STC Toronto - Communication Times

March 2004

In this Issue:

Editor's Welcome: Transformations!
News and STC Events: March Meeting, Let's Go to Baltimore!, Ann Rockley Lecture & Workshop

Meeting Report: Ron Blicq speaks at the February 'Wine & Cheese'
The Wandering Eye: Sites about Design

Career Corner: Interviewing Questions - Part III
From the President's Desk: Springtime at STC Toronto

STC Events:

See the website for all the latest details.

March General Meeting: Writing to Sell
Presented by Kara Kuryllowicz

BizWrite's Kara Kuryllowicz shares what she's learned from assorted clients and editors over more than two decades as a corporate and magazine writer. She has tackled such wildly disparate topics as scuba diving with sharks, ice machines, beer and industrial coatings, both online and in print. Kara takes you through a process that produces marketing copy that will help sell your firm's products and services.

Good writing starts before the writer gets anywhere near a keyboard. It all begins with the right attitude. Then you do the appropriate research and ask the right questions. She'll give you tips on writing the first few lines – the hardest part for many of us.

She'll also share:

• the rules she's learned to write by
• ideas on how to conquer (or at least manage) writer's block; and
• feeding your creativity

Tuesday March 9, 2004 at 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Burgundy Room, North York Memorial Hall
North York Civic Centre (beside North York subway station)
5110 Yonge St., Toronto ON

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Let's Go to Baltimore in 2004
By Robert Milkovich

At STC Toronto, we believe that the STC Annual Conference is one of the best ways to learn new skills, discover emerging trends, and meet other professionals in our field. This year, the Conference will be in Baltimore, Maryland from May 9 to 12, 2004.

And we want to help as many of you take advantage of this opportunity as possible. We have organized a package trip to Baltimore that includes return transportation by luxury coach and five night's accommodation at the Day's Inn Inner Harbor beside the Conference site at discount prices.

The cost will be C$1050 for those who want a single room, and C$650 for those who want to share a room. Compared to the cost of travelling by air and staying in the cheapest Conference hotel, a single traveller will save $461, and those who share will save $861. Plus travelling as a group with your STC colleagues will be a lot of fun!

The bus will leave Toronto in the morning on Saturday, May 8. The trip will take about ten hours. The bus will leave Baltimore in the morning on Thursday, May 13. This enables participants to take full advantage of the entire Conference program.

For full details, and to download the registration form, please visit our web site at: http://www.stctoronto.org/baltimore.

We look forward to seeing on our trip to Baltimore in May!

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Two-Day Information Modeling and Structured Writing Workshop
Downtown Toronto March 15-16, 2004

The Toronto STC Chapter is proud to sponsor our own Ann Rockley for a two-day in-depth workshop that will teach you what you need to know to begin developing structured content supported by information models. Information models formalize the structure of your content, providing the framework upon which the unified content strategy is based. Structured writing provides standards for creating reusable content. You cannot successfully reuse content unless it is consistently structured. Workshop attendees will learn how to create XML-ready content models that support content reuse in a structured authoring environment. In addition, this workshop will provide you with an understanding of the technological options available, and guide you toward best practices designed to help you avoid the pitfalls experienced by others before you. Numerous real-life examples will be used throughout the seminar.

You will learn:

• The business reasons for adopting a unified content strategy
• How to create information models
• Top-level and in-depth information analysis
• How to identify different types of reuse
• How to create
  • Information product models
  • Element models
  • Structural reuse maps
  • Content reuse maps
  • Metadata
• Understanding structure
• How to write structured materials
• Structured writing and information theory
• Writing reusable, structured content
• How to write to models
• How to support your models
• Authoring tools (e.g., MS Word, FrameMaker, XML editors)
• Content management system (if using)
• Delivery (publishing) tools (e.g., from Word or FrameMaker, using XSL stylesheets

Objectives:

At the end of this workshop you will be able to

• Analyse your content
• Develop information models
• Write reusable structured content
• Determine how to best support your models with your technology

Who should attend?

• Writers
• Editors
• Publishers
• Information Architects
• Software Developers
• Business and IT Managers

Cost:

Registration for this intense two-day one-day workshop is $1070.00 Cdn per student. Register two or more students from the same organization and get a $130.00 Cdn discount per student. Learning materials, lunch, snacks, and a copy of our new book on content management, Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy, are included in the registration fee.

To register visit: http://www.rockley.com/WorkshopRegister.htm. Check the STC Toronto website for further details. This seminar has sold out in other cities in the U.S. Space is limited so please register early.

