references in a single entity allows you to manage these links separately from the information.

·         Special elements for content re-use and publishing:

·         A conref for shared topics; the topic in its entirety appears wherever the conref is.

·         A ditaval for conditional text; allows you to filter the information on an attribute so that only some information appears in the publication.

Besides learning about the components and composition of DITA, we learned how to convert legacy documentation to DITA. We heard about the cost, procedures for reviewing existing documentation, a conversion plan, mapping existing documentation to the DITA paradigm, and available tools. Since the information that is written in DITA is independent of formatting, you define the format using whichever scheme or tool you choose. For instance, you might choose a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) if your output is HTML, or FrameMaker if your output is PDF.

Armed with basic information about the most commonly used DITA elements, we wrote a topic in either FrameMaker 9 or XMetal 6. Besides putting the DITA information into practice, most of us had the opportunity to try out a new tool or a new version. I found that writing to comply with the DITA structure requires a different way of thinking because each unit of information is compartmentalized into a predefined bucket. You begin by deciding whether you are writing a concept, task or reference concept; the order and structure of the rest of your writing is then determined by that decision. This is the nature of adhering to a standard, which brings about the benefits of content re-use and tool independence.

DITA is a large and comprehensive standard. Bernard did an excellent job of providing us with the maximum information possible in a short amount of time. The hands-on exercises helped us to grasp the concepts and put them into practice, and gave us a taste of the challenges involved. The final demonstration where he took the topics we all wrote and displayed them in two different proprietary tools, with no conversion or reformatting, showed us some of the possible benefits if we were to take on the challenge of using DITA. Love it or hate it, DITA is a fascinating construct.

Education Days 2011

If you feel like you missed something, you did! Hope you can join us next year.

We’re already thinking about Education Days 2011 and we’re open to suggestions. Please get in touch with Tracey Aitcheson  if you have a topic or a speaker who you’d like to hear.

Canadian Chapters Meeting #4

Five of the six Canadian STC chapter presidents met in April by teleconference, and we discussed the following ideas.

Electing a Canadian Director

The directors who won in the 2010 election each garnered from 306 to 457 votes. Considering this, we think we could elect a Canadian director with just over 300 votes. Bernard Aschwanden from the Toronto chapter intends to run for a director position next year. STC policy states that chapters cannot endorse a candidate, but we can certainly help to publicize the candidacy of a Canadian. We can’t expect a single Canadian director to change the entire STC organization, and every director has a duty to the entire organization, not just one country, but a Canadian director can advocate for issues affecting members outside of the USA, and facilitate communication between the Canadian chapters and the Board of Directors. The Canadian chapter presidents agreed to continue working together to facilitate this two-way communication.

Salary Survey

The national salary survey has been drafted, but we are debating who should participate in the survey. On one hand, the survey results are a significant benefit, and we would like to restrict it to STC members. On the other hand, if we include non-members, we will obtain a better statistical sample. However, concerns have been raised about the accuracy of the survey if we cannot be sure that the participants are technical communicators. One possibility is that we send the survey to employers and clients in addition to members. Discussions are ongoing, but we feel we can meet the intended schedule of an October distribution for December results.

Insurance Proposal

Canada West Coast chapter is spearheading the investigation into health insurance for independent contractors and consultants because many of the STC members work in this capacity. The CWC chapter has found several alternatives, and are developing a survey to find out which option their members prefer. The other Canadian chapters are welcome to re-use the survey and offer the same insurance coverage as a chapter-member benefit.

Proposed National Organization

A senior STC member and STC Fellow, Geoff Hart, has proposed the idea of creating a Canadian umbrella organization. This organization would collect STC dues and give a portion of them directly to the Canadian chapters (thus avoiding currency conversion fees), send the rest of the money to Head Office (so it’s only converted once), centralize the international affiliation agreement, and co-ordinate communication and joint efforts between the provinces. We had some concerns about the availability of volunteers to work in a national organization, and whether it would be cost-effective. A business plan is required; however Geoff is unable to commit his time to develop one. Is anyone else interested in pursuing this? If so, please contact your chapter president.

