Past Events

Letting Go of the Words—Writing Web Content that Works

April 08, 2008

Janice (Ginny) Redish , Redish & Associates, Inc.

Each use of your web site is a conversation started by a busy site visitor. How well does your web site converse with the people who come to it? Come spend the evening with Ginny Redish and see many new examples of web sites that do and that do not hold good conversations with their site visitors.
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Workshop: Embedded Indexing

April 05, 2008

Jan Wright , Wright Information Indexing Services

Embedding codes to create indexes on the fly has been around for a long time. But in the last few years, new emphasis has been put on using this technique, especially with the surge in XML tagging. Come find out what the buzz is about with Jan Wright, who has been a specialist in embedded indexing for nearly 15 years.
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Workshop: APIs and SDKs—Breaking Into and Succeeding in a Specialty Market

March 22, 2008

Ed Marshall , Marshall Documentation Consulting

Documenting application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs) is a challenging but rewarding niche in technical communication. In this session, we'll discuss what these types of products do, who uses them, how you can move into this area, benefits / drawbacks to working on these products, some of the issues unique to these products, and commonly used help authoring tools.
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Panel: Expanding Career Opportunities in Technical Communication

March 11, 2008

Panel Discussion

Come and hear our panel discuss opportunities that changes in our profession are creating. Carl Chatfield will share how careers are evolving in content publishing at Microsoft. Following this presentation, representatives from Sakson & Taylor (Aquent),Volt, The Write Stuff, and Allyis will discuss how job requirements for technical communicators are changing and provide insight into new opportunities that are evolving.
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Adobe Technical Communication Suite, FrameMaker, and RoboHelp

February 19, 2008

Michael Hu , Adobe Systems Incorporated

Adobe bills the Technical Communication Suite as the most comprehensive suite for technical communicators, instructional designers, and eLearning professionals. What does this mean for you? How will this affect the content you create and the customers consuming your information? Michael Hu and other Adobe experts will answer these questions and many more at this event. You will also learn about the new release of Adobe® RoboHelp® 7 as well as other products in the suite including Adobe® FrameMaker® 8, Adobe® Captivate® 3, and Adobe® Acrobat® 3D version 8.
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Puget Sound Competition Showcase

January 22, 2008

Award-winning competition entrants , Sponsored by Puget Sound STC

Mark your calendars now for the STC Puget Sound Competition Showcase Tuesday, January 22, 2008 6 p.m. — 9 p.m. Red Lion Inn Bellevue Check out displays of all award-winning projects at this year's STC Puget Sound Competition, available for viewing throughout the evening. Meet with the project creators and find out about their work and processes for taking a quality technical project to the next level. This is a free event for members and non-members, so invite your colleagues and register now.
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The Top 10 Mistakes Technical Professionals Make When Looking for Work

November 13, 2007

Jack Molisani , ProSpring Technical Staffing

Have you ever submitted a resume for a position and not been called for an interview? Or interviewed for a position you wanted but didn't get? Chances are you made one or more mistakes that scuttled your chance at landing the job. In this meeting, professional recruiter Jack Molisani will refresh the top 10 mistakes technical professionals make when looking for work (contract, perm or outsource), with proactive tips on how to avoid these pitfalls and increase your chances of landing that next job or contract. In our November meeting returning speaker Jack Molisani will present a fun and practical session identifying the components of a successful business case, how to identify what is important to management, how to maximize your chances of approval, and more. Want more training, better tools, a bigger raise? Don't miss our November meeting!
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Creating and Using a Portfolio

October 27, 2007

Lynn McManus, Search Wizards , Search Wizards

Take an extra step in your job search. Show potential employers your skills and abilities with a professional portfolio of work examples. In this 3-hour workshop designed especially for technical communicators, you will learn how to assemble and present a professional portfolio.
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Editing: A Value Added Approach

October 27, 2007

Kelly Malleck

Whether or not your title is editor, in the field of technical communication we're all often called upon to "fix" some copy, or "massage" some content. In this three hour workshop, you will learn how to walk through documents step by step, identify places that require heavy editing vs. light editing, and make meaningful changes. The result will impress your boss and more importantly, help your audience understand your intended message.
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Creating Help in the Web 2.0 Era

October 01, 2007

Neil Perlin , Hyper/Word Services

Traditional approaches to creating help will be with us for years, but the end is in sight. They’ll be replaced by a Web 2.0-style of help that will keep some of today’s attributes of help but be extended by end-user provided content and technologies like wikis, mashups, community-based ratings, and others. The result? Increasingly flexible and web-like help systems that meet the needs of today’s users.
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Managing Virtual Teams

September 18, 2007

Brenda Huettner , P-N Designs, Inc.

