Re: STC Annual Conference trip reports?

[Janice Gelb <janiceg -at- marvin -dot- eng -dot- sun -dot- com>]

In article ORG -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com, SteveFJong -at- aol -dot- com writes:
>I'm sure many of us had to write conference trip reports. If you really want 
>to hear less about the decor of the halls and more about sessions, I'm sure 
>we could oblige. Would anyone object?
>

Here's mine -- it's not exactly the same as the 
one I did for work, as I've cut out the sarcastic 
comments about some of the presenters :->

STC Y2K

MONDAY, MAY 22

10:30 - 12 "Copyright & Policy Issues in Cyberspace"

As usual when STC clumps together three papers in 
one session, these were very different presentations. 

"Legal Issues in Cyberspace" 

Elissa Kagan, a technical writer at Unisys who's now 
in law school, gave an interesting presentation 
featuring cases on various issues such as trademark 
protection and fair use on the Internet, cybersquatting, 
and implied license and web frames. The handout  
included the case law and some further law-related resources.

She said that the basic steps to establish intellectual 
property are Find, Secure, Exploit, and Protect.

"Copyright on the Internet" -- A fairly elementary 
presentation on copyright law. She did give some 
sites that follow legal issues, such as 
http://www.gigalaw.com and http://www.ipwatchdog.com

"Looking Beyond Technology: Supporting the University 
Community's Technology" -- This presentation by a 
tech writer who works for the University of Michigan 
Office of Policy Development was basically a 20-minute 
ad for the presenter's department and drew no generally 
applicable conclusions.

2 - 3:30 "Editing Strategies for Print and Web Copy" 

This presentation by established editors Don Zimmerman 
and Barbara Simmons didn't seem to have a whole lot to do 
with print and web copy but did give some good editing tips 
(for example, the phrase "a number of..." takes a plural 
verb and "the number of..." takes a singular verb). 

4 - 5:30 "Trends in Editing"

Another "all-in-one" panel.

"Survey Says..." was a report on a survey Julie 
Bommarito did of editors, asking what they thought 
current trends in editing were. Then she polled the 
audience. Some of the trends didn't seem very 
trendy to me ("Serving more as an educator as well 
as an editor").

"Editing Once, Publishing Many Times" -- This was 
the most aggravating panel I attended at STC. A 
consultant named Linda Oestrich tried to talk about 
editing in a single-source environment without ever 
having *worked* in a single-source environment. She 
said she'd been asked to do the topic and had done 
some research. She had some mistakes and contradictions 
in her presentation that I raised my hand a couple of 
times to correct.

"What Will Happen to Editing" was by Don Bush, an 
elderly and old-style aerospace editor. His main 
thrust seemed to be that engineers will respect you 
if you find technical errors and that being picky about 
grammar wasn't important. He said that the keys to 
editing were: "1. Find mistakes. 2. Cut copy. 
3. Improve access." I'm not sure I agree with the 
order, but the points are good.


TUESDAY, May 23

8:30 - 10  "Creating Modular Documentation" *

This was one of those presentations where the people 
present a case study from their own company, in this 
case, Engineering Animation. The process was for online 
help, not documentation (contrary to the title). They use 
a modular format to combine different available features 
of their product depending on what customers order. 
The process they discussed was based on software they 
created (and spent about 20 minutes demoing), so it 
wasn't very useful to the audience. They did have an  
interesting feature, which is that they install only the   
help modules related to the software that is installed 
during package installation.

11 - 12

My own presentation on "Establishing an Editorial Forum." 
It seemed to go pretty well: the audience asked pertinent 
questions and the panel went 10 minutes over schedule.


