Title: Learn How TechSoup Can Help Your Organization
Location: Online
Date: Thursday, February, 2010
Time: 11:00 am PST
Cost: Free

Join TechSoup.org content, community, and customer service for a tour of how your non-profit organization can use all that TechSoup has to offer to improve your technology and help reach your mission. We’ll walk you through the process of registering and requesting donated and discounted products from more than 35 donor partners like Microsoft and Adobe. We’ll also take you on a virtual tour of other resources in TechSoup’s tech arsenal.

Click here for more information and registration.

Working in a Use Case or Scenario-based Environment

A Webinar with John Hedtke, STC Fellow

You know topic-based authoring will save you time and effort in your authoring and publishing projects. If you’re working in a use case or scenario development environment, you also know topic-based authoring will make your life easier. But how do you plan these projects? How do you identify what topics are? And how do you plan the other related tasks?

This webinar will show you how to:

• Identify the topics that need documentation from the engineering use cases
• Estimate the authoring time for each topic
• Identify the documentation tasks for each topic
• Plan related graphics
• Create the project schedule
• Deliver results on time and to schedule

Regardless of the tool you use to author and publish, this webinar will help you understand the basics of planning and estimating in this common development environment.

About our speaker:

John Hedtke is the award-winning author of 26 books. He has over 30 years in the software business, close to 30 years writing, and 7 years in technical publications management. John has developed and written documentation and books for many leading software products, and has received 26 writing awards to date. He regularly contributes articles to magazines such as Publish! and Accounting Technology. A complete list of books, articles, projects, and awards can be found online at his Web site, www.hedtke.com.

John’s company offers writing and business consulting services to private, public, and government clients. John is a former member of STC Board of Directors and is a Fellow of the Society.

Logistics: It’s a WEBINAR, which means you participate online from the comfort of your home! Because our speaker is on the West Coast, the program will be starting a little later than usual, at 7 pm ET.

Registration Deadline: Monday, February 15, by 12 noon ET.
To register, send an email to program@stc-swo.org.  Please include your name, email address, membership status (member, non-member, or student).

Cost and Payment

Everyone must pay in advance via PayPal. Fees cover the costs of webinar connections through Genesys, the webinar service used by STC.

Members – $12.00
Non-Members – $20.00
Students -$12.00
Here’s the procedure:

1. Go to www.PayPal.com.
2. Log in to your account and select the Send Money tab.
3. Complete the Send Money page. Make sure you enter treasurer@stc-swo.org as the recipient’s email.
4. Click the Continue button when complete.
5. Review the information on the confirmation page.
6. Click Send Money to complete your transaction.

Note: If you do not have a Paypal account, yiou can pay vai credit or debit card on the Paypal page. Follow the ow the on-screen instructions.

We must have your reservations and payment by Monday, Feb. 16 by noon because we will send all registered participants a URL with Web site login information and a phone number to call to participate in the webinar. Please note that your registration is not confirmed until we have received funds from you via PayPal.

Please also note that more than one person can participate in the webinar at one site via speakerphone—but only one reservation and payment is required per site. So, a group can get together to attend this webinar and share the cost.

On Saturday, March 13, 2010, STC-SWO will present Planning and Implementing Minimalist Documentation for Maximum Return-on-Investment, led by Alan Houser, Group Wellesley, Inc.  The all-day (8:30 am – 4:00 pm) workshop will be held at Cincinnati State Community and Technical College.

Creating minimalist documentation is more than just reducing the word count. Minimalist documentation focuses on developing and writing content that meets users’ needs. Other benefits of minimalist documentation include:

• Effectively addresses different learning styles
• Improves the usability of the documentation
• Reduces production and translation costs
• Maximizes content reusability

If you are a technical communicator, an IT professional, a communication manager—or anyone else interested in maximizing the benefits and the competitive advantage of documentation materials—this full-day workshop will provide information you need to design the most effective explanations and instructions for your customers, so they can use your products.

This workshop introduces you to minimalism and offers information on best practices and technologies, such as:

• User personas
• Task analysis
• Information typing
• DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) as an example of minimalist documentation

Here’s what you will learn:

• The motivation for minimalism: Why do it, based on how users use documentation
• How to design technical documentation with users in mind
• How to determine appropriate documentation coverage for your product or service
• How to perform a user and task analysis: your roadmap for documentation coverage
• How to define documentation structure and organization
• How to write minimalist content
• Strategies for adopting a minimalist documentation approach in your organization

Alan Houser, president of Group Wellesley, Inc., of Pittsburgh, PA, is a distinguished consultant and trainer in the fields of XML, XML technologies, publishing workflows, and authoring and publishing tools. He holds an M.A. in Professional Writing and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Alan is an Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication, a member of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee, and a popular presenter at technical communication conferences.

