“Speaking at the STC Summit” is one of a series of blog posts, curated or new, discussing key takeaways by individuals and STC Communities to Keep the Edge gained at Summit 2017. If you would like to contribute a post, please drop a note to the series editor, Ben.woelk@gmail.com.
Attending Summit was the culmination of several years’ worth of effort to move into the tech comm field, and was confirmation that I had arrived as an “official” technical communications professional. As a first-time attendee, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from Summit (I was hoping to get a more comprehensive overview of the Tech Comm field–if such a thing exists).
I was interested in meeting people from across the country who practiced different aspects of technical communication and learning more about the variety of opportunities available. I was looking forward to the many educational sessions at Summit, because I was hoping to discover my specific area of interest. Although I’ve successfully entered the tech comm field, I am still trying to find my niche. I hope to specialize in a specific area of technical communication, but I need to learn about these areas of specialization. I was also looking forward to meeting other attendees.
There were many opportunities between presentations to take a break in the halls and have more in-depth conversations about the newly gleaned information or get some more background on new connections. I even braved the Speed Networking event and, despite my hesitations, really enjoyed myself. I found it interesting to meet so many people in various aspects of the field, and I was really relieved to find out that Speed Networking was nothing like my single days of Speed Dating, which was a disaster!
The presentations were extremely informative and I walked away with new things to research and much bigger understanding of many topics about which I was clueless beforehand. The session “Breaking Down Silos: Combining Marketing and Technical Content to Deliver a Consistent Customer Experience” by Dustin Vaughn from Adobe beefed up my understanding of merging the two fields, as I’m doing at my new position. I found Dustin’s session helpful in giving me a head start.
The convenience of mobility and an infinite number of mobile applications has changed the way we use a smartphone. Consequently, we store a lot of personal information on a smartphone such as email addresses, passwords, travel information, driver’s licenses, personal identification numbers, boarding passes, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, telephone numbers, and photographs. Would you want someone to break into your smartphone and retrieve the data for nefarious use? Obviously not, but nevertheless, few of us take the same precautions to protect our smartphone that we do for our laptop or desktop because we do not want to complicate its use
It can be overwhelming to figure out what type of technology solution your company needs, which often leads to inaction. Companies today realize that they need to take advantage of content reuse in order to save time, save money, and generate higher-quality documentation. A successful content reuse implementation requires a well-planned, well-thought-out content reuse strategy and technology that effectively supports this strategy. Often, technical communicators must lead this effort because they are working with the content, tools, and writing teams who are critical to the success of any content reuse and management efforts.
Make no mistake: it’s a data-based world, we’re just living in it. According to Forbes, data volumes are absolutely exploding – in the past two years alone, more data was created than in all of the previous years in human history COMBINED.
Passwords are required for all types of online activity to authenticate the user. One thing is certain: until technology provides a better solution to passwords, we must learn to create strong passwords and remember them in order to safeguard our personal data from hackers.
STC’s annual conference has been known as the Summit for some time now, but I often wonder if people give the name a second thought. Conferences can be simply a gathering of members or like-minded practitioners to share information in both formal and social settings
We, as savvy consumers, must have the latest technology. We buy the newest smartphone because it has something that our current smartphone doesn’t have. We download the latest Web applications because we believe they will empower us. Our Internet connection is as fast as the provider can deliver because we have no patience to wait for anything. Most importantly, we make the time to learn because we want to become savvy users. Our workplace; however, is another story.
YOU’VE GOT SKILLS. Mad skills. That’s why you have a job and a career and are respected in your field. You know what to write and which buttons to push and how to meet deadlines. As a technical communicator, you excel at making the complex simple and at adapting to new methods and tools. You seek them. You understand them. But are you successful in implementing them? Are you able to sell your ideas to your company? Do you know how to get the funding and headcount to make change happen?