2 - 3:30 "Peculiarities of Indexing Technical Documents"

This turned out to be a session by the STC Special 
Interest Group on Indexing about their progress in 
developing indexing standards/guidelines for the 
industry. Once I realized this, I was about to leave 
but then they held up a copy of _Read Me First!_ so I 
stuck around! It turned out to be fairly interesting, 
with some discussion of third-party indexing tools and 
insights into the working experience of professional 
indexers. The sample copy of their newsletter was useful 
and copies of past issues are available at 
http://www.stc.org/pics/indexing/newsltr.html

4 - 5:30 -- "Writing and Editing Progression"

I was one of the presenters, on "Developing a Company 
Style Guide." The format for the progressions is unusual: 
you sit at a table and go through your spiel three times 
in a 90-minute period. The whole idea of the small table 
format is interaction, but by the time everyone at the 
table introduces themselves, you barely have time to go 
through your topic, let alone engage in conversation. I 
felt like the speed-talking guy in the old FedEx commercials 
by the end.


WEDNESDAY, MAY 24

8:30 - 10 "Web Tools and Techniques Progression"

The first table I went to, and the main reason I chose 
this session, was "SGML and XML: Some Practical Hints 
for Large Documents." *

I think most people who came to this topic were new to 
the whole concept of SGML and XML. The presenters were 
throwing around terms like DTD until one brave person 
asked what that meant, so they backed up a little. They 
work in a small consulting company and most of the handout 
talks about how to develop a DTD for what seem to be 
small projects rather than extensive technical manuals. 
They really didn't say much about SGML/XML issues, 
which was what I'd hoped to hear.


"Guidelines for Accessible Web Sites" *

This was the best presentation I attended. The two 
presenters talked about the W3C guidelines for 
accessible web design. First they quickly went 
through the guidelines, then they showed the result 
of working their web site through a site called 
Bobby 3.1.1, which reviews web sites for accessibility 
errors. Once your site has no priority 1 errors, you 
may use a "Bobby Approved" icon that indicates 
that your site is accessible. The presenters also 
provided resources for basic and accessible web 
design and testing.

One very interesting point they made was that studies 
show that, contrary to our visual instincts, it's 
actually better ergonomically to have clickable TOCs 
and links on the right side of the page rather than 
the left for easier mousing.

"Web Development Tools 2000"

As I suspected, this was mostly Windows tools, but 
I did learn that Macromedia's Dreamweaver automatically 
generates cascading style sheets.

10:30 - 12 

The presentation on "Quality Assurance You Can Do 
Yourself" that I wanted to go to was SRO, so I ended 
up at "Writing Policies and Procedures." It turned 
out to be even more elementary than I expected except 
for ISO parts about which I knew nothing. One good 
point that was made was that procedures should be 
written for a specific audience and don't necessarily 
need to be understood by every reader. The presenter  
pointed out that sometimes she sees a television 
commercial that she doesn't get and then realizes 
that it's not a problem: she's not the person for 
whom the commercial is intended.

2 - 3:30  "Crossing Borders--Tips for Preparing Your 
Writing for Subsequent Translation"

A project manager at a translation service house gave 
this presentation, which had a lot of information I'd 
heard before but also some new tips:

* Have distributors in the target country review the 
translation before it's final

* Owls in the U.S. are viewed as smart but in other 
places they're evidently viewed as lazy or evil

I'll end this report with some of the amusing examples 
he gave from cases when translations went bad:

* For the opening of their stores in Riyadh, Saudi 
Arabia, McDonalds made special wrapping paper for 
the sandwiches showing regional flags, including 
the SA flag. However, the flag includes words from the 
Koran which are considered sacred and not to be thrown 
in the trash. The outlets closed within a day.

* Accompanying an alarm clock: "Thank you to the 
perfection of the alarming mechanism. You are never 
awake when you are sleeping."

* "To preserve the warranty of your upholstery, you 
must pick up a can of liquid sealant and spray it 
on yourself."

* In Brazil, Ford marketed the Pinto as a second 
family car, and put up billboards that said "Keep 
a Pinto in the garage for when your husband is 
away on a trip." Turns out "pinto" is slang in 
Portugese for a certain part of a man's anatomy...


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