STC Summit 2016: Full Schedule

8:30am PDT

An Introvert's Journey to Leadership

Many of us might agree that Western society lauds extroverted leaders and their accomplishments. However, introverts make great contributions and can be effective leaders, too. Many of us are introverts who may feel unsuited or unequipped for leadership, but are not sure how to take that next step to increase influence and improve visibility. Have you wondered how to empower yourself and leverage your innate skills to become a leader? Join Ben as he shares his personal insights and the path to leadership with you. He will describe his journey from shy team member to recognized leader, and share key steps he took and experiences that have helped him become a successful leader.

Speakers

Ben Woelk

ISO Program Manager, RIT

Ben Woelk, CISSP, CPTC is an Associate Fellow and the 2019-20 President of STC. Ben has been a technical communicator for more than 20 years and a leader at the local and Society level for more than 10 years. Ben was the recipient of the STC President's Award in 2017. Ben is the host... Read More →

Introverts Journey Summit 2016 green pptx

Join me on Slack png

Monday May 16, 2016 8:30am - 9:15am PDT
Platinum 1

Career & Leadership, Presentation (45 minutes)

Tags Personal Experience

9:45am PDT

44 Tips for Making Better Videos!

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If you're just starting or a seasoned video creator, making better video doesn't have to be overwhelming. This session is all about tips to become better in your video creation process--44 of them! Each tip is practical, actionable, and focused toward user assistance video creators. They are highly applicable tips that cross the spectrum of planning, including recording, editing, and production. No way anyone can get through that many in one session? Challenge accepted! We will proceed at a lightning pace that will keep you on the edge of your seat, but participants will receive reminder materials to help recall all the great tips.

Speakers

Matthew Pierce

Customer Support Manager, Instruction designer, Speaker, TechSmith Corporation

My background is instructional design and video. I lead the training and user assistance teams at TechSmith, and I have the privledge of speaking and writing a lot about video for groups like ATD, Training Magazine, eLearning Guild, and STC. Let's talk about video, engagement, YouTube... Read More →

44 tips pdf

Monday May 16, 2016 9:45am - 10:30am PDT
Platinum 1

Technology & Development, Presentation (45 minutes)

Tags Software, Technique, Tips, Video

1:00pm PDT

From Fred Flintstone to George Jetson: Creating Tension in Training Increases Adoption

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The objective of a good training program is adoption and excellent field execution. Whether we create video, user assistance, classroom training, or documentation, what we really want is users to do an excellent job with minimal effort and no mistakes. This presentation is about how to use a combination of traditional training deliverables and old school psychology to gain user buy-in and achieve a successful launch. We’ll talk about how to use cartoons and countdowns to ensure that users seek out training and have a stake in adoption and field execution excellence. Good training is about building the right relationship and less about the deliverable.

Speakers

Viqui Dill

TechComm Leader, American Woodmark

An engineering graduate from Virginia Tech, Viqui is happiest as a small group worship leader or surrounded by singing kids at Vacation Bible School. She works as a Technical Writer for American Woodmark in Winchester. Viqui loves being in the STC #TechComm community and volunteers... Read More →

FromFredFlintstoneToGeorgeJetsonRev pptx

Monday May 16, 2016 1:00pm - 1:45pm PDT
Platinum 1

Design & Testing, Presentation (45 minutes)

Tags Collaboration, Teams, Technique, Training

2:15pm PDT

Turning Offshore Partnership Challenges into Success

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Our company signed an exclusive contract with an offshore partner to provide services, including technical writing. After a multi-year struggle, we abandoned the effort and brought everything back onshore. When new management insisted that we try again (and said that we would be evaluated based on the success of these efforts), my team and I were motivated to make it work. This session is the story of how we created a successful offshore partnership that delivers quality, timely technical documents that meet the organization's needs. We will discuss the changes we made and how we deal with ongoing challenges with our partner team.