Usefulness of Canadian Chapter Meetings

The Canadian chapter presidents agreed that these conference call meetings have been helpful to all participants, and we intend to continue having them on an as-needed basis. We also took the opportunity to compare membership numbers. Most chapters have experienced a 50% drop in membership and are taking steps to attract more members and encourage people to renew. Both the Toronto and Alberta chapters are exceptions to the membership decline; Alberta even won the STC renewal race for chapters of 150 to 300 members! Congratulations, Alberta!

Several chapters introduced their incoming presidents who will participate in meetings after June 2010.

As always, if you have any concerns, questions or suggestions, please discuss them with your chapter president.

A Monumental Day Dawns for Technical Communicators: Certification!

Republished from STC's Notebook Feed, May 2, 2010...


The Society for Technical Communication (STC) announced today that certification for the technical communication field has been approved. Within the next year, technical communicators will be able to attain certification in their profession.

Certification creates two enormous benefits for our profession and for practitioners. First, certification establishes a solid foundation for the legitimacy and economic contribution of technical communication. Second, certified practitioners can clearly demonstrate their expertise as technical communicators, greatly enhancing their value in the marketplace.

Practitioners will become certified in six core competency areas:

• User analysis
• Document design
• Project management
• Authoring (content creation)
• Delivery
• Quality assurance

As a result, employers and clients alike will now have a concrete idea of the expertise, contribution, and value that technical communicators bring to the marketplace. STC is developing a page on its website dedicated to promoting certification and explaining the value of certified technical communicators.

Two days ago, on 30 April, the STC Board of Directors accepted a business case from its Certification Task Force. This historic event occurred after 35 years of ongoing and difficult discussion. The Society has embraced the idea of certification for technical communicators, and in the coming months will be developing a certification program.

Certification will be based on assessing portfolios and work artifacts, not examinations. (In other words, there are no tests.) This method takes advantage of the existing methodology and infrastructure of both the publications competitions and the Associate Fellow and Fellow process. To implement the program, STC is defining assessment criteria for each of these six competency areas, then recruiting a network of examiners to review applications. In the future, as the Body of Knowledge is fleshed out, STC will look at adding an exam-based assessment as another certification method.

Once conferred, certification will be valid for three years. To ensure that competencies are kept relevant, certified professionals must become recertified for another three years. As with many other professions, recertification involves completing and participating in educational and professional activities. STC currently has a number of these opportunities available, and will be creating more in the upcoming year.

Member and nonmember certification and recertification fess are still being developed; however, these fees will be comparable to certification programs of similar associations.

To learn more, attend the “Status of Certification for Technical Communicators” session Wednesday morning, 5 May, at 11:30 AM in Cumberland KL during STC’s Summit in Dallas, Texas. The Certification Task Force will report on its process, progress, and future. You can also expect to hear much more about certification in the coming weeks!

STC Summit - Topic Trends

By Debbie Kerr

Prior to coming to the conference, I tried to plan which education sessions I wanted to attend. Since I was going to a conference for technical communicator, nearly every session seemed to apply to me. I took my best guess at what I thought would be the best for me. However, once I got to Dallas and started looking again, I started to develop stronger feelings about some sessions over others. The name of the speaker made the difference. In other cases, I noticed something in the session descriptions that I hadn't notice it before. It was like being told you could only have one piece of candy when all of them looked good. With this in mind, I spent every night reviewing the next day's sessions to make sure that what I thought were my best selections before I arrived at the Summit were still my best choices.

When I was planning for the conference, Fei Min Lorente (your fearless president) and Carol Lawless (your chapter secretary) suggested that I select two sessions for each time slot so that if one session wasn't providing me with the information that I wanted I could go to my second choice. I am happy to report, in all cases, that I was satisfied with my first choice.

