Why read about it when you can watch it? Here's the video, thanks to ExpoTube, our partner in communication.
If you want to know how you can become an award-winner, see the requirements on our website for the awards that were handed out that night:
Distinguished Chapter Service Award--Debbie Kerr was our winner this year. She couldn't make it to Awards Night, so she received her award at the Annual General Meeting.
Technical Publications Competition--a team from Manulife won an award of Excellence for their entry; congratulations to Meaghan Campbell, Lori Jamieson and Christa Ptatschek!
Sessions started on Monday, and I have to say I was disappointed. I musta picked the wrong topics or something, but they were all so general I couldn't find anything useful to take away. Everyone was going on about DITA, single sourcing, social media, Web 2.0, and Agile development. Well. If you don't happen to be able to completely re-invent your work environment, most of that is useless. I write SDK documentation for a niche market. There ain't no hashtag for it, and I don't think there ever should be. There is no point in single sourcing something that only gets used in one place anyways. And there's no way you can write a cute little task topic for the hairy situations our customers use our software for.
Entrance to the Vendor Showcase
But I loved the vendor showcase. I'm in the market for a new help authoring tool, and have been pondering the best option for over a year. This was my opportunity to corner their reps and ask all the questions that are relevant to me. And they listen! Little ol' me who only needs to buy three licenses -- they listen to what I'm saying as if I was outfitting a team of hundreds! I've got two private discussions lined up for when I get back, to see how two different pieces of software can be used in a new workflow.
End of day wrapped up with a get-together at a pub, with a strong Canadian presence and a younger (ahem) demographic. The pub had 14 kinds of their home-brew on tap, which made it an excellent opportunity to network. Nuff said :). I've never been to Sacramento either, so I really enjoyed the downtown core where the conference was located - a blend of old & new architecture, civic art, beautiful gardens, restaurants, pedestrian ways, and so on. I wonder if all the STC summits are so happily situated?
Tribute to the Pony Express in Old Sacramento
State Building
The Peace Garden, full of roses and writings from children about peace
Tuesday Day 2
About face. The sessions today were AWESOME. Lots of new concepts I could directly apply to current work: better ways to map requirements to user design; faceted navigation to assemble documentation pieces into content that is applicable for the situation; ways to start planning content strategy; better ways to estimate projects work.
Beyond that, there were thought stretching times. At a meeting for one of my SIGs (Information Design & Architecture), we had a heated discussion about the difference between the architecture of information, content strategy, and visual design, and how they relate to one another. Another session where Michael Priestly (godfather of DITA; he actually presented DITA at our chapter meeting about 4 years ago, waaaay before any publishing tool supported it) demonstrated their new, open source, online content delivery system.
There were also ideas that I could take back to others at my company: for the S&M team (that's Sales & Marketing in case you're getting any ideas about my workplace), ways to manage content and analyze our website; for my team's Product Manager, ways to identify and prioritize real user goals (not just the ones we dream up).
Wednesday Day 3
Where'd the time go? The last day went by in a blur of sessions. Learned to duck out of ones that just didn't live up to their descriptions or were too general for my liking. Some speakers are insightful enough you just go see them, even though the topic seems like it has nothing to do with your work. Sometimes there would be three sessions I was interested in running simultaneously, so I'd have to make a tough choice. But with summit registration, you now get access to all recorded sessions (speaker audio and screen capture), so there's a way to catch the ones you missed. I'm also super excited about sharing the best sessions with my team mates back home. Maybe we'll listen to one a week over lunch, and talk about the ideas it presents and the changes we can make as a team.
Spent more time talking to people, between sessions, finding how they handled the topics we had just listened to (or were about to listen to) at their companies where they were stuck, where they had made a change, what kind of transition they were in, how their work environment differed from mine. Yeah, I know you're supposed to network for personal career development, but really it felt more like finding someone with a common interest or hobby, and getting right into it with them. It's like a club with a secret handshake. Where's the best fishing hole? The best place to buy lures? The biggest fish you caught? What technique did you use? The tacit understanding of what it takes to go out for hours and sit in a boat, to produce a single edible specimen.
Convention Centre Ceiling
Then, in a flash the Summit is all done. The last session is over, suitcases are packed and wheeled away, my mind is full of ideas and innovation. On the long flight home to reality, I pondered what things I can try to implement right away, and what will just percolate in the back in my mind until an opportunity arises. At work, I've bored all the non-writers with details of the DITA methodology, and peaked some interest in distributing our documentation more dynamically through our website. Maybe I can get something to change after all!
It's strange being a newbie again. I've been a tech writer and an STC member for over 13 years (or is it 14?), and normally I feel a bit weathered around the edges. But I've never made it to a summit, so it was a brand new experience for me. I've been wondering for a few years - why, oh why, did I not go in '97 when it was in Toronto? So I was pretty excited to get the opportunity to attend: hoping to learn a bit, network with the people who I know by name but not in person, and spend a few nights in a quiet hotel room, sans enfants.
Sunday - Day 0
Leadership Day isn't strictly part of the education portion of the summit. Instead, it's time for the community leaders (SIGs, chapters, special committees) to talk STC shop: what the society is doing, what it's changing, what it's looking for feedback on. After the requisite intros, awards, and thank-yous (yawn), we got right down to work. The burning question this year is what can STC do to serve its communities and individual members better? What do people want from the STC?
The day was a series of progressions, so I picked some of the topics that seemed most relevant for our chapter.
Competition: Discussed how they're improving the evaluation forms. Last year, they threw away the old checklists, since what people find most valuable are the actual reviewer comments. But they are hoping to improve the forms this year so they're less work for the reviewers to fill out. Wonder if that will mean less review comments in general?
Virtual marketing of your community: I'm suspicious of stuff like this, since I don't have time to moon about on Facebook and tweet about what I had for lunch. But the main point was whatever method you use to communicate with your members, make a plan for the year, stick to it, and be consistent. So whether your channel is a newsletter, a Facebook page, or a mailing list, you've got to know when you need to communicate something, communicate it at the same time, and in the same way. You need to make message consumption simpler by making it as easy to digest as possible.
Problems/successes faced by geographic communities: Lack of participation in chapter events concerns everyone, particularly when members are polled and say that is what they value. What to do about decreasing attendance? Virtual seminars (either entirely remote, or live webcasts of an actual meeting), moving locations, planned communication about events are ways to encourage people to come out. Or just do stuff together. Like go to movies, hikes, baseball games, the pub. There is a general feel that we need to re-establish the community aspect of a chapter.
How can we recruit, support, and maintain volunteers in a virtual environment? Bodily presence at events isn't always possible, so how can we harness people to help out remotely, and how do we outline terms of engagement? For example, what is an appropriate time period for people to respond to an email, before they've missed the window of opportunity? Answer: 1 business day or less. I think that's pretty true for work too.
Leaders and Attendees Mixing It Up at the Community Reception
Finally, we wrapped up with a demo and Q&A session about the MySTC networking site its features, the planned enhancements, and so on. I think it's neat that our local chapter can have its own group; maybe we can have a forum where we can ask for advice, voice opinions, and get to connect with people in our own area? So scratch my above comment about mooning about on Facebook -- I've already signed up, connected with a bunch of people I met at the conference, and am looking forward to some collaborative inspiration.
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