Travelling to see a different chapter

By Gwyneth Evans

Membership has its privileges™. OK, so that saying belongs to a credit card company (American Express), but regarding STC membership privileges the spirit of that message is 100% true. One under-exercised privilege is the right to meet up. Meet up with your own chapter! And meet up with local and international chapters!

Recently, I travelled to see what was up at a nearby STC-Toronto membership social event. Like our own STC-SOC chapter events, it was advertised on-line, open to members and non-members, and hosted at a central location in the region - in this case a Milestones restaurant on the subway line and by a highway. After our group of 10 did introductions and ordered a brunch feast, conversation began to flow.

Technical communicators are an interesting group. We enjoy terms like “context of use”, “progressive disclosure”, the problem of “findability” and might use expressions like, “That’s Madcap!”, “I grow my own wiki,” and "Darwin Information Typing Architecture" while debating the future of fine print and internet media as we know them. The STC Toronto council and members did not disappoint. Conversation addressed the place for documentation in mobile application spaces, the finer points of automatic and manual indexing techniques, new CAD and DITA tooling, the managing of it all and more.

Regionally specific topics including talk of local STC events, goings-on in the city of Toronto, mayoral views on public libraries versus the right of the individual to literacy resources, the likelihood and date of a first snowfall or ski season all came up. We found we all could relate to the globally available STC education webinars: Technical Communicator in a Business Process Model World, Organizing Help Content, Document standard for Technical Publications, held high hopes for successful completion of work and wrap-up of documentation projects before the December holidays whether Hanukah, Kwanza, Festivus or Christmas, and hey… the pancakes – they were good. By the time our brunch meet-up was done, I had discovered that while our STC members come from different chapters, we all do and have a lot in common.

Successes & Lessons learned:
Travelling to regional STC events is energizing, is encouraged, leads to new relationships and new ideas to bring back to your chapter. You might, like I did, discover a funny, but good, understanding that under the STC umbrella, wherever you go, you will be welcome within a community that speaks your language.

So, keep your membership up to date, enjoy meeting up with your membership and when you do travel, bring your STC membership card – Don’t leave home without us. ™

See: Upcoming STC-SOC events
Let us know: Share your STC meet-up story
Been away? Renew your membership

Pub Night at The Firkin

by Fei Min Lorente, President

Who says technical communication is boring? The Southwestern Ontario Chapter got the year off to a fantastic start by meeting at The Firkin during Okoberfest. Completely informal, the attendees were free to talk about business, or not. Most of the council was there, so it was a great opportunity to meet the people who are planning your events and spending your money.

Welcome to the new recruits who came out that evening and volunteered to help the chapter:

• Ann Garniss will be helping with Education Days, which are our annual workshops.
• Sian Waterfield will be helping with competitions.
• Dwight Baer will be helping with the Heidi Thiessen Memorial Award (the student award competition).

We had an enthusiastic response to this social get-together, and we'll plan more of these in the future. Thanks to Rob Cundari who had this great idea and who did the organizing.

Isn't that interesting? President Fei Min Lorente listens
intently to the conversation over chicken fingers and fries.



I can visualize all kinds of things while I'm wearing this hat.
Jim Bousquet, Treasurer



Everyone's happy during Oktoberfest, especially with a drink and that hat.
Veronica Kutt from Front Runner Training and Rob Cundari, Vice-President.



These nachos require serious consideration.
(left to right) Ann Garniss, Education Manager assistant;
Ilmar Kutt, Front Runner Training, and Debbie Kerr, Past President



What do you really think about the virtues of Irish stout vs. a winter porter?
Sian Waterfield, Competitions Manager assistant, and Nancy Halverson, Competition Manager

Digital Futures: Technical Communication in the Digital Age

by Fei Min Lorente, President

Ken Coates, Dean of Arts at the University of Waterloo, was the guest speaker at the 2011 Annual General Meeting for the Southwestern Ontario Chapter of the STC. He discussed technical communication’s future in the digital age – where are we headed, and how will we fit with the new trends.

The effects of the Internet on worldwide communication have been hard to predict, but several decades after its inception, we’ve observed a deleterious effect on reading and writing. We spend more time skimming a search engine's results or a web page than actually reading. When we do read a web page, we find it usually provides a superficial treatment of the subject because writers know that it’s hard to read a lengthy article online (often on a small screen like a smart phone), and readers have low expectations. Lack of publishing rigour leads to incorrect grammar and articles that are typically written for a grade five level.