On May 3, I attended the following sessions:

• Assessing Your Corporate Value - Jack Molisani


• Using Stories for More Effective Usability - Whitney Quesenbery


• Content Management as a Practice - Pamela Kostur (my favourite for the day)

On May 4, I attended the following sessions:

• How to Edit Online Like a Pro! - Linda Oestreich and Michelle Corbin


• Creating Visual Help and Training Using Adobe Acrobat - Neil Perlin


• Managing Documentation Projects in a Collaborative World - Larry Kunz (one of my favourites for the day)


• Content Strategy SIG Progression - too many presenters to mention


• Building Visual Explanations: Practical Advice for Writers - Don Moyer (my favourite of the Summit)

On May 5, I attended the following sessions:

• Results of Interviewing Editors: Best Practices, Challenges, Insights - Angela Eaton, Liz Pohland, Cynthia McPherson


• Thriving in an Agile Environment - Kathryn Poe


• Enhance Your Writing Career with Improved Speaking Skills - Barrie Byron

While the topics may seemed varied, there were two hot topics for the Summit: Content Strategy and Agile. Some of these topics you can see in the title of the sessions and others were embedded in the topic descriptions.

Social Media

With changes in the way that information can be presented to users, a content strategy is becoming more accurate than preparing a documentation plan. With the various social media options available (e.g. forums, wikis, Twitter, and blogs), many organizations are looking toward using these resources in addition to traditional documentation. In some cases, these other methods of communication will replace all or some of the more traditional methods. For this reason, the method for planning how to provide users with information must be an entire content strategy, and not merely focused on documentation.

For example, in one education session, the presenter talked about how someone had used Twitter to learn when users were having trouble with a product. Since the success of a company is often based on customer service, being proactive in providing information is an excellent place to start. Imagine being on Twitter and complaining to someone that a particular feature doesn't work. Wouldn't be great if someone from that company contacted you and provided you with an answer without you even having to contact them? In many cases, users don't even ask for assistance from the company. They often complain about the company/product without trying to get an answer to their questions. Using Twitter helps to eliminate this step.

Another interesting way to use Twitter is to get sales leads and to obtain feedback about what features users would like to see in a product. Another way that companies are using social media is to use wikis for Help and forums for customers to obtain support from either the company or fellow users. Social media seems to have more uses than just being sociable.

Agile

Agile is a new way of planning and completing a project. This methodology replaces the traditional waterfall and iterative waterfall that is usually used for the software development life cycle. With Agile, requirements, development, documentation, and testing, take place over and over in iterations that build on the previous iteration. One iteration might include A, B, and C. The second iteration will include any necessary changes to A, B, and C, and new items D and E. This process will continue until everything is complete -- development, documentation, and testing.

The major change for technical communicators is that everyone involved in the design and development cycles are part of the project right from the beginning. This means moving from the end of the development cycle to being involved right from the beginning. As you can imagine, for many technical communicators, this is a big and welcome change.

Some people enter into the Agile world for the wrong reasons, for example, they believe that it will eliminate the need for documentation and that everything will get done faster. The truth is that documentation will still be needed; it just might be created using different timelines, which will necessitate writing and reviewing documentation in a different way. As for getting work done faster, this will only be true if the people involved in the process have the discipline needed to complete their work on time and in the way that is needed. Without this discipline, companies can end up with more chaos than they may have had before.

Conclusion

It seems like there is a lot of potential changes to the role of technical communicator. It also emphasizes that the term technical writer does not accurately reflect our changing role.

STC Summit - Tourist Tidbits

By Debbie Kerr

The Summit was held in the Hyatt Regency hotel, which is the building on the right. The structure on the left is Reunion Tower, which has several components that include Wolfgang Puck's restaurant (Five Sixty) and an observation deck. Unfortunately, the tower was closed for renovations. Based on information that I found on the Internet, it seems that the tower has been closed for over a year.

Although the tower was closed to the public, the lights on the top of the were still visible at night. My husband managed to take this picture when we were returning during one of many trips to the nearby Historical District.

The Historic District contains items associated with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. There is the Book Depository, the grassy knoll (where some believe there was a second gunman), the JFK Memorial, and even an X on the road where President Kennedy was shot. The Book Depository is where the Sixth Floor Museum is located. This is the location from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy. Ironically, while we were there, someone tried to rob the museum of both money and some artefacts; however, the thieves never got away.

