communication department

Technical Communication Summit

Ramius Software Provides Dynamic Conference Experience

New features planned for this year’s conference in Minneapolis—including Institutes, or conferences-within-a-conference—continue STC’s tradition of educational excellence by offering in-depth explorations of hot topics in technical communication. As part of these new features, the Ramius Corporation (www.ramius.net) of Ottawa, Canada, has joined with STC to extend and deepen the conference experience beyond the few days that attendees gather in Minneapolis.

A leading developer of online community systems for virtual collaboration and knowledge sharing, Ramius will offer complimentary use of its flagship software, CommunityZero, a powerful Web-based tool for creating virtual communities. Attendees who register for the Sharing Corporate Knowledge Institute will be able to use CommunityZero to network, share information, view session files, and communicate with the presenter and other participants—for thirty days before and after the conference!

CommunityZero is 100 percent Web-based and features a full suite of collaborative tools that will enable participants to discuss Institute sessions and build on the knowledge they gather at the conference. Presenters also plan to use CommunityZero’s polling feature to solicit registrants’ input, which will help shape the discussions in Minneapolis. More than 1.5 million users worldwide recognize the value of CommunityZero’s extensive capabilities, which include the following:

• a consistent, easy-to-use interface
• powerful search capabilities
• integrated RSS feeds
• streamlined document management with check-in/check-out version tracking
• content submission via e-mail
• easy-to-use permissions capabilities
• Web-based database tool

The Sharing Corporate Knowledge Institute—organized by Michael Hughes, an STC Associate Fellow and award-winning author on knowledge management—will feature sessions on knowledge harvesting, maximizing the business value of your intranet through design standards, case studies in knowledge-driven design, and pattern language as a knowledge tool.

For more information about Ramius and CommunityZero, visit www.ramius.net. To register for STC’s 54th Annual Conference, go to the conference Web site at www.stc.org/54thConf.asp. The Institutes are included in the conference registration fee (US$795 for members).