Virtual collaborative team environments face unique challenges because their communication is not face-to-face. Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools provides practical advice for managers of distributed teams who must design the internal systems and meet deadlines with a diverse team, and for the team members who want to develop and maintain professional relationships.
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Introduction to Usability Testing

June 02, 2007

Judy Ramey , University of Washington

Many technical communicators want to gather user feedback on their information designs by means of a usability test, but may not feel confident in designing a study. This brief introduction will show you how to convert your usability concerns into a solid test design. The course will include a tour of the award-winning UWTC Laboratory for Usability Testing and Evaluation (LUTE).
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UW Research and Design Showcase

May 22, 2007

UW Students , University of Washington

This session offers an opportunity to learn about the latest research conducted in technical communication at the University of Washington. Students working in groups and individually with UWTC faculty will present and discuss their research findings and design projects. Before and after the presentations, you will be able to meet the researchers and talk with them about their work; four of the student groups will give short presentations. This is a great opportunity to get insights that you can use in your own work. Much of this research is focused on "real-life" problems that technical communicators encounter in their day-to-day work.
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Trends in Technical Communication

April 18, 2007

Susan Burton, Josh Cohen, Odile Morrison, Judy Ramey, Tom Woolums, Joe Welinske

This session offers insights about the future of technical communication and STC. The Executive Director of STC will be talking about new developments for our Society. She will then join a panel of local technical communication leaders to share their thoughts about important trends in technical communication. This is a great opportunity to learn about the evolving nature of our profession.
For more information click here

Implementing Embedded Help with JavaScript

April 14, 2007

Paul Mueller, UserAid , UserAid

This hands-on lab session reviews various strategies for embedding user assistance in both Web and non-Web user interfaces. During the session, we start with JavaScript basics and then use them and several techniques to implement embedded solutions.
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Publishing with XML and XSLT

April 14, 2007

Alan Houser , Group Wellesley

The W3C-standard Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSLT) is an important part of nearly every XML-based publishing workflow. XSLT is a programming language for manipulating XML documents. Using XSLT, you can sort, select, filter, and transform XML content for publishing to print, PDF, HTML, wireless device, or any other current or future output format. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn to write XSLT stylesheets and test our stylesheets by performing "real-world" tasks on XML documents.
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Metadata: What, How and Why?

March 13, 2007

Michael Crandall , University of Washington

This session will look at different types of metadata, the world of metadata standards, and how systems such as a content management system, a portal, or a search service might use metadata. We'll also explore some of the hard questions around metadata: When do you use it? How much does it cost? How do you maintain it over time? When are alternatives a better choice?
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From Expense to Asset - Making Content Powerful

February 20, 2007

Donna Sakson and Andrew Wilson , Sakson & Taylor

How to transform content into an asset instead of an expense, and how enhancing the importance of content in an organization drives true business value is the focus of this presentation. Managers and technical communicators increasingly need to show how the expense of creating content can be recovered through business and product revenue. Rather than looking at content as a cost center, we’ll explore ways of attaching value to content and making it into and asset that helps drive revenue. Discussion points include the right use of content, selling your position in the organization as something that has business value, identifying what kinds of content customers are willing to pay for, and how to combat the idea of content as only an expense.
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Free - Competition Winners Showcase

January 23, 2007

Competition Award Recipients , Sponsored by Puget Sound STC

For the first time, you will be able to meet with the recipients of Distinguished and Excellence Awards at our Puget Sound Competition Showcase. Thirty-five top projects will be on display and represented by the people responsible for developing them. You'll have a chance to talk with them about their work and get ideas for your own. This is a free event for members and non-members if you register early.
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Jobs Fair

November 11, 2006

Employment Agencies

This event is designed to provide technical communicators with the tools that they'll need for a successful job search and career! Members of leading staffing agencies will be on hand making presentations about job hunting, accepting resumes, and fielding employment questions.
For more information click here

Working with Computer Graphics

November 11, 2006

Brian Wood, eVolve Computer Graphics Training

This half-day workshop introduces you to the fundamentals of working with computer-generated graphics. Through this hands-on computer instruction you can learn skills to boost your job satisfaction and make you a more valuable team member.
For more information click here

Introducing MadCap Flare v2.0

October 17, 2006

Scott DeLoach, UserFirst Services

This session focuses on the new features in Flare and the differences between Flare and RoboHelp. Scott will demonstrate Flare's new round-trip FrameMaker and Word support and discuss how these features can be used.
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User-centered Design for Help Systems

October 14, 2006

Scott DeLoach, UserFirst Services

This half-day workshop introduces you to the concept of user-centered design. Through this hands-on computer instruction you can learn skills to boost your job satisfaction and make you a more valuable team member.
For more information click here

Designing Effective Help

September 19, 2006

Scott Boggan, Aventail

Writing and designing online user assistance isn't like working in print. This session explores common help taxonomies and examines writing and information design techniques that effectively answer user's questions. We'll discuss how people read and scan online information, examine best practices for designing information that gets read, and illustrate techniques for navigation and signposting content.
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CSS, Scripting, DHTML, and XML Primer

