RE: Well, I Sure Won't Be in Chicago

["Gilger.John" <JGilger -at- acresgaming -dot- com>]

The best writing conference I've attended was free. It was a two-day weekend
deal sponsored by the Denver Public Library. The major divisions were
fiction or non-fiction, with the sub-divisions being books or magazines and
further sub-divided into genre.

The Sci-Fi presentations were great and the lecture by P.J. O'Rourke was
super.

The point? Hmm... what was the point when I started this rumination?

Oh yes, writing well isn't just restricted to mundane boring stuff like "How
do I write an on-line help topic?" It is about using your native creativity
to communicate your ideas and knowledge effectively. 

I would rather take a break from the techno-rut and go to a sesssion about
creating a believable civilization in a galaxy far away or learning
interviewing techniques from an investigative reporter.

That said, I would also enjoy the conference topics listed by Bruce -- they
are not the usual run-of-the-mill retreads of last year's conference.

John Gilger
Technical Writer
Acres Gaming, Inc.
702.914.5585



-----Original Message-----
From: Tracy Boyington [mailto:tracy_boyington -at- okcareertech -dot- org]
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 06:18 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Well, I Sure Won't Be in Chicago


Bruce, I think you just accidentally made the point I was going to make.
Yes, these are important concerns in YOUR daily working day. Not mine. Most
of them don't affect me at all. And I have my own daily concerns that don't
affect you in the slightest. You work in a specialized area. I work in a
specialized area. We all have our own niche. Why should a conference that's
trying to present information relevant to the largest number of technical
writers possible spend a lot of time individual, specialized interests? If
all of the topics you mentioned were important (or even just interesting) to
ALL technical writers, wouldn't they be frequent topics here on techwr-l?
When you have a large, diverse group, you have to find something they all
have in common. And what we have in common tends to be in the writing area,
NOT in the content area.

====================================================
Tracy Boyington     tracy_boyington -at- okcareertech -dot- org
Oklahoma Department of Career & Technology Education
Stillwater, OK          http://www.okcareertech.org/cimc
====================================================

>>> Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- progeny -dot- com> 04/11/01 07:14PM >>>
Possibly, all these topics will be covered in the panel on Current
Trends. However, so far as I can see, none of these things - many of
which are important concerns in my daily working day - even rate a
mention. Granted I work in a specialized area, but I would have
thought that some of these concerns would interest technical
writers, if only because such things might potentially affect the
way they earn their livings. But apparently not.



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