communication department

Volume XIX Number 8

Events

Coffee, Croissants, and Q&A: Region 2 Conference Event

Take advantage of a rare opportunity to share a light breakfast at the Region 2 conference with STC’s new Executive Director, Susan Burton, and the presidential chain: Paula Berger (President), Linda Oestreich (First Vice President), and Mark Clifford (Second Vice President). This gathering, scheduled for Saturday, October 14, 2006 from 7:30–8:30 AM at the conference site (Hampstead Britannia Hotel in London), will be a relaxed, town-meeting-style event. Meet these four influential STC leaders and ask them your burning questions, whatever they may be!

To reserve your spot, please send an e-mail to registration@stcuk.org. Walk-ins are welcome — no one will be turned away. However, your reservation will help ensure adequate seating and food.

This is a special, late addition to an already spectacular conference program, so don’t miss it!

Get Involved in World Usability Day

STC is participating in World Usability Day 2006 on November 14 to help make the world a better place for product users, and we invite you to participate. The STC initiatives include holding the world’s largest online card sort and working on a usability competition. Volunteers are needed to organize the competition and to organize and participate in the card sort. If you’re interested, please visit www.stc.org/wud for more information about signing up.

Society Events

October 11, 2006 WEBINAR
Nathaniel Lim will present an STC Web-telephone seminar, “Designing Business Forms: A No-nonsense Approach,” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. Participants will learn about the basic designs of hardcopy forms, common design pitfalls, use of white space, placement of instructions, and logical flow. For more information or to register for the seminar, please visit stc.webex.com.

October 13–14, 2006 CONFERENCE
STC’s Region 2 Conference, “Making Cents of Making Sense: Technical Communications and Business,” will be held in London, England. The audience for the conference includes anyone involved in the business or production of technical documentation, including writers, editors, documentation managers, translators, technical illustrators, and publishers. For more information, please visit the conference Web site.

October 18, 2006 WEBINAR
Beverly Tester and Maggie Haenel will present a Web-telephone seminar, “Accelerated Learning: The Extreme Training Makeover,” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. The seminar, produced by the Instructional Design and Learning (IDL) SIG, will focus on a proven learning system designed to speed up and enhance both the training design and the learning process. For more information or to register, please visit stcidlsig.org/webinar/reg.php.

October 25, 2006 WEBINAR
Holly Harkness will host an STC Web-telephone seminar, “Ten Ways to Increase Your Value as a Technical Communicator,” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. The seminar will focus on how technical communicators can market their versatility and talent in the services they provide. Contract technical communicators will also learn how to beef up their resumes and increase their chances of remaining with a company after their original project is completed. For more information or to register for the seminar, please visit stc.webex.com.

November 2–4, 2006 CONFERENCE
The Lone Star Community STC will host STC’s 2006 Region 5 Conference, “50 Facets of Technical Communication,” at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Addison, Texas. For more information, please visit the conference Web site.

November 8, 2006 WEBINAR
Whitney Quesenbery will host an STC Web-telephone seminar, “Choosing the Right Usability Technique (To Answer the Right Question),” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. This seminar will review options for usability evaluations and examine how they can be used most effectively. For more information or to register for the seminar, please visit stc.webex.com.

November 22, 2006 WEBINAR
Robert Dianetti will host an STC Web-telephone seminar, “Selling Technical Communication Services—Both Inside and Outside Your Organization,” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. Participants will learn how to identify their companies’ needs to create more business and how to market themselves effectively to build their career. For more information or to register for the seminar, please visit stc.webex.com.

December 6, 2006 WEBINAR
Maggie Haenel will present an STC Web-telephone seminar, “Creating Training that Sticks,” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. The seminar will focus on how adults learn and what makes them remember information. For more information or to register for the seminar, please visit stc.webex.com.

January 17, 2007 WEBINAR
Neil Perlin will host an STC Web-telephone seminar, “The X Factor—From HTML to XHTML,” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. A detailed description will be available soon. For more information or to register for the seminar, please visit stc.webex.com.

January 31, 2007 WEBINAR
Elaine Wisniewski and Steven Hall will present an STC Web-telephone seminar, “ANSI Z535.6—A New Standard for Safety Information in Product-accompanying Literature,” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. Participants will learn about a new national standard for presenting safety messages in owners’ manuals. The standard ANSIZ535.6, Product Safety Information in Product Manuals, Instructions, and Other Collateral Materials, is expected to be published by the end of 2006. It focuses on the design and placement of product safety messages (or warnings) in product-accompanying documents. For more information or to register for the seminar, please visit stc.webex.com.

February 7, 2007 WEBINAR
Heather Hedden will host an STC Web-telephone seminar, “Creating Indexes on Web Sites and Intranets,” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. The seminar will focus on manually created A-Z site indexes as a solution for managers of Web or HTML content. The structure of HTML indexes and a review of how such indexes compare with site maps, taxonomies, and search engines, as well as an overview of Web indexing tools, will be presented. For more information or to register for the seminar, please visit stc.webex.com.

Send announcements of your community or regional events to tieline@stc.org.