One day, while I was attending some of the education sessions, my husband rented a car and looked at some sites farther away from the downtown area. His day trip included the Texas Motor Speedway, the Cowboys Stadium and the Rangers Ballpark. At the speedway, his tour guide (shuttle bus driver) got permission to go around the track with my husband, so they sped around the track going 80 mph. At the stadium, my husband did his own walking tour and got lots of valuable information by talking to the employees onsite. While he did not go into Rangers Ballpark, he did get some great pictures.

On 4.2 acres of downtown Dallas, there is Pioneer Plaza, which contains approximately 40 statues of longhorn steer, complete with cowboys. These larger than life statues show a typical cattle drive. My husband found out about this site when he talked to Manny, who worked at the hotel. Manny turned out to be a wealth of information.

One of the sites that I did see, and the one that is my favourite, is a 120 year old building in downtown Dallas called the Old Red Museum. On top of this building are four decorative creatures called Acroteria/Wyverns (from the Latin word "serpents). Each of these creatures also have two feet and wings. There is also a clock tower and stained glass windows.

As you can see, there is lots to see in Dallas.

The Summit 2010, Keynote Speaker and Education Sessions Begin

By Debbie Kerr

For most of the conference attendees, this was the day when the bulk of us started learning. The Leadership Day enabled me to learn from one perspective, the remaining days were opportunities for me to learn from another perspective.

The first stage of learning was from the keynote speaker. Erin McKean—Chief Consulting Editor, American Dictionaries for Oxford University Press, as well as founder and CEO of Wordnik —showed us how words, especially when considered as part of the history of the dictionary, are as much fun as we expected. She talked about the first issue of the dictionary and how there were instructions on how to look up things in alphabetical order. There was even a description of what alphabetical meant! To top this off, it was written in an older form of English (looketh up writing from the 1600s and you will knoweth what I mean). :-)

She poked fun at the dictionary itself because it describes a dictionary has having one-sentence descriptions of words that are captured in a book. If you have ever looked at a dictionary, you know that there is far more content than one sentence and it no longer needs to be in a book.

She also talked about dictionaries defining what without capturing, who, how, where and when. Her example was the word "tuxedo". Without context, how would you know if the person wearing the tuxedo was a waiter or James Bond? To give you an example of Erin's sense of humour, this was conveyed with pictures of Lego figures, where only one was carrying a gun and an attache case.

She also gave an example of a definition of a feather that went on for about five lines, which left us more confused than ever before. Talk about poor choices of words and the passive voice!

All in all, the topic struck a chord with the audience, and it became quite clear why she had just been made an Honorary Fellow of the Society.

After the keynote speaker, the more intense learning began. Because of the keynote speaker, the education sessions did not start until 1:30 pm, but they continued throughout the day until 6:15 pm. During that time I attended the following sessions (each of which is about 1.5 hours long):

• Assessing/Increasing Your Corporate Value


• Using Stories for More Effective Usability


• Content Management as a Practice

The last session hit home with me because it related to some projects that I have been working on lately. It emphasized the importance of putting processes in place even before selecting a tool, and even deciding if a tool is needed. Ironically, the speaker is from Toronto. It was particularly funny (for me) when she mentioned Canada's win over the U.S. team in the Olympics. Things went uphill after that. :-)

After these learning sessions, I attended a Community Reception. It's at events like this that you get a good sense of just how international the organization is. As a member in your own town or city, you don't really think about India, France, Israel, Australia or even the vastness of the United States, and just how many states there really are. After a short time at a networking event—not to mention Leadership Day, and talking to the person beside you at one of the education sessions—you have a real eye-opening experience. You start to recognize the vastness of the technical communication profession, of which you are an important part.

I am writing this blog entry between learning sessions, which is when I am supposed to be eating; however, to get free Internet access, which is set up in the Exhibitition Hall, I have to use the terminals a little off hours, although, as you can see from the picture, there really is no down time.