This extensive, thorough, and immediately useful full-day workshop, presented by an acknowledged leader in the field, is yours for:

STC Members………….$55.00
Non-members…………$95.00
Students…………………$45.00

A box lunch and beverages are included in the registration fee.

Registrations and payments must be received by March 5, 2010. Make checks payable to STC-SWO Workshop. Send checks to STC-SWO Treasurer, c/o TeichTMC, 8674 Cottonwood Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45231. To pay by PayPal, send funds to treasurer@stc-swo.org

Registrants will receive specific information about the location and directions.

The support of the following sponsors is gratefully acknowledged:
Cincinnati State Community and Technical College

Title: Scenario-driven Information Architecture
Location: Online
Date: Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Time: 1:00-2:00 PM EST
Cost: Members $79; Nonmembers $149.

Traditionally, scenarios are used as tools to help users understand a product or task. In our approach, scenarios are internal tools to inform information architecture and are rately customer-facing.

Learner outcomes:
* Identify the various types of scenarios and their purposes.
* Learn strategies for locating and using existing scenarios and methods for creating
your own scenarios.
* Understand why and how to use scenarios internally to shape a solution’s information
architecture while exploring examples that illustrate these concepts in an applied
business setting.

Click here for more information and registration.

Title: DITA
Location: Online
Date: Monday, March 9, 2010
Time:
Cost: Free

STC Phoenix is sponsor a virtual meeting March 9, 2010 regarding DITA presented by Sarah O’Keefee of Scriptorium.

Check the STC Phoenix web site, stc-phoenix.com in mid-February for details.

Click here for more information and registration.

Title: Using blogs and other social media tools in your job search
Location: Red Tree Art Gallery and Coffee Shop
3210 madison road | cincinnati ohio 45209 | 513.321.8733
Date: Saturday, February 27, 2010
Time: 10:00 AM

Program: Using blogs and other social media tools in your job search, Sponsored by MomCorps. Presented by Jennifer McClure (CincyRecruiter on Twitter)

Click here for more information and registration.

Title: Improving Usability with ComponentOne DynamicHelp
Location: Online
Date: Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST
Cost: Free

This session will cover how embedded, dynamic Help improves usability, demonstrate the Dynamic Help control, and show how simple it is to map a Help file to your interface.

Click here for more information and registration.

Title: Webinar: What To Look Forward To In SurveyGizmo 3.0
Location: Online
Date: Friday, January 22nd, 2010
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST
Cost: Free

A week from today you’ll be able to see and use the new release of SurveyGizmo, version 3.0.

During the Preview Release stage, you can help contribute to what gets put into the Final Release. They want to bring their whole user base in on the final stage of development, so your voices can be heard. They need your feedback so SurveyGizmo becomes the survey tool you’ve always wanted.

To get you warmed up to the TON of new features, they’ re holding a webinar which will cover:

• The new features of SurveyGizmo 3.0
• How to move back and forth between SurveyGizmo 2.6 and 3.0
• How to convert surveys over to the 3.0 format
• How to suggest and vote for features with the new community voice tool
• Open Q&A session

Click here for more information and registration.

Title: Evaluating Training: Core components in training materials
Location: Online
Date: Thursday, February 4, 2010
Time: 1:30-3:00 PM EST
Cost: STC IDL SIG Members $20; STC Members $30; Nonmembers $70.

Are you a lone writer with no one to provide professional feedback on your instructional design efforts? Are you creating training materials for the first time and unsure if you’ve captured the core training components? Are you having a vendor create your training materials and uncertain what to look for when reviewing their content? Attend this webinar and learn the core components that should be included in all training materials.

Click here for more information and registration.

Title: Managing Conflict on a Global Team
Location: Online
Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Time: 1:00-2:00 PM EST
Cost: Members $79; Nonmembers $149.

This presentation describes how to minimize and manage workplace conflict, especially in a multicultural setting. At the end of this presentation, the audience will (1) understand the mechanics of a classic conflict spiral, (2) be aware of the different conflict styles that people use, (3) be cognizant of the different communication and conflict styles of high-context and low-context cultures, and (4) be able to choose the appropriate method or tool to actually get ahead of the conflict before it spins out of control and moves toward the polarized end of the conflict management continuum.

Click here for more information and registration.