Treasurer replacement

Our recently elected STC Treasurer has been forced to resign due to employer imposed policy constraints and regulatory restrictions. STC Fellow Rachel Houghton has agreed to fill the post-election Treasurer vacancy for the remainder of the year. As required by STC by-laws, an interim election must be held to validate the selection. The results of that election will be announced Mar 6.

Mentorship Program

We have two mentorship aplicants who are seeking a mentor with grant-writing experience. If you have such experience (or know somebody who has grant writing experience), please contact our mentorship student rep Julie Anderson at jlath01@msn.com

Panera Bread

Saturday, March 11, 10 am

RSVP

1125 E Glendale Road, Phoenix, AZ (map)

Join us for another Saturday morning session of coffee and conversation with fellow technical communicators. We’ve reserved plenty of space at this easily accessible North Valley brunch location, so drop by and jolt your weekend into gear with a pleasant caffeine buzz.

http://www.stc-phoenix.com/index.php/category/employment/

Lou Kummerer

president@stc-phoenix.com

Vice President:

Barry Maid

vice-president@stc-phoenix.com

Secretary:

Angela Harleaux

Treasurer:

Rachel Houghton

treasurer@stc-phoenix.com

Have you renewed your membership for 2017? Visit the STC website to join or renew.

by Rachel Houghton

The 64th annual STC Technical Communication Summit just wrapped up on Wednesday, May 10 in National Harbor, MD. The location was unique - close to Washington, D.C. and all the sightseeing you could possibly cram in, but just far enough away that most tourist attractions were not a distraction.

There were plenty of things to see just outside the hotel. National Harbor boasts the Capitol Wheel, which gives you a birds' eye view of the Potomac River and Alexandria, as well as the new MGM Grand Hotel and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. If you didn't want to take a water taxi ride to Alexandria or the National Mall, there was enough to keep your camera busy just walking around: statues of Founding Fathers, Henry Ford, the Marilyn Monroe Seven Year Itch iconic scene,  and the Peeps store with the yellow Peepmobile outside -- just to mention a few.

While it was fun to take in the sights and sounds of the area, there was a lot of learning done at the Summit. A more comprehensive review of the Summit will appear in next month's newsletter. (All photos copyright Rachel Houghton, used with permission.)

Phoenix chapter was fortunate to have two summit attendees this year, Rachel Houghton and Eric Strachan. Eric has provided the following  report on several of the Summit sessions:

Among the many benefits of attending the annual STC Summit is the opportunity to learn about important trends and developments in the industry from leading professionals. I had the good fortune to attend the Summit conference for the second straight year. What follows is a brief snapshot of what I observed. Insofar as I was only able to attend a small fraction of the sessions, I will necessarily be giving short shrift to a host of important topics like DITA, Agile, and user experience. Instead, I plan to talk briefly about API documentation, customer engagement through video tutorials, and what I’ll designate as --- for lack of a better term --- aligning documentation with business objectives. These topics reflect my personal interests, but I hope they might also be of interest to any technical communicators looking to adopt a promising specialty, acquire a critical new skill, or persuade stakeholders to appreciate the value of the work we do.

Opening Address at STC Summit Given by Seth Mattison

As was the case at last year’s Summit, the sessions on API documentation drew a lot of interest. The exponential growth of APIs, which shows no signs of abating, promises to provide a lot of job opportunities for technical communicators, especially since the supply of technical communicators with the requisite skills falls short of demand. Of course, API documentation also has the advantage of being one of the most lucrative technical communication specializations. I had the opportunity to attend two of these sessions at this year’s conference, one given by Ed Marshall and another by Robert Delwood. Invariably, one of the questions that comes up at these sessions is: How much programming knowledge does one need to write API documentation? As ever, the answer depends on whom you are asking. Though he did not address this question explicitly at this conference, I know that in the past Ed Marshall has said that an introductory-level knowledge of programming should suffice. You just need to know enough to craft some basic code samples and not break the build. According to Delwood, on the other hand, you can write good documentss without being a programmer, but you will not be able to write great documentss. In fact, he stated that writers would be at a disadvantage if they only knew one programming language. He suggested, moreover, that writers should be familiar with such concepts as class, inheritance, method vs. property, and scope. (For anyone interested in API documentation, I highly recommend Peter Gruenbaum’s affordable three-course introduction to API documentation, available through SDK Bridge/Udemy.)

Summit Attendees Leah Guren, Judith Glick Smith, and Andrea Ames showing off Judith Glick-Smith's book Flow-Based Leadership

The subject of customer engagement, which I will revisit below, figured prominently in many of the education sessions at this year’s Summit. However, I wanted to take a moment to discuss one specific means of customer engagement --- the video tutorial --- because I think the ability to produce such videos is becoming a vital skill for technical communicators. Whether or not we care to admit it, consumers appear less inclined than ever to consult the manual for instructions or troubleshooting. (For more on this topic, especially as it pertains to the IoT, see Steve Jong’s insightful article.) In his presentation, “Video Provides the Edge,” Mark Kleinsmith of MiTek, U.S.A. explained how his team converted their entire set of help documentation into short videos. According to Kleinsmith, the decision to ditch their old help system in favor of video was an acknowledgment that this is how people prefer to learn, but it also provides a unique avenue for creating a bond with customers. While I don’t think this kind of wholesale conversion is realistic for many companies, I think it is very likely that most companies will want to convert at least some help content into video format, if for no other reason than this is what consumers demand. In the near future, I think this will become a basic skill that all technical communicators will be expected to have.

