STC Rochester Spectrum 2017

Structured writing is big news in technical communication today, but it is usually practiced more for its ability to enable content management systems than for its potential contributions to content quality. Indeed, systems designed to facilitate content management can often do positive harm to content quality.

The presentation will introduce the three domains in which writing can be structured, the media, document, and subject domains. Traditional desktop publishing tools work in the media domain. Structured writing for content management typically takes place in the document domain. But structured writing for content quality takes place in the subject domain.

Working in the subject domain is fully compatible with standard content management practice but it frees the writer from the complexities of content management systems while providing far greater levels of author guidance and a far greater capacity for content validation, auditing, linking, and integration.

We used to let others pump our gas. Now we prefer to take care of the task ourselves - it’s quicker, cheaper, and more convenient. This trend applies to communication and the deliverables that we help manage or produce. Are you asked to do more with less? Or more with the same resources? Then DIY communication may be part of the solution. 

People are often too busy to schedule a meeting with you when they are ready to communicate something. They may also need to get the content out quickly and be willing to do some of the tasks themselves. Why not create or work in a system that helps manage the process and get things moving along quicker?

Join us in this session to hear about a request system used to manage, track, and process communication requests across the enterprise. Come learn how the system works and discover the benefits a ‘self serve’ model can offer both your organization and your team.

Many employers are interested in hiring a group of capable yet under-utilized individuals: those on the Autism Spectrum. With prevalence rates of about 1 out of 250 people in the United States, and rates expected to continue to rise, it is likely that you already know or are working with someone on the Autism Spectrum. This presentation builds upon the article “The Intersection of ASD and TC” in the February edition of Intercom, featuring interviews with two technical communications practitioners on the Autism Spectrum. In depth interviews reveal common areas of strength and challenge for employees, including their unique ways of seeing and solving problems and how they can be an asset to their employers. The presentation concludes with practical tips for inclusion of job candidates and employees on the Autism Spectrum from recruitment and management perspectives.

We’ve heard that in techcomm the ideal workflow is one where managers, developers, writers, and consumers work together to create 'perfect' content to solve business problems. It's tricky to identify all the pieces and make it work. See it live and participate during this session!
This session has you, the audience, guide the plan for product documentation (what goes into it, how it is organized), and then you continue to participate as the presenter works feverishly to ensure your ideas are captured, content is created and approved, and it is published to multiple outputs. See the scramble, and the solutions, to getting “just-in-time” content out the door.
Participate and be a moving part of a documentation project that comes together to create content in a shared workspace, with collaboration between teams, and quality finished materials delivered the way the audience wants them. On time, on budget, and on any device!

New to Flare? Need to publish content to multiple devices, formats, or audiences? Flare’s single sourcing features are tremendously flexible and powerful but they can also be overwhelming. Which ones should you use? When? Can you combine them? How do you avoid overdoing it? Come to this half-day, hands-on workshop for answers AND hands-on practice. We’ll look at:
• Two definitions of single sourcing.
• The three main single sourcing features – variables (everywhere!), snippets, and conditions.
• Supporting features like CSS mediums, conditionalizable styles, responsive output, and parent/child project structures.
• How the Target Editor ties the settings together.
• Best practices for single sourcing with Flare

You’ll leave with a solid overview of Flare’s single sourcing features and how to use them to create cutting edge outputs.

Requirements

• Bring a laptop with a mouse and your power cord.
• Have a licensed copy or a trial copy of Flare 12 or above. (If you want to use a trial copy, download and install it less than 15 days before the workshop. Note that the trial copy misspells words at random until you enter the key. It's terrifying but harmless.)
• Make sure your laptop has a USB port.

Lee and OS-Cubed staff will run a workshop in which we’ll explore the various capabilities of Office365 live. We will use an example domain and each attendee will get a 1 month free subscription to Office365 to use to do the Office workshop tasks, and practice what they’ve learned. The workshop will cover the following topics:

• Challenges technical documentation teams face
• Overview of the tools in Office 365
• The different features of the different license types
• How to use the Office365 online and offline tools to solve the challenges of working in groups
• Office365 Group
• Using Group collaboration in Office365 (hands-on)
• How each tool enhances collaboration (hands-on)
• Collaborative editing (hands-on)
• Sharepoint and version control (hands-on)
• Advanced sharepoint and group features (hands on)

Requirements

• Users must bring their own laptop with chrome, firefox, edge or IE9 or better on it, with wireless internet access and ability to get on RIT’s network.  
• Office offline (word, excel, etc) version 2016 is supported as an option but not required to perform workshop tasks.  
• Users will receive their initial accounts ahead of the speaking date, and must be registered no later than 24 hours prior to the event to be guaranteed an account.