This post is brought to you by Chris Hester, Chair of the STC Conference Committee
Has your team started talking about “going mobile”? If you have started talking about content strategy for mobile projects, are you also considering your users’ mobile experiences? Whether you are new to the topic or have been delivering mobile content for a while, we have experts lined up, guaranteed to give you new and exciting perspectives at the 2015 Summit.
Presentations
Minimalizing Mobile Interactions, with John Carroll
The emerging smartphone design palette incorporates smaller displays and thumb-twisting keyboards, but also new possibilities for leveraging contextual information, such as one’s location and favorite interactions. Learn about mobile design challenges and approaches, drawing upon mobile timebanking and other community-oriented applications.
John M. Carroll is Distinguished Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University. His research is in methods and theory in human-computer interaction, particularly as applied to Internet tools for collaborative learning and problem solving, and design of interactive information systems.
Delighting Mobile Customers with Content for Apps, Videos, and a Social Media Campaign, with Marta Rauch and Emily Hamer
This session looks at how your team can delight customers by leveraging your content across multiple channels, including social media and video. Discover best practices for developing mobile content, running a social media campaign across platforms, validating results through analytics and customer feedback, and demonstrating the department’s value to the organization.
Marta Rauch is a Senior Principal Information Developer at Oracle, where she develops content for mobile products, including smartphones and tablets. She enjoys sharing content strategy best practices with worldwide audiences, and contributed to The Language of Content Strategy, by Rahel Bailie and Scott Abel. Emily Hamer is a Principal Information Developer at Oracle, where she works with different teams to develop content and video-based user assistance for mobile, cloud, and other products.
Hypergraphics for Visual-first Help: SVG, CSS, JavaScript, with Dave Gardiner
Learn how hypergraphics, an emerging HTML5 technology, can be used to sketch visual interfaces for mobile-first help and shortcut the process for translation/localization and online help documentation. Hyperlinked infographics are a convergence of scalable vector graphics (SVG), cascading style sheets (CSS) and JavaScript – technologies necessary for responsive web design.
Dave Gardiner is the owner of Xmplar, a content development and publishing support consultancy. He has a decade of experience in technical and scientific document editing, redrawing illustrations, and ebook authoring. Dave has delivered industry workshops and conference presentations, and has published articles on XML document publishing technologies.
Meeting the Evolving Challenges of Mobile Publishing with Maxwell Hoffman
Platforms, screen sizes, and standards for publishing to mobile devices seem to change on a quarterly basis. How can you get the most out of Adobe FrameMaker and Adobe RoboHelp and continue to publish usable, findable, and friendly content across mobile and traditional channels?
Maxwell is a Product Evangelist for technical communication at Adobe. His practical experience includes managing projects in DITA, XML as well as authoring tools ranging from Word, InDesign, QuarkXpress to structured FrameMaker. He has presented face-to-face, hands-on training to over 1,200 people in scalable authoring solutions over many years.
Preparing Legacy Help Projects for Responsive Design with Neil Perlin
Do you have legacy help projects whose content is still valid and that you’d like to make responsive? In this two-part session, Part 1 looks at the concepts of responsive design and problems that can arise during the conversion of legacy help projects; Part 2 is a practical workshop session that addresses design issues and techniques for resolving them.
Neil’s extensive experience in technical communication includes training, consulting, and development for online documentation and tools including WinHelp, HTML Help, CE Help, JavaHelp, RoboHelp, Flare, XML, XHTML, ViziApps, and others. He is a columnist and frequent speaker for STC and other professional groups, member of the New England STC chapter, creator and manager of the former Beyond the Bleeding Edge sessions at the STC Summit, and a 2010 STC Fellow.
Workshops
Phones Aren't Flat: Designing for People, Data and Ecosystems, with Steve Hoober
This workshop dispels the idea that phones are simply flat slabs of glass our users touch. Multi-screening, smart homes, and wearable devices give us an excuse to think specifically about the real ways people work. Attendees will talk about how to use technology to build products and services—not just apps and websites—for your business and users. We will combine this with a brief exercise, so bring along a current or recently-completed project, or a favorite (or least favorite) tool you use day to day to work on.
Steven Hoober is a mobile strategist, architect, and interaction designer whose 4ourth Mobile helps large companies, mobile service providers and startups understand how to exploit mobile technology to meet the needs of their users. He has been doing mobile and multi-channel design since 1999, working on everything from the earliest app stores, to browser design, to pretty much everything but games.
Writing for Mobile: Don't Shrink It–Rethink It! With Jenny Stout and Marta Rauch
Mobile devices require an entirely new mindset. We are now challenged to write with the small–sometimes tiny–screen in mind. Jenny and Marta show you how to adjust to such space limitations and making every word count.
Jenny Stout is a Principal Editor at Oracle, where she helps writers in their quest to deliver the best content available, in the best way possible, on mobile devices. Jenny develops emerging mobile guidelines for iPhones, Androids, and simplified user interfaces while working closely with writers and developers. Her early career of 13 years as a copy editor at a national newspaper prepared her to “think big, write small.” Marta is an STC Associate Fellow, a member of the STC Nominating Committee, and Vice President of the STC Silicon Valley Chapter. She has presented internationally on mobile user assistance, and her articles on strategies for mobile and wearable tech appear in STC Intercom and other publications.
Preconference Workshop
Creating Documentation-Centric, Interactive Mobile Apps, with Neil Perlin
Responsive design makes it easy to port online help to mobile devices, but what if you need more features than help authoring tools can create, such as help that knows where it’s located and automatically revises itself accordingly? Or a help system for the general public that can sell tools and support services to users as part of the help? Or a help system with a built-in camera that can take a photo and send it to tech support? Help authoring tools can’t create this; app development tools can. In this full-day workshop (on Saturday, June 20), you’ll build an app that can display documentation on a smartphone or tablet and can have app-like features.
Check out summit.stc.org for more information.