Most of the writing done now is in the form of emails, text messages, or tweets. Even university level exams are moving away from essays and long answers and moving towards multiple choice because they are machine readable.  Between the reduction of book reading and the rise of writing for the Internet, writing skills are in decline.

In the meantime, the fastest growing economies are in non-English speaking countries, such as China, India, South Korea, and Germany. Israel, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Finland lead the way in digital media. They are learning English as a matter of course; as a result, they can harvest information from the English websites. About 350 million people in China are learning English, while very few North Americans or Europeans are learning Mandarin or Japanese. These countries are rapidly gaining a huge advantage over North America.

Emerging countries have embraced the digital revolution on a scale that is hard for us to imagine. The University of Waterloo started a digital media campus in Stratford this year. The masters program can accommodate up to 20 students. Compare with China—they built a digital media campus that can accommodate 425 000 students. The digital economy has shifted to Asia.

Asian students have to compete for the relatively few spots available in universities. In the international workplace their graduates have many advantages over ours: multilingual ability, better work ethic, competitiveness. One advantage we still have is that the English that they are learning is not very good.

Our educational institutions are part of the problem. Schools require less book reading and expect more Internet research. As a result, students get used to finding simplistic information about a subject. Furthermore, schools provide little instruction on basic writing skills, and few opportunities to learn and become proficient in a second language. Students with short attention spans are accommodated by the curriculum.

As a consequence of the digital age, the audience that technical communicators are writing for has changed. Readers expect to find information faster, and when they do find it, they expect it to be simple and easy to understand. With the global economy, our readers are a more multicultural group. Many readers understand English as a second language, and might be reluctant to ask questions when they don't understand something.

Digital media will continue to grow at a rapid pace, and as technology matures, the majority of workers in the field will shift from technology makers to technology users. We can already see that content is growing in importance. This enables communicators like us to find new career opportunities. See Michael J. Totten’s blog (http://pajamasmedia.com/michaeltotten/) for an example of some of the best freelance journalism, and he doesn’t have to sell anything to a media company. He makes enough money from his blog to travel to the areas that he is reporting about.

Dean Coates' advice to us was to learn another language if you have the chance. Instant translation is still at least 25 years away. If you can’t learn another language, at least try to understand other cultures so that you can write for a global audience. Our ability to write properly and organize material to explain a complex technology will be a rare talent in the future. It will be up to us to maintain the art and science of good communication.

He recommended reading Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku. This book will give you an inkling of the social ramifications of communication in a digital age.

Shortly after Dean Coates’ presentation, I came across two other related items of interest:

·        See guest post on Tom Johnson’s Idratherbewriting blog, http://idratherbewriting.com/2011/06/15/technical-writing-in-china/ about “Technical Writing in China” by Ivan Walsh

·        Listen to the interview on Spark, a CBC program hosted by Nora Young. Author Cyrus Farivar talks about his book The Internet of Elsewhere: http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2011/06/full-interview-cyrus-farivar-on-the-internet-of-elsewhere/. It examines the internet experience in four very diverse societies: Iran, Senegal, Estonia and South Korea.

Dean Coates’ presentation and these other sources are signs that we have to start looking beyond our own language and culture to see the future of digital communication.

Southwestern Ontario Chapter Second Annual General Meeting

by Carol Lawless, Secretary

Another year wrapped up and while we didn’t pop the champagne or launch into Auld Lang Syne, we did have good friends, old and new, and good cheer. The Huether Hotel’s Boardroom was the scene of our second Annual General Meeting (AGM) on June 12, 2011. We welcomed Ken Coates, our guest speaker who is the Dean of Arts from the University of Waterloo, enjoyed a good meal and participated in some excellent networking conversations. And of course, conducted the official business that’s crucial to any non-profit organization.

The evening’s sponsor was Technically Write Consulting Ltd. Thank you for paying the balance of our food and drink bill!