Speakers

Barbara Giammona

Sr Mgr Technical Publications, Schneider Electric

Barbara A. Giammona has been a technical communicator for more than 30 years and a manager of technical communicators for more than 25. She is currently manager of technical publications and communications for the Process Automation division of Schneider Electric, a global energy... Read More →

STC 2016 Offshoring Partnership Giammona pdf

Monday May 16, 2016 2:15pm - 3:00pm PDT
Platinum 1

Career & Leadership, Presentation (45 minutes)

Tags Case Study, Collaboration, International, Teams

3:45pm PDT

Preparing Legacy Help Projects for Responsive Design

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Do you have legacy help projects that are still valid and that you want to make responsive? The problem is that old projects were often created in ways that break responsive design. How do you fix those problems? In this practical session, we’ll look at the technical concepts of responsive design and a “mobile first” design philosophy and its effect on content. Topics include eliminating local formatting with styles and a CSS, relative image sizing, CSS float to position images, and changing wording for different screen sizes. At the end of this session, you’ll know how to deal with the most common responsive design problems in legacy help projects.

Speakers

Neil Perlin

President, Hyper/Word Services

Neil is an internationally-known online content consultant for companies from startups to F100. He ran the Bleeding Edge at the Summits and was an Intercom columnist for 15 years, and is a 2010 STC Fellow. He is the author of three courses on Flare and RoboHelp for Lynda.com. Neil... Read More →

STC 2016 Preparing Legacy Projects for Responsive Design pdf

Monday May 16, 2016 3:45pm - 4:30pm PDT
Platinum 1

Design & Testing, Presentation (45 minutes)

Tags Content, Software, Technique, Use Cases

8:30am PDT

Use Usability Testing and Enhance your Documentation with Feedback

Feedback Survey

Usability testing for your documentation offering is more than asking people if they can get through a procedure successfully. This presentation discusses how to implement usability testing standards in-house, how to write different tests, and how to use the results to enhance your documentation offering. You’ll also learn how to gain buy-in for conducting usability tests and how to gather a pool of usability test candidates. We'll present the concepts in terms of a case study to further show how to implement feedback into your documentation.

Speakers

Dave Bachmann

Senior Technical Writer, kCura

I've been a technical writer for the litigation support software kCura in Chicago for over six years. In that time, I've documented a number of different products and features that range in complexity from those requiring a simple click of a Go button to those requiring diagrams to... Read More →

Mandy Morgan

Technical Writer, kCura

Mandy works as a technical writer for an ediscovery software company in Chicago, Illinois. She's received both a bachelor's and master's degree in technical writing from Missouri State University. Her master's thesis focused on document usability particularly for patients diagnosed... Read More →

Use Usability Testing and Enhance Your Documentation with Feedback pptx

Tuesday May 17, 2016 8:30am - 9:15am PDT
Platinum 1

Design & Testing, Presentation (45 minutes)

Tags Case Study, Techniques, Usability

9:45am PDT

Getting to the Core of Web Content Development

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Websites can be confusing tangles of links, images, and text. Come learn how a Web strategy team used an innovative method for developing Web content while collaborating with subject matter experts. This case study shows how we used technical know-how, marketing, and a simple worksheet to design and develop effective Web content for promoting programs of study at a community college. We will also see how to design a content outline with a simple worksheet and learn how to gain traction with stakeholder engagement and a commercial mindset. Join us to understand our core model and see the benefits of scaling up Web content development.

Speakers

Roger Renteria

Web Content Administrator, Central New Mexico Community College

Getting to the Core of Web Content Development STC 2016 (1) pdf

Tuesday May 17, 2016 9:45am - 10:30am PDT
Platinum 1

Technology & Development, Presentation (45 minutes)

Tags Case Study, Content, Technique

1:00pm PDT

Customer Experience (CX)--Come Join the Party

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Customer Experience (CX) is more than a buzz word. It's key to remaining relevant and adding value to your employer or business. Come and see how you start the CX discussion (as it relates to technical communication), put together and deploy a strategy, and then measure results. If you're doing CX already, come and challenge others, share your secrets, and disclose your stories. This session promises food for thought, a party hat of laughs, and a hope that you can get your CX party started when you leave the room.

Speakers

Pamela Noreault

Solutions Architect, SDL, Inc.