September 16, 2006

Dave Gash, HyperTrain dot Com

This half-day workshop introduces you to the technologies of Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, Dynamic HTML, and XML. Through this hands-on computer instruction you can learn skills to boost your job satisfaction and make you a more valuable team member.
For more information click here

Web Technology Update: W3C and Beyond

August 15, 2006

Joe Welinske, WritersUA

Open source technologies continue to grow in popularity. The many standards developed through the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium are now integral components of today's software development. This session is designed to brief techical communicators on the latest updates to relevant efforts of the W3C and other standards-setting entities.
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Edward Tufte - Presenting Data and Information - comes to Seattle!!

July 18, 2006

Edward Tufte

Presenting Data and Information - a one-day course by Edward Tufte
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David Blatner's InDesign Secrets

July 12, 2006

David Blatner , eVolve

Live! In a rare northwest appearance, David Blatner lays bare his favorite Adobe InDesign Secrets -- from super-charging your efficiency to getting cool effects that really print.
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Eye Tracking Presentation and Discussion

June 27, 2006

Lynne Cooke

Dr. Lynne Cooke will discuss her recent eye tracking research in an informal presentation and discussion. This special free event will take place June 27, 6pm, at the University of Washington.
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Make Your Documents More Usable with QuikScan

June 20, 2006

David Farkas & Quan Zhou

Dave Farkas and Quan Zhou of the University of Washington talk about QuickScan - an innovative set of formatting techniques designed to improve the comprehension, retention, and scannability of print and online documents. The presentation includes hands-on practice QuikScanning a short document and practical guidance for using QuikScan within your company or with your clients.
For more information click here

Being Bulletproof: Job Security in the Modern Tech Comm Environment

May 20, 2006

Jamie Wagner & Chris Smith , The Write Stuff

What does job security mean to you? Does it mean staying at one company until you retire, or being secure in the knowledge that once you finish with your current job, another one will be waiting for you?
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Creating Personas

May 18, 2006

Whitney Quesenbery , Whitney Interactive Design, LLC

**Note Special Date** We all know that we need to know – really know – the audience for our work. Personas are an increasingly popular technique for communicating what we know, and putting that information in a useful format.
For more information click here

Asthma Walk 2006

April 30, 2006

American Lung Association of Washington

Want to meet old and new friends from STC, support a good cause, and get some exercise - all at the same time? Join us on April 30th for the Blow the Whistle on Asthma Walk!!
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Visualizing Information - Willamette Valley Chapter Workshop

April 21, 2006

Dr. William Gribbons

Are you developing a Web site or document where you need to organize copious amounts of data? Would you like to become more efficient at organizing visual information for your online or printed projects? Then read on.
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User Experience Design - The Road Ahead (Willamette Valley Chapter)

April 20, 2006

Dr. William Gribbons

Technical communicators are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the radical changes that the next 25 years will bring, says Dr. William Gribbons. By properly moving with these changes, we can prepare for success in our careers.
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UW Graduate Student Research Showcase

April 18, 2006

UW Graduate Students

UW Technical Communication Graduate Students present their research projects.
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March Chapter Meeting - Free Event

March 21, 2006

Paul Doyle , Swedish Medical Center

Enjoy informal networking, learn how the new content-management-based web site was developed, and hear about volunteer opportunities for the chapter. All for free!
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STC Puget Sound Chapter Vendor/Job Fair

March 11, 2006

Various

Mark your calendars for the vendor/job fair and mini-conference in March!
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Trends in the Profession

February 21, 2006

Dr. JoAnn Hackos

Technical communication is undergoing significant changes as a result of pressures to decrease costs and increase productivity. Managers are promoting cost savings associated with topic-based authoring, minimalism, reuse of topics in multiple outputs, and repurposing of content in multiple media. The move to decrease costs could result in decrease value to customers unless we adopt best practices and use tools effectively and carefully
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JoAnn Hackos Workshop

February 21, 2006

JoAnn Hackos

To implement a single-sourcing strategy for information development and publishing, we strongly recommend that organizations structure the content they produce. Well-structured content leads to more opportunities for reuse across products, user communities, delivery media, and other dimensions. More reuse leads to a greater return on investment, as well as the ability to serve dynamic content to your information customers.
For more information click here

Going Beyond "Know Thy User"

February 11, 2006

With guest Dr. Ginny Redish, presented by Canada West Coast STC

Come spend the day with Dr. Ginny Redish, STC Fellow and internationally-recognized technical communicator and usability specialist, at this special workshop hosted by the Canada West Coast STC in Vancouver, BC. Ginny will lead a highly-interactive, hands-on workshop about personas and scenarios.
For more information click here