Our outgoing President, Fei Min Lorente, recapped the year. We had a successful ten months with our core offerings (education evenings, webinars, workshops and competitions). But we also had an innovative year. We:

• offered several education evenings by webinar. For our members who live too far to drive in for an evening, this offers a chance to be involved in the chapter.
• opened our student award competition to all post secondary schools in Ontario.
• hit social networking, using LinkedIn and Twitter as well as the new STC website to move towards two-way communications.
• introduced the participation contest.
• leveraged our partnership with Communitech.

Looking ahead to the future, we need to provide a venue where members and non-members are more excited to participate. To that end, we will be doing a survey later this summer to find out what you think we need for a vibrant chapter and what would fulfill your needs. Some ideas we floated informally were more relaxed networking evenings, pub-style, to complement our education evenings.

Our chapter is working with other Canadian and International chapters to support one another with ideas and resources. The Canadian chapters, specifically, are working on a Canadian salary survey and are looking to revive the Canadian Issues SIG.

For the official business we had a quorum – enough members were present to vote and elect the board of directors for 2011-2012. We began by reading and approving the 2010 minutes. Treasurer, Jim Bousquet presented a view of the audited financial statement for 2010. All members are entitled to see the financial statement, which they can obtain from the treasurer. The members accepted the report unanimously and also agree to retain the auditors for the 2011 statements.

The election of officers yielded the following results (all were elected unanimously):

• President: Fei Min Lorente

• Treasurer: Jim Bousquet

• Secretary: Carol Lawless

While the president can (under our bylaws) serve for a maximum of two consecutive terms, she may run for a third term at the request of the membership. Since there were no other nominations put forward for President, Fei Min graciously agreed to stay for a third year. Rob Cundari was appointed as Vice-president. We wish him well as he learns the ropes! Thanks to both of you for stepping up to keep our chapter alive and vibrant.

Fei Min presented several awards – She announced the participation contest winners:

• third place (150 points): Carrie Warner won $50

• second place (150 points): Ursula McCloy won $100

• first place (200 points): Tricia Ward won $250



Jim presents a cheque to Ursula, the happy second place winner in the Participation Contest







Jim presents a cheque to Tricia, the happy first place winner in the Participation Contest



Debbie Kerr receiving her award from Fei Min Lorente

Debbie Kerr officially received her Distinguished Chapter Service Award. Debbie was unable to attend the March awards night to receive this well deserved recognition for her huge contributions to the chapter. We were delighted that she could receive it at the AGM.

And finally Fei Min thanked the council members for their dedication this year:

Absent: Gwyneth, Elaine, Patrice, Tracey, Heather, Sam

Sylvia - liaison with Fanshawe College and University of Western Ontario, and liaison with London Word Fest in 2012

Ursula - Employment Manager

Nancy - Competitions Manager and Hospitality Manager

Rob -Membership Manager

Debbie - Past President and jack of all trades

Jim - Treasurer

Carol - Secretary

Fei Min - President

And finally, a special thank you to all our families for their support and understanding.

Our chapter is run by volunteers and we are always looking for new faces around the table. Your input and help are essential for an energetic and exciting chapter. Volunteering is a great way to build your portfolio, learn new skills, and impress people. If you’re interested, we’d love to have you on board! Specifically we’re looking for people to fill the roles of webmaster and education manager.

We are taking a break from events for the summer, but we look forward to seeing you again in September. In the meantime, stay in touch. There are so many ways...

Awards Night 2011

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.
• The Summit Award--Ursula McCloy wrote about her award-winning experience on this blog; see Reaching the Summit (Part One) and Reaching the Summit (Part Two).
• Technical Publications Competition--a team from Manulife won an award of Excellence for their entry; congratulations to Meaghan Campbell, Lori Jamieson and Christa Ptatschek!
• Heidi Thiessen Memorial Award for students--see Student Award Winners for more information about this year's winning entries.

Maybe you'll be in the picture next year!

Reaching the STC Summit (Part Two)

By Ursula McCloy

Main Entrance to the Convention Centre

Monday -- Day 1

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!

Reaching the STC Summit (Part One)

By Ursula McCloy

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.

The My STC Network is Open for Business!

Today we launched the My STC Network on STC.org.

This new feature will change the way technical communicators interact online. Combining the knowledge-sharing capabilities of a professional network with the interactivity and user experience of a social network, My STC is an important platform for networking, collaboration, communication, community management, and more.

