This post is brought to you by Chris Hester, Chair of the STC Conference Committee.
Led by industry leaders, this year’s preconference workshops at the 2015 Summit provide an excellent opportunity to develop and practice skills that will help you stay ahead and provide value to you, your employer, and your customers. Explore a topic that will advance your professional development, or challenge yourself with a new topic that can move your career in a new direction:
- Information Architecture for Everybody; Abby Covert
- Apply Cognitive Science to Your User Assistance; Ray Gallon
- Project Management for the Technical Communicator; Liz Herman
- Tell Me About Yourself: Promoting Yourself, Your Business; Brenda Huettner
- Crash Course in API Documentation; Tom Johnson
- Creating Documentation-Centric, Interactive Mobile Apps; Neil Perlin
Want to gain even more value from the Summit this year? Build a learning plan that starts with earning a certificate and follows up with related presentations and workshops during the Summit. The two-day certificate workshops will be held on Saturday, 20 June and Sunday, 21 June.
Getting to Success: Implementing a Content Strategy. Rahel Bailie leads participants through a content strategy project, starting with identifying needs and gathering requirements, and moving through the selection of deliverables to measuring your success with implementation.
After this workshop, attend the following sessions for deeper dives into topics that support content strategy projects:
- Creating Tangible Experiences; Marli Mesibov
- Wireframing, Interactive Mockups, and Prototyping Made Easy; John Collins
- Under the Influences: Context as Strategy; Keith Anderson
- Phones Aren't Flat: Designing for People, Data, and Ecosystems; Steve Hoober
- UX Axioms: How to Design Better Products for People; Erik Dahl
- Discuss Design without Losing Your Mind; Adam Connor
Working Locally, Thinking Globally: Trends in International Technical Communication. Kirk St.Amant leads this interactive workshop on strategies, skills, and models for working effectively with international clients and colleagues in different professional contexts across different media, as well as creating materials for globally distributed audiences.
After taking Kirk’s workshop, continue building your knowledge on global topics with the following sessions:
- Elements of a Successful Content Strategy; Denise Kadilak
- Re-thinking Content Strategy in an Age of Globalization; Kirk St.Amant
- Is it Time to Adopt Machine Translation?; Alan Houser
- Performing a Global Audit; Leah Guren
- Accessibility and Translatability: Making Your Content Universal; Jessie Mallory
Technical Editing Fundamentals for All. Linda Oestreich and Michelle Corbin lead a two-day intensive on the writer/editor collaboration and discuss how to edit beyond words on the page, such as user interfaces and embedded assistance.
After completing Linda and Michelle’s session, further your writing and editing skills with the following sessions:
- Writing for Mobile: Don't Shrink It—Rethink It!; Jenny Stout and Marta Rauch
- Clever Copy for Happy Users; Lauren Colton
- Letting Go of the Little Things; Leah Guren
- How to Make Sense of Any Mess; Abby Covert
- Information Design for Technical Communicators; Linda Oestreich
The preconference workshop fees are separate from the Summit registration fees. If you have already registered for the Summit and would like to add a preconference workshop to your registration now, please contact Deborah Repasy.