Finally, a common theme in many of the sessions I attended was aligning documentation with underlying business goals. One of the biggest topics at the conference was content strategy, which to my mind is all about creating content that serves the underlying business goal of cultivating and maintaining a loyal customer base. But this theme also appeared in the context of urging technical communicators to demonstrate the added value of their content by aligning that content with marketing and sales objectives. This idea was articulated most explicitly in a presentation by Tom Aldous (“Aligning Your Technical Communication Content with Brand Initiatives and Making Marketing Pay for It”). He identified a shift in the industry toward having technical writers report to the marketing department, and encouraged writers to show the marketing folks that they can create content that can be used to build relationships with customers. In a somewhat different vein, this was also the thrust of Rahul Prabhakar’s presentation on social media (“How Social Media Can Be Part of Your Set of Technical Communication Skills”). Though he mainly talked about how he monetized his blog and the role of influencers in social media marketing, Prabhakar suggested that technical communicators, as the best communicators in their organizations, are positioned to help their organizations cultivate customer relationships and influence sales through social media.

Mirror Image of Hotel

Last month we heard from Eric Strachan about his experience at the STC Summit. For this month's edition, Rachel Houghton has contributed her impressions.

I’ve been to almost every STC Summit since 1999, so my perspective and experience is a bit different. Yes, I go to the Summit to learn every year, but I also go to network with and learn from my peers in the field. And to have some fun!

In between sessions, at the Vendor Expo, at the local Starbucks – if you see an attendee wearing the Summit badge, it’s an opportunity to learn. You could meet someone in a totally different field who is experiencing the same challenges, or someone who lives in the same geographic area as you that you’ve never crossed paths with. All it takes is one conversation that sparks an idea or a solution to a nagging problem in your job.

Networking in the main hallway. That's Conference Chair Todd DeLuca in the back with the patriotic hat.

STC also has a great speed networking event that allows you to quickly meet (and exchange cards/information with) 7 other tablemates in 10 minute period, then you switch tables and do it again. This was a recent addition to the Vendor Expo area, but it’s a fun thing to do, and helps attendees get over that initial fear of approach.

There are also social events that allow attendees to meet in more informal ways. I attended a “Dine Around” event with a host chapter representative, Dr. Liz Herman at Rosa Mexicano. The tableside guacamole preparation was amazing, but the conversation was even better.

Tableside guacamole prep at  Rosa Mexicano.

I also went to the Honors Reception After Party, which featured the Rough Drafts on stage. The Rough Drafts are a group of technical communicators who play musical instruments. We had Rich Maggiani on drums, Viqui Dill on bass guitar and vocals, Keith Dill on guitar, Richard Hamilton on guitar, and Stephen Alder on guitar. They had a playlist of crowdsourced tunes, and occasionally the more extroverted attendees would get up on stage and sing along.

The Rough Drafts take the stage at the Honors reception.

Marilyn Woelk, Jamye Sagan, Sean Stevenson and Ben Woelk at the after party.

When it came time to say goodbye, it was time for some memories with friends. Lots of attendees were taking selfies with their phones as they headed back home, full of knowledge and good times.

Rachel and friends Dr. Jackie Damrau, Jamye Sagan, and Cindy Pao.

Please welcome the following new Phoenix Chapter members:

• Lester Kaufman
• Erika Konrad
• Angela Gillis

Phoenix City Grille

Thursday, December 14, 4:30 to 7 pm

Bethany Home and 16th Street, Phoenix, AZ(map)

Join us for seasonal cheer.

Election results will be announced.

RSVP

STC Associate Fellow Kim Rosenlof has been a member of the Phoenix Chapter since 1997 and has served as chapter treasurer (2012) and president (2013-2015)

Originally from Wisconsin, Kim knew she wanted to write from an early age and has been writing for the aircraft industry for many years. She operates her own technical writing business and currently serves as chapter membership chairperson.

Kim, how did you first get into the field of technical writing?

Before moving to Arizona in 1996, my writing had been confined to newsletters and magazine articles. But in 1997, I became a contractor for Honeywell, doing some light coding in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to create macros and templates for Microsoft Word. The documents I was producing were given to Honeywell technical writers.

After I was hired full time at Honeywell and took on more tech writing responsibilities, I convinced my manager to switch from Word to FrameMaker.

What advice do you have for writers just starting out in the field?

I've found that having some sort of background, experience or interest in the industry you want to write for is actually more important than a degree in technical writing. You are much more saleable as a technical writer if you actually know a little (or a lot) about the industry. For example, if you want to write in healthcare, go get an Associates in Nursing and work on the floor for a year or two. My degrees are in aviation, not English or tech writing.

Where do you see technical writing going in the future?

I see manuals going away, and even, in 50 years or so, PDFs. People don't read more than 300 to 400 words at a time any more. They want short videos, tutorials, wiki entries, blog posts, or bits of specific data.

Most technical writers won't be writing for end users but for the media producers, if they are not producing the media themselves. They'll write scripts for videos and tutorials, or they'll chunk material into small wiki-sized bites. Or if they want to write books, they may end up writing textbooks, although those are going increasingly digital too.

That said, there will always be a need for technical writers whether in the print field or online, whether with large companies or small.