We’ve worked hard to ensure that the interface is simple enough to be intuitive while still incorporating the tools and resources that will provide the greatest value possible. We’ve involved community leaders from STC chapters and SIGs in our pre-release site testing, and their feedback has helped shape our efforts in refining the interface and determining which features are top priorities for STC members.

To experience the My STC Network, please visit www.stc.org. (Because of DNS propagation, it may take some time before you see the updated site. This depends on your ISP. However, over the next few hours, the site new site should be available to all users.)

To log in, just enter your existing STC username and password. You can do this by clicking on the “Site Access” link at the top right-hand side of the page or by clicking on the “My STC” tab on the navigation bar.

Once you’re inside, you’ll have the opportunity to personalize your user experience. You can edit your profile, add personal information, upload an image or video, create or view events, and begin participating in discussions. If you’re a member of an STC chapter or SIG, you’ll be automatically added to the corresponding discussion groups when you sign in. If you’re not a member of an STC community, you can participate in open discussion groups or start your own.

With this new platform, STC can also invite any STC.org visitor to register for the website, providing the opportunity for nonmembers to purchase education offerings, publications, and other STC services. These accounts will also allow nonmembers to gain limited access to the My STC Network, where they will be able to participate in designated nonmember groups and view or join open community groups. (A group’s status as “open” or “private” is determined by the administrator; in the case of STC communities, usually the president or manager.) If you’re considering inviting a technical communicator you know to join STC, this is a great way to get them involved.

We’ve prepared a video tutorial that explains the new features of STC.org. If you’d prefer a walkthrough before signing in or need some help finding your way around, please have a look at the following instructional video:http://youtu.be/WDo99UUhj9s.

We’ve taken great care to make this new platform as user-friendly as possible. If you should happen to encounter any problems, however, please let us know. You can leave feedback using the “Feedback” tab on every page of the site. This will take you to Get Satisfaction (separate login required), a tool we’re using to aggregate and address site issues and suggestions.

We hope you enjoy these new Web tools developed to enhance collaboration, networking, and knowledge sharing among professionals in the field of technical communication. We look forward to seeing you online.

Reprinted from STC's Notebook Feed by Kevin Cuddihy on 12 May 2011

The STC Southwestern Ontario Chapter’s Discussion List

This list provides a place to discuss any topic that might be of interest to a technical communicator. You do not have to be a chapter member to join this list. If you want to join, send an email request to mailmaster@stc-soc.org.

The chapter will publicize events related to technical communication on this list. Some of the events are ones our chapter is offering, while others are offered by other chapters, organizations and companies. While events offered outside of our chapter might be very worthwhile, we can only endorse those that our chapter offers. The STC Southwestern Ontario chapter does not receive any remuneration for advertising these events; this is simply a public service to our community.

To post messages to the Discussion List, do one of the following:

• Email your message to stc-southwestern-ontario@googlegroups.com.
• Log onto https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/stc-southwestern-ontario with your email address as your user ID, and click the + new post (or New Topic) button

This list is moderated. Please review the Posting Guidelines below.

Posting Guidelines

When posting messages to the main mailing list, follow these guidelines:

• Ensure that posting are relevant to technical communicators. Under no circumstances can any postings include references to religion or politics.
• Respect individuals who post information. Personal attacks are not acceptable on the discussion list or during exchanges that have been taken off list.
• Keep in mind that this venue is for discussion and sharing information. Alternate points of view are encouraged, and participants should keep an open mind.
• Accept that we are all human. Refrain from editing other members’ posts and overcome your technical communication tendencies by refraining from reposting your message or apologizing if you make a typo unless it really changes the meaning of the sentence.

Repeated violations of these guidelines will result in your removal from this Discussion List.

Student Award Winners

About Heidi Thiessen

The Heidi Thiessen Memorial Award was officially named in 2000, although the award itself was established years before that.

The Southwestern Ontario Chapter of the STC created this award to keep her memory and legacy alive. Beyond her involvement as an active member of our chapter, Heidi was influential in hiring new graduates, and she mentored many students and young writers. Through her work at the University of Waterloo Centre for Professional Writing, and later at Storm Technical Communications, many co-op students gained valuable work experience in a supportive environment. Unfortunately, Heidi passed away from breast cancer while she was still in her 30s.

