communication department

Volume XX Number 3

Events

Now Open: Online Conference Registration

Online registration for STC’s 54th Annual Conference is now open. To register at the member rate, STC members must enter their membership number, which appears on the address labels of Intercom, Technical Communication, and all other correspondence from the Society office. Members who want to be reminded of their membership number should call the STC office at +1 (703) 522-4114.

The conference Web site also provides comprehensive, up-to-date information on educational and professional opportunities at the conference. As the conference draws near, this information will be updated frequently. Members are encouraged to visit the site often for the latest information.

As with STC’s main Web site, all conference Web site pages are printer-friendly for the convenience of attendees planning their schedules.

Conference Hotels: Reserve Rooms by April 13

STC has arranged for special rates for this year’s conference attendees at the following hotels. All prices are in U.S. dollars.

• Marriott Minneapolis City Center ($163 for a single, double, triple, or quadruple room)
• Millennium Hotel ($164 for a single or double room, $174 for a triple room, and $184 for a quadruple)
• Hyatt Regency Minneapolis ($183 for a single or double room, $193 for a triple room, and $203 for a quadruple)
• Hilton Minneapolis and Towers ($194 for a single room, $204 for a double room, $224 for a triple or quadruple room, and $239 for rooms located in the Towers and suites)

To take advantage of these rates, attendees must make their reservations by April 13. For reservations, call the Meet Minneapolis housing bureau at +1 (888) 947-2233 (toll free within the U.S. and Canada) or +1 (612) 767-8000 outside North America. You can also make reservations through the housing bureau. The conference code is 3121.

STC works hard to negotiate with hotels to provide you with the best possible accommodations during the annual conference. When you book your reservations through the housing bureau, you will have the support of STC and the bureau to resolve any issues that might arise with your reservation. If, after you have made your reservations through the housing bureau, you need to make changes, call the Meet Minneapolis housing bureau directly.

Preconference sessions will be at the Hilton Hotel. The Minneapolis Convention Center will host all other conference events and technical sessions.

IDL SIG Presents Live Web Seminar on Interactive Training

By William Huscher, Instructional Design and Learning (IDL) SIG Public Relations Manager

You may be the best trainer on the planet, but you’ll never interact with your audience the way Dr. Sivasailam Thiagarajan (Thiagi) and his associates can. How you teach a course says so much about your credibility, your experience, and your professionalism—all rolled into one. Some trainers reiterate information straight out of a workbook, point to diagrams, rewrite old examples to teach, and call it interactive training. In April, an Instructional Design and Learning (IDL) SIG live Web seminar will teach participants how to provide games and activities to best engage their audience.

Some tools promise to boost classroom participation, but the lesson that trainers most often learn themselves is that such tools are expensive, cumbersome, and not practical in all situations. An alternative that many trainers are beginning to take seriously is Thiagi’s approach to engaging audiences.

Everyone agrees that an interactive training environment is important—and expensive tools fall short of their technological promises all too often. In contrast, Thiagi shares a set of proven principles and procedures that increase and improve interactive training—easily and affordably! Firmly based on his conviction that the essence of interactivity can be unleashed in the trainer’s mind and not the keyboard, Thiagi’s techniques are directly related to instructional outcomes rather than DSL modem speed.

Techniques shared in his live Web seminar include:

• Pair work
• Polling and predicting
• Interactive fiction
• Facilitated follow-up
• Jolts

Thiagi’s professional experience spans decades. He has worked with over fifty top-tier organizations in the high-tech, financial services, and management industries. He’s consulted and provided training in such areas as right-sizing, diversity, creativity, teamwork, customer satisfaction, human-performance technology, and organizational learning. He’s published forty books, created 120 games and simulations, authored more than 200 articles, made hundreds of presentations and keynote speeches at professional conferences (in fact, he holds the International Society for Performance Improvement, ISPI, record for making the most presentations), and is a regular presenter at Lakewood’s training conferences and the annual conferences of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and the North American Simulation and Gaming Association (NASAGA). Thiagi has served as the president of NASAGA and the Association for Special Education Technology (ASET), and has received seventeen different awards and presidential citations from ISPI, including the society’s highest honor—being named an honorary life member. He has also been named an honorary life member of NASAGA, and has received its highest honor, the Ifill-Raynolds award.

Thiagi is charismatic, knowledgeable, and funny. Your expectations should stay high long after his presentation.

If you don’t know what “jolts” are, then it’s in your best interest to attend, learn, and play!

Event Information
Title: Learning with Thiagi
Date: Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Time: 1 PM Eastern Time (10 AM Pacific Time)
Cost: Members $50; nonmembers $65
Presenter: Dr. Sivasailam Thiagarajan
Duration: 1.5 hours

To register, please visit the IDL SIG Web site. For more information, please e-mail Jane Smith, IDL SIG manager, or call her at +1 (928) 284-0455.

