At the Summit: What Took Me By Surprise

Carolyn Kelley Klinger joins us today to provide her thoughts on the Summit.

As I continue to convert the information I’ve gained at the Summit into knowledge, I thought a fun way for me to begin the process would be to report on unusual tidbits and trivia I have learned this week that have taken me by surprise.

From Lee LeFever’s thought-provoking presentation, “The Art of Explanation,” I learned that the way the screenplay writers of the 1979 movie Alien received funding to make that movie was by pitching it as “Jaws in space.” The context helped seal the deal.

From Sarah Maddox’s excellent presentation, “Doc Sprints: The Ultimate in Collaborative Document Development,” I and Leah Guren discovered the word coolth, which according to Miriam-Webster  is the “state or occasion of being cool,” as in both the opposite of warmth and the meaning referring to social popularity. For example, “James's coolth was the stuff of legend at his high school; he was always the one to start trends” (source: http://www.urbandictionary.com). I name Leah in this paragraph because it comforts me to know that such an accomplished writer and editor joins me in the process of continual learning.

While on the topic of Leah, she and I were both amused to learn that the STC Summit Proceedings mistakenly reversed the verbs and called her preconference workshop “Don’t Think—WRITE!” I sober up quickly when I realize that this is exactly the philosophy driving some of the gibberish on Web pages written only to increase a page’s visibility by search engines.

Kai Weber’s fascinating presentation, “Addicted to Meaning,” taught me, among other more important things, that misheard pop lyrics are actually called mondegreens.

Pop quiz! Name the actual lyrics to these mondegreens:

• Excuse me while I kiss this guy
• There’s a bathroom on the right
• Medieval woman
• I spi-it, in my c-cereal bowl

Finally, I leave you with another wise phrase from Sarah Maddox: “If you don’t blog about it, it didn’t happen.”

Carolyn Kelley Klinger is an Associate Fellow and independent technical communicator hoping to increase her coolth in the next year by doing excellent work for her clients and serving her beloved Washington, DC–Baltimore Chapter well. You can find her on LinkedIn.