Requirements for Submission

To apply for this award, students had to meet the following requirements:

- Attend a college or university full time
- Be in second year or higher in their program
- Have a minimum of a 75% average (official transcript required)
- Write a letter describing how their writing skills have improved with experience
- Submit two writing samples to demonstrate their technical writing skills (for example, reports, newsletter articles, and essays).

General Comments

This is the first year that we made the Heidi Thiessen award available to all college and university students in Ontario who are in their second year of study. Previously the award was restricted to the University of Guelph, University of Waterloo, and Wilfrid Laurier University. It was also previously restricted to 3^rd and 4^th year students. These changes are definitely reflected in the winning entries. Two of the winners are in their second year of study, and all of them would not have met the requirements for this award in the past.

1st Place – Josh Wellstood

4^th year student at McMaster University (Electrical Engineering Management Program)

His Letter

The following sentence captures an important concept about technical communication:

“I have worked significantly to develop key communication skills to effectively explain technically detailed material in a manner that a person without a background in the subject can understand.”

Submission Titles (Topics)

- Analysis of the SLN-Aecon Field Change Notice Process for Bruce ‘A’ Restart Balance of Plant Project

- Arc Flash Hazards: Causes, Calculations and Controls

Comments

While the titles seem complex, the well-written text and great use of graphics within these submissions made the information easy to understand. In addition to content, the information was laid out well with useful headings and groupings of information. These are truly impressive entries and very worthy of their 1^st place finish.

2^nd Place – Daniel Pinelli

2^nd year student at McMaster University (Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering)

His Letter

Daniel’s cover letter was very strong. In fact he started with a definition of communication:

“Communication. A skill that is immensely important in the fields of science and engineering and yet is rarely given the emphasis it deserves in academic study.”

Submission Titles (Topics)

· Propeller Selection

· ECCS Work Term Report for a company that is a component repair shop for the aerospace industry. His main task during his work term was the improvement of the thermal spray process.

Comments

Daniel made good use of flowcharts to illustrate processes with corresponding explanations and formulas. He also provided good descriptions of elements before providing more details. He did an excellent job of presenting his goals and then following those goals with examples of how they were met. He also included examples of problems and solutions.

3^rd Place – Daniel Dulcin

2^nd year student at Lakehead University (Honours Bachelor of Science in Biology)

His Letter

The following is a quotation in Daniel’s letter:

“I am determined to strive for excellence in my written work and have already registered for two writing classes this summer that are not requirements in my degree.”

Submission Titles (Topics)

The following articles were written as part of the SPARK program at Lakehead University. The SPARK program conveys to the public the importance and significance of local research. Daniel wrote two such articles:

· Mussel Man (Note: Since you cannot see the spelling, it refers to the one in the Clam family.)

· Evolution: An Evolving Science

Comments

Daniel’s two submissions demonstrate that technical documentation can be easy to read, even by people not educated on the topic. It also shows that the length of the document is not necessarily reflect the quality of the writing. If you can say the same thing with fewer words then you should be commended. Daniel has demonstrated that he knows his audience and recognizes how much content that audience can grasp, and how much time that audience will spend to read an article.

Debbie Kerr

Immediate Past President

Southwester Ontario Chapter, STC

Education Days 2011

Don’t miss our upcoming and exciting Education Days 2011! Pamela Kostur of Parallax Communications will be with us to lead an exploration of modular content design and reuse. Fernando Santiago MBA PMP CSM, with 20+ years of project management experience and certified Scrum Master Certification, will share his perspective on how to integrate and adapt Agile project management practices to documentation requirements.

Modular content design approaches break content into a larger volume of smaller reusable information units supported by storage, meta-data and relationship management techniques. Regardless the project management approach or size of an organization, content-reuse generally reduces content duplication and increases accuracy and consistency across libraries while enabling dynamic and flexible development of multiple deliverables from content sub-units.

Agile project management practices increase the number of completed prototypes along an iterative development path. These practices are also characterized by increased stakeholder and client engagement so as to increase likelihood of customer acceptance of the final product. Documentation practices can be partially or fully adapted to the Agile model. Learning the key concepts and gaining practical experience can help you minimize common project risks: excess production overhead, discarded prototype work, and tight deadlines. By leveraging the gains of this approach and being part of the critical project path, you will achieve improved requirements, status reporting, teamwork and communication.