My head is getting ready to burst with all the new information. It helps to write about it and share it with others. Stayed tuned for more details about some great sessions that I have attended so far today.

The Summit 2010, Leadership Day

By Debbie Kerr

Leadership Day started at 7:30 am Sunday morning. Perhaps it was a test of leadership to be on time for this event and still follow the great presentations going on. Not all people are morning people.

The day started with Cindy Currie, STC President, providing a summary of the financial crisis and how the Society survived and even made a small profit after taking many actions to deal with a projected deficit.

In an effort to let chapters participate in how we move forward, the Society asked for volunteers to be on a task force -- Community Funding and Support. One of the members of that task force is from the West Coast Chapter in British Columbia. Four members of the task force gave a presentation, which was really well received. In fact, their observations and recommendations were one of the highlights of the morning as the leaders (both Chapters and Society) recognized the validity and value of the information.

In the afternoon, there were various progressions to attend. I participated in the following:

• Re-engineering Your Community
• How to Create Webinars
• Community Funding and Support
• Developing Educational Programs

Everyone had some great ideas. The day was full of a lot of questions and answers -- so many that one of the items on the agenda had to be dropped. Some of the suggestions require more research at the Society level. I look forward to seeing the end result.

Look for my next post about the keynote speaker and my first education seminars.

The Summit 2010, Travelling to Dallas

By Debbie Kerr

I am the Immediate Past President of the chapter. In a draw that the chapter held to see which council member would attend this conference, my name was selected. The last conference did not go well for me -- my appendix ruptured and I spent my time in Las Vegas, the place of the conference, in a hospital room. The standard bon voyage message as I left for the conference had something to do with returning and having all my organs intact.

In an effort to keep costs down, I decided to fly out of Detroit. Although the drive was a long one, the weather was good and I saved about $400 in the process.

While the drive was long, the sleep was limited. I got up at 3:30 am to make sure I caught my 6:45 am plane. The lineups at the airport were like those at Wonderland. I couldn't believe that there would be so many people at the airport at that awful hour. The plane out of Detroit was delayed because of a storm (lightning, high winds, and heavy rains). I was glad that it started before takeoff rather than after. Although there was some turbulence, I arrived in one piece.

My husband came with me on the trip, so in an effort to do something together before all the meetings and education sessions started, we tried out Dallas's transportation system and went to the Dallas Zoo. The zoo in Toronto is a lot bigger, but from the walking we did and the pain in our feet, my husband and I were glad that the zoo wasn't any bigger.

Bedtime was early because, between the 3:30 am start and the amount of walking, we were exhausted. Our last bit of exercise was trying to climb up into bed. The top of the mattresses was about 3 feet off the floor, which meant that neither my husband or I could touch the floor when we were sitting on the mattress.

The Leadership Day started at 7:30 am the next day, so I wanted to be wide awake for the discussions.

Look for my next blog entry about Leadership Day. I am off to my first education session.

2010 Awards Night Video

If you missed the party, here are some sights and sounds from the event. If you were there, take a look; you might see yourself!

> 2010 Southwestern Ontario Chapter Awards Night

Many thanks to Rhonda Lee for putting the video together.

STC Celebrates Excellence

by Patrice Bernard

Many people assume that it is easy to write – reports, letters, blogs. For some it is true, and the evidence is obvious. For others, it is not so. A well written document is magical; easy to read and easy to understand no matter how complicated the subject. The reader’s eyes just flow across the words almost effortlessly. Isn’t that the craft of technical writing?

During Awards Night, held on the evening of April 6, 2010, the Society for Technical Communication Southwestern Ontario Chapter (STC – SOC) celebrated the excellence of the written word and the contributions made by students and writing professionals to the development and promotion of both the Society’s mission and our Chapter.

Three award categories were recognised during the wine and cheese gathering. Debbie Kerr (past President STC – SOC) and Fei Min Lorente (current President STC – SOC) presented certificates to the recipients.