For more information about Thiagi and the Thiagi Group, please visit www.thiagi.com.

Society Events

March 9–10, 2007 CONFERENCE

The Atlanta Chapter STC will host its annual conference, Currents 2007, at the Mercer University Atlanta campus. Conference session topics include management, online content, tools and technology, writing and editing, usability, consulting and independent contracting, and marketing. Susan Burton, STC's Executive Director, will deliver the conference keynote address. For more information, please contact Dirk Bender or visit the chapter Web site.

March 14, 2007 LIVE WEB SEMINAR

Rahel Bailie will present an STC live Web seminar, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Content Management, But Were Afraid to Ask,” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. This seminar provides the groundwork for understanding what a content management system (CMS) is and what it does, the differences between various types of CMSs, circumstances in which content management can be beneficial, and techniques for determining system suitability. The seminar will also demystify the industry vocabulary, thereby eliminating some of the barriers that can slow down the investigative process. For more information or to register for the seminar, please visit the STC Web site.

March 16–17, 2007 CONFERENCE

The Philadelphia Metro Chapter STC will host its annual conference in the conference center at Penn State Great Valley, located in the Philadelphia suburbs near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Featured speakers include Cheryl Lockett Zuback, Neil Perlin, Ed Marshall, Stephanie Morgan, and keynoter Robert Glushko.

For more information, please e-mail conference@stcpmc.org or visit the chapter Web site.

March 23, 2007 CONFERENCE

The Rochester Chapter STC will hold “Spectrum 2007” at the RIT Inn and Conference Center in Rochester, New York. Featured speakers include Cindy Currie, Dorothy Hoskins, Lori Marra, Ruth Thaler-Carter, and keynoter Peter Bowerman, author of The Well-Fed Writer. For more information, please contact Amy Castronova or visit the chapter Web site.

March 28, 2007 LIVE WEB SEMINAR

Austin Skaggs and Christine Granger will present an STC live Web seminar, “Visible: The New Valuable,” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. The seminar will focus on how documentation departments can show their value by becoming more visible within their organizations. For more information or to register for the seminar, please visit the STC Web site.

April 11, 2007 LIVE WEB SEMINAR

Kevin A. Siegel will present an STC live Web seminar, “Creating Interactive CBTs with Captivate®—in Half the Time,” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. Participants will learn how to maximize the potential of Macromedia Captivate®, a powerful tool for creating software simulations, and how to create hybrid computer-based training systems (CBTs) that will cut development time by 50 percent. For more information or to register for the seminar, please visit the STC Web site.

April 11, 2007 LIVE WEB SEMINAR

Dr. Sivasailam Thiagarajan will present a live Web seminar, “Learning with Thiagi,” from 1 to 2:30 PM Eastern Time. The seminar, produced by the Instructional Design and Learning (IDL) SIG, will address a set of proven principles and procedures that increase and improve interactive training—easily and affordably. For more information or to register, please visit the SIG Web site.

April 12–13, 2007 CONFERENCE

The Manitoba Chapter STC and Red River College will hold their fourth annual technical communication conference, “Technology and Teamwork,” at the Red River College Princess Street campus. For more information, please contact Leslie McKendry-Smith or visit the chapter Web site.

April 18–20, 2007 CONFERENCE

The TransAlpine Chapter STC will host its spring 2007 conference at the corporate center of Zurich Financial Services in Zurich, Switzerland. For more information, please contact Nancy Gelman or visit the chapter Web site.

April 24–26, 2007 CONFERENCE

The Southwestern Ontario Chapter STC will host its spring 2007 workshop at the Hilton Garden Inn in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. Sarah O’Keefe will guide those new to XML as well as those already using it in their authoring environment through the XML challenge. For more information, please e-mail education@stc-soc.org or visit the chapter Web site.

May 2, 2007 LIVE WEB SEMINAR

Whitney Quesenbery will host an STC live Web 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 the STC Web site.

May 12–16, 2007 CONFERENCE

The Technical Communication Summit—STC’s 54th Annual Conference will be held at the Minneapolis Convention Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Preconference workshops will begin on May 12. For more information, please visit the STC Web site.

June 4, 2007 CONFERENCE

The Israel Chapter STC, which will celebrate forty years as a chapter—and as the oldest STC chapter outside of North America—will hold its semi-annual convention, “The Proactive Technical Communicator: Multiple Disciplines, Multiple Perspectives,” at the Daniel Hotel, Herzliya, Israel. For more information, please e-mail convention@stc-israel.org.il or visit the chapter Web site.

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