Volume XIX Number 8

October 2006

“Software Saturdays” Provide Quality, Affordable Training

By Nicky Bleiel, Immediate Past President, Pittsburgh Chapter

Everyone agrees continuing education is important—but how do you keep up with the latest technical writing tools and technologies if you have a small budget and no time? The Pittsburgh Chapter STC decided to tackle that problem last year with the kick-off of a new program called "Software Saturdays."

Software Saturdays are one-day, low-cost (we charged $40 for members), hands-on training opportunities. The classes are a great way for members to get an introduction to a software tool they’ve never used, or to get a refresher on something familiar. Each class is taught by a certified trainer.

Training sessions last six to eight hours and effectively bridge the gap between a regular one-hour monthly meeting and a standard two- to three-day training class. Enough information is provided to either pursue further study of the tool with the intent of adopting it, provide “jump start” information for a tool already purchased, or to decide the tool isn’t right for your needs.

During the 2005–2006 programming year, our chapter offered three Software Saturdays:

❖ Adobe FrameMaker/WebWorks ePublisher Pro (Instructor: Alan Houser, Group Wellesley, Inc.)
❖ Doc-To-Help 101: Getting Started for RoboHelp Users (Instructor: Lynn Phillips, ComponentOne)
❖ Introduction to AuthorIT (Instructor: John Hawkins, Systems Documentation, Inc.)

All were held at a centrally located training facility in downtown Pittsburgh.

For our efforts, the Pittsburgh chapter was named a “Chapter of Excellence” at the STC annual conference in May 2006 for “sponsoring Software Saturdays to meet your members’ specific professional development needs.”

Getting Started

Planning the Software Saturday program began in the summer of 2005, when we were working on the monthly meeting programming for 2005–2006. We wanted to make sure there was no overlap in content and that classes were spaced logically throughout the year.

In order to get the program off the ground, we needed three things: trainers, a venue, and a publicity program.

Trainers

It was important that Software Saturday classes be taught by certified trainers, but because we wanted to keep the cost low, we wouldn’t be able to pay them their standard fees. In addition, we sometimes required them to do the extra work of modifying their standard classes to fit our format.

We began our search by checking our membership for locally based, certified trainers. We were also lucky that Pittsburgh is the home of ComponentOne, the developers of Doc-To-Help, which has qualified trainers on staff.

If a certified trainer isn’t in the neighborhood, check for one in nearby towns and states. When attending conferences and meetings, make sure to note on the business cards you collect if a person is a software trainer and if he or she is planning a trip to your town in the future. Often a training session can be tacked on to a client visit.

As for trainers’ fees, there are several offers that you can extend to help keep your costs down. First of all, ask trainers to donate their time. STC members are often willing to do pro bono work to help local chapters. Software companies may provide a trainer free of charge. If you can’t find a company that will provide training at no cost (and it isn’t possible 100 percent of the time), make an offer to pay the trainer’s travel expenses or split the day’s revenues. Get creative, and always be honest about what you can afford.

Venue

Another important aspect of the Software Saturday program is that the training is hands-on. This makes finding a low-cost venue a little more challenging because we needed a facility with a PC for each student.

When scouting training facilities, remember that the room only needs to accommodate the maximum number of students the trainer can comfortably teach. For hands-on training, most instructors will have a limit; make sure to ask what it is. Make sure to let the venue know that your class will be held on a Saturday. This can be a plus because the weekends are usually a slow day for classes. However, if the facility is normally closed on the weekends, they may need to juggle staff to accommodate your needs.

To keep costs down, forge relationships with local training facilities. You can offer them publicity in exchange for discounts. Colleges can be a low- or no-cost venue, especially if they have a technical writing program in place. Ask a professor (perhaps an STC member) if the school would be willing to cosponsor.

Publicity

We publicized our Software Saturdays by:

❖ Sending hard-copy mailings to our members (make sure to get them out at least a month in advance so members can plan and possibly request training budget money from their supervisors). Added bonus: we used these mailings to cross-promote other chapter events.
❖ E-mailing our members. We used Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com). It’s inexpensive and you can easily design a professional-looking HTML mail template. You can also take advantage of a free Lyris listserv from the STC office. Contact the office for more information or visit www.stc.org/List_Request/listrequest.asp.
❖ Contacting the presidents of nearby STC chapters.
❖ Posting notices on local technology Web sites. In Pittsburgh, we have the Pittsburgh Technology Council Web site, as well as several online calendars.
❖ Submitting information to local newspapers. Many cross-post on their Web sites.
❖ Posting to our Web site.

And don’t forget to add the presidents and webmasters of other local organizations to your mailing and e-mail lists. The local chapters of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), Special Librarians Association (SLA), etc., may have members interested in your classes. Many cities also have organizations that exist only at the local level that you can find out about by reading the local technology press and networking. Pittsburgh has many such organizations, including the Pittsburgh Regional Knowledge Management Consortium and the Pittsburgh eLearning Society.

Make sure your publicity materials include:

❖ The purpose of a Software Saturday
❖ Lesson overview
❖ What students will learn (bullet points)
❖ The target audience—beginners, those with previous experience with software product, etc.
❖ Speaker biography
❖ Housekeeping information: location, schedule, cost, RSVP

For samples of promotional materials created by the Pittsburgh chapter, please e-mail me.

Odds and Ends

Food: Since a typical Software Saturday lasts six to eight hours, you need to plan for two meals. Catering for two meals can easily exceed $30 per person, so we avoided it to keep our prices low. For breakfast, we picked up bagels and pastries. The training facility provided the coffee, tea, and other beverages as part of their service. Lunch was “dutch”—which we made clear in our publicity materials. We could do this because our training facility was located in downtown Pittsburgh and there were a wide variety of choices available. Brown-bagging was also an option.

Evaluation Forms: Feedback is very important, so make sure you hand out evaluation forms. Most trainers will have standard evaluation forms. Make sure to let them know they may hand them out. The chapter should create a separate one that focuses on the program itself.

Wrap-Up

Our chapter was pleased with the response to our Software Saturday program and plans to offer at least two more sessions this year: MadCap Flare and—as part of our mission to address technologies—Structured Authoring/DITA.

A neighboring chapter, Northeast Ohio, kicked off its own Software Saturday program in the spring, and plans to continue it this fall. Since Pittsburgh and Cleveland are only two hours apart, our chapters are coordinating with vendors and trainers to ideally set up a “tour” that will result in a class in one city on Friday, then the other on Saturday. This will make it easier for the trainers to work out travel arrangements, and offer members of both chapters another option to suit their schedules.

Nicoletta Bleiel is the lead information developer with Matrix Solutions. Nicky has more than ten years’ experience in technical communication, writing for products in the media, industrial automation, simulation, and pharmaceutical industries. She has presented talks at several STC national and regional conferences and other technical writing conferences. She is immediate past president of the Pittsburgh chapter and can be reached at nbleiel@matrixplus. com. The Pittsburgh chapter Web site address is www.stcpgh.org.