Summit ’13: Project Showcase Offers Learning by Example

Note: Starting with this guest post by Paul Mueller, we'll be putting Summit-related blog posts here on STC's Notebook instead of the Summit blog to give readers just one place to look for all the official STC blog posts. In the coming week's we'll be migrating all previous content here as well.

The Project Showcase debuted at the 2011 Technical Communication Summit and has been growing in popularity as more and more attendees learn about this session. The format is much less structured than a program session and allows presenters to discuss and share their projects and approaches with attendees. This highly interactive session allows you to explore projects that use approaches you may want to learn about and possibly adopt.

On Tuesday afternoon, each Project Showcase presenter sets up his or her project at table in the session area. Attendees are free to roam in and out during the 1-hour session period. Presenters share their projects with groups of attendees as the groups walk from table to table. Attendees who are interested in a topic will stop and listen, and hopefully discuss the project in greater detail.

Presenters often prepare a short (5-10 minute) presentation, and they provide a handout with additional details.  In many cases, attendees get an idea that they can explore and use. The implementation details can be secondary, and presenters may choose to invite people who are interested in more details to contact them after the session. These small group discussions allow technical communicators to share their experiences, ideas, and solutions. Presenters have 60 minutes to share their project multiple times, as new people come to learn more. The projects selected for the 2013 Project Showcase include:

• How Tos: Creating a Quick Path to Success!
• Gamifying Your Content
• From Confusion to Cohesion: Process-Oriented Documentation
• Creating and Cultivating Community Via CHM
• Using Automation to Improve Your Content for Free
• Role of Attitudes in Assessing TC Instruction Feasibility
• MotoDawg: A Case Study in Native App Development