Both modular content design and Agile practices, have gained recognition in recent years and are quickly becoming standard practice.

Learn the terminology, concepts and practices of each process now and become a documentation leader capable of managing the critical documentation project path.

Register now! For more information, see the Education Days micro-site.

Agile approaches to documentation requirements

This one-day introductory training course will provide you with a solid understanding of the core knowledge, terminology and concepts that define the Agile project management approach. A comparison of various project approaches highlights the key differentiators of Agile methods, and the implications within product development environments on communications, documentation and other related processes.

Hands-on exercises done in small groups provide practical preparation for applying the communication methods and concepts with a combination of basic tools, including Excel. You will become comfortable defining user-stories, as well as creating and sizing a project work item backlog. You will become confident defining "Done!" in the context of your project, be able to articulate project work velocity, plan work iterations, and generate tasks from backlogs and communicate the status of iterations using accumulated data. By the end of the course, you will be able to establish scrum procedures, a project backlog, a burndown chart, and have practical experience executing basic project iterations.

This course is intended for beginners or those with some previous knowledge or experience with Agile practices.

Writing modular reusable content

Modular content design approaches break content into a larger volume of smaller reusable information units requiring storage, meta-data and relationship management techniques. Regardless of the project management approach or size of an organization, content-reuse generally reduces content duplication and increases accuracy and consistency across libraries while enabling dynamic and flexible development of multiple deliverables from content sub-units.

In this course you will learn the key terminology and concepts related to modular documentation design. You will then learn how to analyze content, plan and structure content deliverables and the reusable content modules that will be required to satisfy the independent and collective deliverable requirements. Lastly, you will learn how to apply structure to the writing within the modules to maximize the clarity, accuracy and consistency of the module content which can be integrated with and used alongside writing guidelines.

This course is suitable for technical communicators with varying amounts of experience, from novice to well-seasoned.

Gwyneth Evans

Public Relations Manager

2011 STC Director Candidates

To be eligible for voting, you need to renew your membership by February 28. Voting starts on March 9 and ends March 30.

For full election details: http://notebook.stc.org/election

Bernard Aschwanden

http://notebook.stc.org/election/bernard-aschwanden

Member Status: Senior Member

Current Community: STC Toronto

Current Professional Title: President of Publishing Smarter

Company: Publishing Smarter

Company Location (City, State, or Country): Canada

Ray Gallon

http://notebook.stc.org/election/ray-gallon

Member Status: Senior Member

Current Community: France Chapter

Current Professional Title: Global Software

Technical Information Systems Designer

Company: Carestream Dental, division of Carestream Health Inc.

Company Location (City, State, or Country): Marne La Vallée (Paris region), France
(HQ in Atlanta, GA)

Brian J. Lindgren

http://notebook.stc.org/election/brian-lindgren

Member Status: Associate Fellow

Current Community: South Carolina Midlands Chapter

Current Professional Title: Systems Analyst

Company: Imagine One Technology & Management Ltd.

Company Location (City, State, or Country): Charleston, SC (HQ in Colonial Beach, VA)

Rich Maggiani

http://notebook.stc.org/election/rich-maggiani

Member Status: Fellow

Current Community: Vermont

Current Professional Title: Communication Consultant

Company: Solari Communication

Company Location (City, State, or Country): Essex, VT

Tricia Spayer

http://notebook.stc.org/election/tricia-spayer

Member Status: Senior Member

Current Community: Northeast Ohio, all SIGs

Current Professional Title: Technical Writer/Illustrator

Company: Pressco Technology Inc.

Company Location (City, State, or Country): Solon, OH

Recording of STC Vice President Candidate Discussion

Sarah O’Keefe and Scriptorium recently held a webinar discussion with the two candidates for STC Vice President, Alan Houser and Victoria Koster-Lenhardt. If you missed the live webcast, watch this recording to get to know the candidates.


Thanks again to Sarah for hosting. Remember, the STC election opens 9 March and runs through 30 March at 4:00 PM EDT (GMT-4). You must have renewed your STC membership by 28 February in order to vote in this election. To learn more about all candidates and ask questions of the candidates, visit the STC Election site.
 