From left to right: Alex Chortos, Arthur Churchyard, and Ushnish De

The first was the Heidi Thiessen Memorial University Student Award – named in memory of a devoted mentor of students and young writers, this recognition is awarded to a 3rd or 4th year student who submits a cover letter, writing samples and a record of academic achievement. A panel of judges chooses the top three entries.

First Place was awarded to Alex Chortos a 4th year Nanotechnology Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. Alex’s submissions were Modeling of Diffusion of Excitons Generated by Pulsed Laser Excitation in Titanium Dioxide Thin Film and Analysis of the Process of Measuring Electrical Properties of Silicon Nanocrystals Embedded in a Silicon Oxide Matrix. The judges remarked that “Alex did a commendable job of presenting a highly technical topic, while being constrained by standard scientific reporting methods.” Alex received $1,000.00, plus an STC Student Membership.

Second Place was awarded to Arthur Churchyard, a 4th year Biology and Environmental Studies student at the University of Guelph. Arthur’s submissions were entitled The sticky side of water and waste–water treatment and Video offers best practices for water controllers. The judges noted that “Arthur’s work was consistent with the requirements for a journalistic piece. Language was appropriate for the audience, and the material, especially in the first article, was well organized and engaging.” Arthur received $500.00, plus an STC Student Membership.

Third Place was awarded to Ushnish De, a 4th year Honours Computational Mathematics student at the University of Waterloo. Ushnish’s submissions were IReport for Reports and The Velocity System. The judges commented that “Ushnish’s piece on IReport did a good job of describing the work involved, and the procedures in particular are appropriately chunked and easy to follow.” Ushnish received $200.00, plus an STC Student Membership.

The second award category presented was the 2009/2010 STC Regional Technical Communication Competition recognising excellence in online communication and technical publications. This year STC Southwestern Ontario Chapter partnered with STC Toronto to judge and select the best entries.

Roxanne Eszes, a member of STC Southwestern Ontario Chapter, received an Award of Merit for her online tutorial entitled Segregated Funds E-Learning Course. The judges commented that “the test exercises are well designed.” Roxanne, owner of Learning Partner, develops online tutorials for the insurance and financial sectors. People successfully completing Roxanne’s tutorials receive continuous education credits toward the maintenance of their professional designations.

The third award category during the evening was the Distinguished Chapter Service Award which acknowledges the work of those Chapter members who repeatedly provide exemplary service to the Society through their activities. Lori Jankowski was recognised for her great service, her sense of professionalism, and her commitment to the Chapter during the past 8 years.

Lori has served on the STC-SOC council, in various roles, for almost as long as she has been a technical communicator. She has worked in a team of writers, as an independent contractor, and as a lone writer. As a former manager said, “she continually demonstrated a passion for communication and a genuine enthusiasm for delving into various technical issues with the goal of writing the clearest, most audience-friendly documentation possible, which she was regularly successful at accomplishing.” Lori currently works for North Plains Systems in Toronto, and in spite of the distance, continues to be a member of the STC-SOC.

Congratulations again to all recipients. It was a pleasure for me to attend the relaxed social gathering where I witnessed members renewing acquaintances, welcoming visitors and recognising writing excellence.

Trademarks™ and ©opyrights Demystified

By Jim Bousquet

Have you ever wondered how to properly attribute trademarks to their owners? Finding authoritative sources on correct trademark usage can be difficult, which is why the STC’s Southwestern Ontario Chapter was particularly fortunate to have Richard McClurg, Senior Marketing Manager at ON Semiconductor’s Medical Division, speak about both copyrights and trademarks on March 9. Richard has 17 years of experience applying trademark and copyright guidelines while creating, launching and working with global brands and the related marketing and technical communications.

The bottom line? Following what other companies and publishers do might not be the way to go. As Richard noted, ‘Even in larger organizations, guidelines for claiming and acknowledging copyrights and trademarks may not reflect current law or best practices.’

Copyright

As writers, many of us are somewhat familiar with the concepts, if not the laws, surrounding copyright. Copyright laws exist to balance access to creators’ works with their right to make a living. Creators automatically own the copyright on their work unless the work was part of a job for an employer or client. In these cases the party paying for the work owns the copyright, unless a contract states otherwise.

