Tag: Guest Blogger

May 20

At the Summit: A Man, A Plan, A Panama Hat

This year’s Summit has a bunch of subtle changes that translate to significant improvements. There have been some years when the STC Summit was at convention centers and hotels where the individual sessions were spread across a wide area—sometimes on separate floors. I remember at times either showing up for a session that was standing room only and having my second choice being a bit of a jaunt. In past years there was only a 15-minute break between sessions, which of course made things complicated if you had to haul from one end of the venue to the other for your next session and no doubt truncated some of the after-session Q&A. One excellent change this year is that for the most part all the sessions are in one hallway in adjacent rooms.

May 15

Letter from the UK: Mapping Technical Communicators

Sarah Maddox will be soon speaking at the STC Summit on API Technical Writing: What, Why, and How. She recently posted an article on her blog on how she has used APIs to create an interactive map showing technical communication events around the world. This in turn prompted me to look at whether I could create a map showing the location of Technical Authors around the UK. You can see the map here: Cherryleaf Survey—Location of Technical Authors map.

May 14

Talking Usability: What I Learned as a Competition Judge

I was in a meeting with a client reviewing my user guide for use in training users on a new system in development. The client asked why my user guide did not have the same layout and design as the legacy user guide. Before I answered, my mind flashed back to earlier this year when I was a judge in the Society’s international publication competition, better known as the STC International Summit Awards.