Determining Potential Career Paths

By Lynda Baxter

On May 10, 2012, we had the privilege of listening to the combined wisdom of Mandy Lam, a product marketing specialist, Cathy Disbrow, graphic designer, Kate Wilhelm and Mark Connolly, user experience designers, and Debbie Kerr, business analyst.  The panelists talked about their current roles, their previous roles, and the skills they developed along their career paths that enabled them to move from one role to another.

While technical writing has played a significant role in their career paths, it has also been a springboard to learning and getting involved in more specialized areas of user advocacy.

Here are my takeaways:

•          Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. For example, you may have technical writing expertise that can morph into marketing or user experience roles.
•          Be aware of possibilities not just to advance your career or move it in a new direction, but also to help your company solve problems or be more efficient.
•          Be willing to develop new skills. For example, become proficient in HTML or at least understand how it works.
•          Network and join or start! professional groups with like-minded people.
•          Stimulate your thinking by reading and doing. 
•          Become a respected advocate for excellence within your company.

All in all I was very impressed with the passion the panelists have for their jobs, their flexibility, and their willingness to share their time and experience with others.

Follow them on Twitter: 

@CathyDisbrow

@uxMark

@katewilhelm

@Kerr_Debbie

@imandylam

 Photo from Free Digital Photos

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.

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.

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.

Education Evening Recap: Get a job! Or, at least learn how to get one

The Southwestern Ontario Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication hosted an Education Evening on February 9 at the University of Waterloo, which was designed to help job seekers learn about finding–and keeping–a job. The evening’s five speakers, Margie Yundt, Kate O’Donnell, Susan Malcolm, Cheryl MacDonald, and Janice McVey, used their considerable and varied professional expertise to address a diverse range of topics, all related to employment within the technical communications sector.

Kate O’Donnell, an independent contractor since 1993, spoke about her expertise in this area. She answered questions about how technical writers might consider marketing both themselves and their businesses, and was able to use her insider’s perspective to address both the advantages and disadvantages associated with contract work. Janice McVey, a managing partner for the Dean group, explained the role that recruitment specialists and agencies like the Dean Group could (and do!) play in helping independent contractors market themselves, as well as the more traditional role of recruitment agencies as matchmakers in helping companies and qualified individuals to find each other. To hear what Kate and Janice have to say for themselves, go to YouTube.

Margie Yundt, a Manager at Research in Motion who has considerable experience with interviewing and hiring, spoke about hiring practices at specific companies. Get a sample of Margie’s advice.

Cheryl MacDonald, Research Manager at The Economical Insurance Group, and Susan Malcolm, Career Consultant at the Wilfred Laurier Career Development Center, addressed resume construction, and pointed participants to websites they have found particularly useful for job-seekers.

All speakers touched on interview strategies, portfolio building, the importance of a well-crafted resume and overall interview preparedness.

As a service to the community, the SW Ontario Chapter of the STC hosted this evening for free. The extensive publicity resulted in a high attendance by non-STC members. The informal progression style of the meeting allowed all of the participants to have in-depth conversations with the speakers and ask individual questions. Participants left the evening having gained a better understanding of the technical writing job market and self-marketing strategies to improve chances of landing (or keeping!) that job.

Many thanks to Rhonda Lee for providing the YouTube videos.


By Katherine Heyland

Education Evening - English Usage Guide for Writers and Editors

Hobgoblins, Salad Forks, and Hard and Fast Rules: An English Usage Guide for Writers and Editors
Presented by Alan Yoshioka, PhD (University of Waterloo alumnus, Chair of the Toronto Branch of the Editors' Association of Canada)

When is it okay to boldly split an infinitive? To use a sentence fragment? Even if you were lucky enough to be taught much grammar in school, you might not know which rules are still considered current and which have gone the way of the rotary phone. Sometimes there are several correct ways to make a point, and the choice between them is just a matter of emphasis, while at other times the main concern is to maintain internal consistency within a document. Then there are usages that are unsuitable for a given context and audience.

Learn to distinguish matters of editorial taste from rules that should really be followed all the time. Also get tips for dealing tactfully with team members when there’s a usage point on which they’re dead certain, and dead wrong. Come with questions about the rules you’re anxious about—or about which you’re anxious.

Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Time: Presentation begins at 7:00 p.m. / Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for networking
Where: Room DC1304 at the Davis Centre, University of Waterloo
Cost: Free for members and non-members

For more details go to http://www.stc-soc.org/calendar/2009-10-06.php