While notice isn’t required in Canada or most countries, it is required in some so proper notice is a good idea. Proper notice includes (in any order):

• The ‘C in a circle’ symbol (©)
• The year of publication
• The name of the copyright owner

Company style guides should include a format for copyright notices. The actual word copyright isn’t required. Interestingly, the commonly used phrase ‘All rights reserved’ is obsolete. It’s a vestige of the Buenos Aires Copyright Convention, whose signatory countries are all now members of the Berne Convention.

Trademarks

Trademarks distinguish a seller’s product, creating brand awareness and expectation for consumers. Trademarks can be logos, slogans, or even designs (the shape of the Coca-Cola bottle is one). Owens-Corning used the pink colour of their fibreglass insulation as a trademark. Harley-Davidson was unsuccessful in their attempt to register their motorcycles’ familiar rumbling sound as a trademark, because engine noise was deemed to be integral to the function of the product. On the other hand, a Netherlands marketer was able to register the scent of ‘fresh cut grass’ for tennis balls.

Registering a trademark, while not mandatory, provides evidence of ownership and ensures that the mark is unique. In the US, proper use of trademarks can affect the amount of damages the owner can claim in an infringement suit.

Owners can lose the rights to their trademarks if:

• They use them inconsistently
• They fail to police them
• The mark becomes a generic term

The last point explains why some companies seem to have such extensive guidelines and requirements around the use of their trademarks. Corn flakes, zipper, escalator, aspirin and many other generic words were once trademarks. The Google trademark is also in danger of becoming a generic term. Richard pointed out that while the word has made it into some dictionaries, the dictionary definitions are careful to state that Google is a trademark.

So just what are the guidelines to use a trademark properly?

• Distinguish it from surrounding text (by using quotation marks, initial capitals, etc.)
• Use it as an adjective modifying a noun (instead of ‘a Kleenex’, it’s ‘a Kleenex tissue’), or follow with the work brand (as in ‘Band-aid brand adhesive bandages)
• Never pluralize the trademark; instead pluralize the generic word (rather than ‘two Oreos’, it’s ‘two Oreo cookies’)
• Never make the trademark possessive, unless it already is
• Never use the trademark as a verb
• Be consistent and careful to avoid deviations (for example, it’s ‘Coca-Cola’, not ‘CocaCola’; ‘A&W’, not ‘A and W’; and so on); a deviation is a different trademark

Complicating things, some companies have trademarks that are the same as their trade names. For example, Oracle Corporation has a database product with the registered trademark Oracle. While it would be correct to use the possessive when writing about the company (for example, ‘Oracle’s third quarter earnings’), it’s incorrect to refer to the product that way (as in ‘Oracle’s data compression feature’). Similarly, it would be incorrect to use the ® symbol with Oracle the company.

Richard brought this subject to life with plenty of engaging examples. He described which symbols to use when and how to give proper notice in Canadian, US and international markets. For more information, refer to:

• The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (http://www.cipo.ic.gc.ca/)
• The Canadian Copyright Act (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/C-42)
• The Copyright Handbook: What Every Writer Needs to Know by Stephen Fishman (http://www.nolo.com/products/the-copyright-handbook-COHA.html)
• Michael Geist’s blog on Canadian copyright reform (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/)
• The Canadian Trade-marks Act (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/T-13)
• The International Trademark Association (http://www.inta.org/downloads/documents/2009_TrademarkUse.pdf)
• Patent, Copyright & Trademark by Richard Stim (http://www.nolo.com/products/patent-copyright-&-trademark-PCTM.html).

About Jim Bousquet
After 14 years as a professional engineer in the database, hearing aid, semiconductor and medical measurement industries, Jim Bousquet (jim.bousquet@primal.com) turned to technical writing and now works at Primal, a semantic technology company in Waterloo. Besides being Southwestern Ontario Chapter’s treasurer, he enjoys running, cooking and playing the bagpipes, and would like to travel much, much more.