Republished from STC's Notebook Feed

Summary of the Winter Council Meetings for Southwestern Ontario

Thanks to the power of technology, council continues to meet monthly. Did you know our council members live throughout Ontario, from North Bay, to London; Paris to Toronto; Guelph to Waterloo? We alternate our meetings from virtual to in person; some people dial in monthly. Our newest volunteer, Sylvia Squair, is our new liaison in London with University of Western Ontario and Fanshaw College. Our winter has been busy with event planning topping the monthly agendas:


Education days:

We’re still finalizing instructors for our Education days this spring. We are working on the same profit sharing model we established last year. We bandied about a number of topics and finally narrowed it down to content reuse and working with agile development.

Monthly events:

We are continuing to plan for a Webinar in the months we do not have an education evening. However, we did cancel February due to lack of interest.

Awards night:

Our annual Awards night is scheduled for March 30 at the Davis Centre. We’ll be presenting the Heidi Thiessen Memorial scholarship, Publication Competition awards, Summit award (drawing will take place that night) and Distinguished Chapter Service Award. Fei Min is looking into bringing the STC Travelling Road Show to the event. The road show showcases the International Competition winners from last year.

Annual General Meeting:

In June, we’ll have our Annual General Meeting and are looking for a speaker.

Other items of interest:

• Student competition is underway. We posted notices in London, Toronto, Waterloo and Guelph. Judging will begin shortly.

• Technical publications judging was completed in conjunction with the Toronto chapter, in one day. One entry in the group will go on to the International competition. Nancy will arrange to have the certificates for our chapter winners ready for the awards night.

• We finalized and rolled out the participation game. See our website for the current leaders.

• We’ve purchased an early bird registration to the Summit (transferable) that will be awarded to one volunteer at the Awards night. The person selected is expected to attend the Leadership day, write an article on the Summit and present a seminar on their learnings.

• We discussed the best way to communicate to members and decided to use a variety of options so people can pick the one that best suits them. With that in mind, we’ve set up Linked-in and Twitter accounts.

• The STC launched their new website. In future we will be able to set up a micro-site on the site. At that point, we’ll investigate how best to tap into this.

• Communitech representatives have attended some council meetings. Avvey Peters is our new Communitech liaison.

• As of year end (2010) our chapter membership is at 73 people.

• The audit has been completed on our 2010 financial statement.

• We’re pursuing sponsorship options with Front Runner.

• STC elections are coming soon. We’ll provide election information on the Blog and website. There are several international candidates including Canada’s Bernard Aschwanden running this year.

• And last but not least, our February council meeting was completed in a record breaking sixty one minutes!

Carol Lawless
Secretary
Southwestern Ontario Chapter STC

STC’s International Candidates

My fourteen years of STC membership have undoubtedly provided excellent professional development value, from a local perspective.

Initially, I relied on STC for contacts in my neighborhood to help me become established in the profession. As I grew in confidence and experience, I joined my chapter executive and tried to pay it forward by helping to provide a platform for new tech writers, as others had done for me.

The work is rewarding, and my colleagues on our chapter executive are first-class. So I guess you could say, I love the STC.

But at the international level, I have certainly felt some frustration. A particular sore spot for me is the way this international organization seems to remain firmly focused on what happens within the United States.

In 2010, I joined first the Community Funding and Support Task Force, and then the Community Affairs Committee, to help define the kinds and quantities of support that would most benefit our chapters and SIGs. My particular interest was the full inclusion of international members.

I participated out of concern that STC membership fees purported to provide a number of benefits that weren’t practical (US-centric job bank and salary data) or weren’t available (insurance) to international members. During our sessions, I learned that even within the US, rules vary so much from state to state that things are not substantially better for Americans!

At the Dallas conference in 2010, the Community Funding and Support Task Force summarized a number of recommendations. Many of these ideas are now being put into practice, and I hope they will benefit all STC members.

I believe that the STC executive genuinely desire to improve the value of STC memberships for all members, but change is always hard. Even characterizing myself as an “international” member suggests that “American” is the default position – exactly the perception I am struggling against.

But my experience on these committees has helped me see that the STC needs leadership from its international members, before it can become the organization it is striving to be.

In the upcoming STC election, we have a chance to vote for two international candidates. Bernard Aschwanden (Canada) and Ray Gallon (France) are both running for election as Directors of our Society.

I believe that the fresh perspectives these experienced members bring can help the STC transform itself into a truly international organization.

