Society for Technical Communications : Phoenix Chapter

We had such a grand time at the July networking dinner, we decided to do it again! Join us for more fun on Tuesday, August 12, 2008. Our second summer dinner and networking meeting will take place at the Old Spaghetti Factory in central Phoenix.

We will have another fixed price menu for this event that provides your dinner and a non-alcoholic beverage. Other beverages are available foradditional cost.

Come join us for a lively evening of conversation and networking. We’d love to see you there!

Tuesday, July 8, 2008, dinner and networking at the Half Moon Sports Grill. Join us for a relaxing evening of old friends and new acquaintances. Find out who is doing what this summer and share a few stories of your own. We’d love to see you there!

A Humorous Look at the 2008 Conference

Join us on June 10, 2008, to enjoy perspectives of this year’s conference from an experienced conference goer and a newbie. Tom Barnett has attended conferences every year for “quite a few” years during his tenure with STC. Karen Zorn has never attended one and is looking forward to the conference and reporting back to the membership her impressions and views. Both are attending this year’s Technical Communication Summit and will return with differing perspectives of the conference proceedings and associated activities.

Following Tom and Karen’s presentation, there will be opportunity to discuss their perspectives and yours, should you also attend the conference, and we’ll host our annual Awards for the Chapter.

Mark your calendar and plan on joining us for the June 10 STC-Phoenix chapter meeting at the Phoenix Airport Hilton.

About the presenters

Tom Barnett
Tom is a long-time chapter member, STC Fellow, and our primary repository of chapter trivia, history and bylaws. Tom attends the conference every year and will put his personal spin on the proceedings.

Karen Zorn
Our incoming President is a Senior STC member and active member of the Phoenix Chapter since she landed in the Valley of the Sun in 2001. Karen is the owner of ZornTech LLC, a documentation and training company.

Dinner

Meat: Chicken Parmesan with egg noodles and vegetable

Vegetarian: Vegetable Stir Fry: a medly of sautéed vegetables served over rice

All entrees include a tossed green salad, warm rolls and butter,
coffee (regular and decaf), tea, and chef’s selection of dessert.

Location

Airport Hilton, 2435 South 47th Street, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 85034-6410

Registration Information

Cost: $25 for Members, $30 for Non-members, $15 for students,
$10 for program only (includes beverage and dessert)

Time: Networking and Registration 5:30, Dinner 6:00 p.m.
The program starts at 7 p.m.

Deadline: Thursday, June 5, 2008

Register Online
To register online using PayPal, please click here.

Register by E-mail
To register by e-mail, please click here.

Join us for an interesting and educational evening on May 13th, 2008 at 6:15 p.m. Pacific Time as Tom Johnson presents Combining Social Media with Help Authoring.

The Web landscape has changed considerably in the last several years. Users are no longer passive consumers of information (Web 1.0), but instead are active contributors of content (Web 2.0). They expect to interact and share information, not only with other users, but with project teams and companies.

Although interactive technologies have flourished on the Web, much of the help authoring community remains in the one-way communication model. We treat our users as if they have little or nothing to contribute back.

In this virtual meeting, Tom will discuss six of the most compelling technologies that enable users to become contributors: blogs, wikis, social networks, forums, podcasts/videocasts, and interactive online help. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of each medium and how technical writers can use these technologies to better connect with users.

Scott will discuss the weaknesses in our current approaches to managing content and content creators and make the case for:

1. The adoption of software tools that can drastically outperform human counterparts.
2. The adoption of controlled vocabularies to help make content less ambiguous and to improve content quality and translation accuracy (and make translation less expensive).
3. Documentation managers to use metrics to make informed, professional business decisions.

Scott will also demonstrate a content quality management tool so you can “see” how these ideas work in practice instead of simply imagining how they might work.

It will be a very valuable evening!