Pam has over 20 years of experience in technical communications, education, and management. She specializes in content strategy, customer engagement, content conversions, and social networking strategies. She has an undergraduate degree in education from The Ohio State University... Read More →

Tuesday May 17, 2016 1:00pm - 1:45pm PDT
Platinum 1

Design & Testing, Presentation (45 minutes)

Tags Content Strategy, User Research

2:15pm PDT

Building Quality Experiences for Users in any Language

Feedback Survey

Companies are striving for a friendly tone with their content and also taking it to other cultures. Those two content goals seem to be at odds, but they don’t have to be. How do you reconcile more casual writing for content that will be translated into other languages? In this talk, we’ll use a metaphor to look at how to build quality content experiences for all users so they have the best possible experience, regardless of their language. We’ll also cover some pitfalls to watch for and tactics for creating friendly English for good translations.

Speakers

John Collins

Sr Writer • Design, Atlassian

I'm passionate about the intersection of UX, content strategy, and localization. I'd love to talk about any of those topics, plus I have experience in journalism if anyone wants to commiserate. I also enjoy emergency management and firefighting topics, if you really want to shock... Read More →

STC2016 BuildExperiencesPDF pdf

Tuesday May 17, 2016 2:15pm - 3:00pm PDT
Platinum 1

Writing & Communication, Presentation (45 minutes)

Tags International, User Experience

3:45pm PDT

Editing Tons of Text? RegEx to the Rescue!

Feedback Survey

Do you face a daunting editing task, possibly editing a few lines in hundreds or thousands of files? Do you want to update the value for a property in multiple files? Regular expressions (RegEx) can help. Regular expressions are powerful search patterns that exceed what is possible with a basic search. In this session, you will learn common patterns that dramatically decrease the time spent on tedious text maintenance tasks. If you wished for a smarter find and replace or do repetitive text editing for days or weeks, then this presentation is for you.

Speakers

Eric Cressey

Senior UX Content Writer, Symantec

I write API documentation for Website Security products at Symantec. When I'm not doing that, I'm writing content for our web products and working on features for our API portal. I love talking about the latest tools and techniques for API documentation and I enjoy dabbling in code... Read More →

Editing Tons of Text STC 2016 pptx

Tuesday May 17, 2016 3:45pm - 4:30pm PDT
Platinum 1

Technology & Development, Presentation (45 minutes)

Tags Automation, Editing, Software, Technique

8:30am PDT

Automate Release Notes for Quick and Accurate Results

Feedback Survey

Time to market is a key differentiator for a company’s success. With Agile methodology and continuous delivery approach in software development, there is less time to write release documentation. To keep up, we must look for opportunities to automate wherever we can, including Release Notes. In this session, we will discuss a solution developed by our technical publications team that allows writers to capture feature and defect information from a defect tracking system and then quickly publish online, wiki-based Release Notes while ensuring technical accuracy and style compliance. This system allows users to access complete, quality content with short notice on the release date.

Speakers

Tanya Ivanova

Senior Manager, Technical Publications, Genesys

With over 15 years of experience in technical writing for software companies, I am currently a Senior Manager with the Technical Publications department at Genesys. I have lead the initiative for automating production of Release Notes at Genesys, from creating the solution architecture... Read More →

TD RN Automation Ivanova Grenon pptx

Wednesday May 18, 2016 8:30am - 9:15am PDT
Platinum 1

Technology & Development, Presentation (45 minutes)

Tags Case Study, Technique

9:45am PDT

Programming Language Storytime

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You don't need to write code to be able to read it! "Digging into" the code is often the best way to extract information when we write software documentation, but the idea of reading all that code can be daunting. A few simple tricks and an understanding of the patterns involved can get you started reading code to answer your questions. This session will examine open-source applications in some of the most common programming languages: Java, JavaScript, C, C#, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Perl. It is particularly helpful for writers who work with API documentation.

Speakers

Sarah Kiniry

Technical Writer II, cPanel, Inc.

Sarah Kiniry is a Technical Writer for cPanel, Inc., a web hosting software company. In this role, she provides full documentation support for an Agile development team, as well as participating in content strategy and other initiatives for the company as a whole. In a past life... Read More →

STC 2016 Programming Language Storytime pdf

STC Programming Language Storytime Handout pdf

Wednesday May 18, 2016 9:45am - 10:30am PDT
Platinum 1

Technology & Development, Presentation (45 minutes)

Tags Programming, Software, Tips