So when you vote for your new Society Officers between March 9 and March 30 this year, ask yourself whether the STC could use a helping hand from some international candidates.

And if you agree, then remember: Bernard and Ray are willing to step up and help us all.

Thank you,
Tracey Martinsen


Tracey Martinsen has been a member of the STC (Canada West Coast) since 1997.

Education Evening: Arbortext Service Information Solution

By Kaitlin Ojamae

If you’re using Adobe® Technical Communication Suite for your documentation projects – or perhaps grinding away with the Microsoft Office® suite like I am – prepare to be impressed by the Arbortext Service Information System.

An hour was not enough time for our presenters, Richard Ernst and Anthony Villa, to showcase all the tools and functionalities of this system. In fact, two hours were not enough to do it justice! The information-rich presentation was punctuated by our members’ sighs of, “Oh that’s wonderful,” and “Oh, that would make things so much easier!”

Overview of the Arbortext Service Information System

Anthony Villa, President of Newbook, credits the success of Arbortext to the manner in which all the components are connected in a fully integrated system; the product and all its information is centralized in one place, so users avoid delays most commonly caused by the inability to locate up-to-date information.

“If it’s not connected back to the product data, you lose the connection to the product data itself,” Villa explains.

As technical communicators, we are all familiar with the frustrations of lost requirements and valuable time wasted by information hunting. As an all-in-one solution, Arbotext allows you to “go to the source” of the product itself. For example, if you need information fast, simply do a query and get a list of information – you can then decide what format you want the information in. It is all associated with the content, which drives efficiencies, like a feedback system.

Villa admits that the system is “not perfect,” but it connects people with the data, and the data with the products.

The Integrated Tools

We were fortunate to get a demonstration, from Training Coordinator Richard Ernst, of the five tools that comprise the system. Ernst went through the stages of a typical documentation project, to showcase the system and how it encompasses all the phases of documentation (authoring, illustrating, revising and updating, styling, collaborating and reviewing, publishing).

The Arbortext Editor allows you to create content, edit and collaborate globally. The interface allows you to integrate text and illustrations, DITA maps and concepts. In fact, the system is designed to work with DITA. You can insert mark-ups and view tags – it even has a handy quick tag menu to make authoring more efficient. You can copy and paste from anything, including the web, PDF, Word, etc. When creating DITA maps, you can either layout the structure of the document or assemble the topics into a structure (working up or working down).

Revision and change management is easy – everything uses an associative link, so when you change a topic or illustration in any document (or tool), all files containing the same topic or illustration can also be updated automatically (if you want them to).

When you close the application, it retains your preferences of how you like to work (e.g.: with tags visible) for the next time you open it. These are just a few of the features that make the Arbortext Editor more intelligent than the average editor.

The Arbortext IsoDraw is CAD neutral and standard for technical illustration. You can work in 2D or 3D, in perspective or go to plane view; you can even work with legacy drawings and draw on the existing perspective planes. IsoDraw supports any export file type (even ones you haven’t seen since 1996). Your 3D CAD models can be made to match the grid and repurposed for different audiences and documents. Animations can also be made from existing 3D CAD models and played within the Arbortext Editor (there were many OOOs and AHHs at this point in the demonstration).

Another feature to give your illustrations an artistic flair – IsoDraw maintains thick and thin pen strokes in legacy drawings, even as you edit them.

The Arbortext Styler allows you to define many different stylesheets to apply to your content. Using these dynamic stylesheets, you can ensure that the information published is consistent across all media types. If you choose, you can create a master stylesheet to apply to multiple channels or enable multiple delivery formats (web, print, PDF, Word, HTML Help). You can also apply style rules from DITA or other standards.

The Arbortext Publishing Engine can take the same content and publish it to multiple outputs such as the web, PDF, Word, DVD, CD-ROM, and HTML Help. Using the engine, you can choose from multiple document layouts such as two-column or single column, fold-out page formats, or automatic styling. Of course, front and back matter can be automatically generated, including tables of contents, list of figures, and indexes.

Arbortext also has a Content Manager, although it is not required in order to use the tools and get most of their benefit.

For more information on the Arbortext Service Information System (because you know that this single blog article barely scratches the surface of what this robust system can do), check out Newbook’s website.