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Welcome:

March 2004: Transformations!
By Editor Philip Kahn - newsletter@stctoronto.org

As temperatures rise and the snow melts, this is an opportune time to talk about transformation. At last month's 'Wine & Cheese', our Director-Sponsor Jon Baker spoke about how the STC is transforming to better meet the needs of members. This process is ongoing and STC Toronto members are encouraged to participate. A good place to start is the Transformation Page on the STC site (login required). A STC Transformation web blog site has also been set up and it contains some excellent discussions on the issues.

The other speaker at our special 'Wine & Cheese' celebration was Ron Blicq, and Susan Webb has written an excellent report on his incisive historical review of the technical communication profession. Also this month Keith Soltys reviews some websites that discuss design, and Andrew Brooke continues his useful series on dealing with interview questions. Finally STC Toronto President Robert Milkovich discusses some STC Toronto plans for the Spring.

Philip Kahn works for Rogers Media and also is the sole proprietor of Digital Jive, a company which provides web design and technical writing services, as well as Macintosh support. He lives off the Danforth with his wife, daughter, dog and a Mac G5... not always in that order.

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Meeting Report:

February 2004: Ron Blicq on '100 Years of Technical Communication'
Susan Webb - susan_e_webb@yahoo.ca

Where do you feel most creative - under an oak tree, on a hill, while listening to the patter of rain, or enjoying a pint? Guernsey-born Ron Blicq of RGILearning.com writes his best documentation by the sea, notepad in hand - an environment that, for him, induces creativity in a field not usually associated with it.

Technical writing - creative? Yes! According to Ron, we as writers deal with specialist subjects in a specialist way. We must engage and hold the interest of the readers of an unfamiliar technical subject. And if this means documenting while sitting by a river or listening to music, then your manager may be in for quite a shift of office space!

Serendipitously entering the field by accident, Ron first flew in the RAF and then joined their Navigational Office in 1953. He later became an educator and workshop leader in North America and Great Britain. More recently, Ron has been presenting "One Hundred Years of Technical Communication: A Significant Endeavour" to rapt global audiences of technical writers. This delightful presentation, made before the STC in the plush surroundings of the King Edward Hotel, illustrated the evolution of technical writing from its earliest incarnation as a means of improving the quality of engineering students' writing, to recent worldwide efforts to standardize English documentation.

Engineering professors began to add technical writing courses to their regular curriculum in 1901 to eradicate what the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education had pronounced the "deplorable" writing skills of engineering students. Professor T.A. Rickard published the earliest tome on the subject, A Guide to Technical Writing, in 1908.

A number of writers subsequently began to change their approach to technical writing. R.A. Kapp introduced the idea of "know your user" in The Presentation of Technical Information (1948), while in 1959 T. Hicks lauded the power of short, sharp sentences and the active voice in Successful Technical Writing, completely changing the direction that engineering writing had previously followed. In Writing Technical Reports (1964), B. Cooper outlined the importance of satisfying the reader rather than the writer.

Could entire educational programs in technical communication be far behind? The first major program was established in 1953 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, while in 1972, Algonquin College in Ottawa, Ontario introduced the first such Canadian program. At about the same time, the STC, an amalgamation of several former societies for writers, editors and publishers, was born.

There are now societies for technical writers in many parts of the world. Nearly all of these belong to INTECOM, the International Council for Technical Communication, which is currently working on a project to develop guidelines for international technical documentation written in English. Will British or North American English dominate our field in the years to come? Stay tuned!

Technical communication continues to change the way people write. In just 28 years, Ron himself has reduced sentences in the fifth edition of Technically-Write! by about one-third of their length, as the technical writing style became more streamlined.

In the 1990's, there was a subtle but significant change in technical writing: companies began to favour strong writers with backgrounds in English who had a flair for technical matter over technical experts who could write. Now, projects exist because of the need for documentation, and writers have more prominence on a project team than ever before.

Ron's final bibliography offering was "Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" (Lynne Truss, 2003), a guide to the necessity of sound punctuation. The title was inspired by an unfortunately punctuated dictionary definition of the panda bear; perhaps, as Ron charmingly recounted, also illustrating its uncouth restaurant behaviour.

Words of wisdom from Ron: adaptability and flexibility are necessary as we evolve in our careers as technical writers, as is keeping abreast of the everchanging tools of the trade.

Susan Webb joined the STC in September 2003. An honours graduate of the Technical Communications program at Seneca College, she is interested in online learning and editing in the field. In addition, Susan leads Adult ESL learners on an engaging, fun-filled journey through Canadian English at the Toronto District School Board.

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The Wandering Eye:

Sites About Design
Keith Soltys - keith@soltys.ca

Last month I wrote about typography resources. Since typography and design are closely related, this month I'll provide some design resources. These cover typography, print, graphics, and web design.

Typography and Page Layout is a site devoted to teaching the principle of good typography and design. Here's author John Magnik's introduction to his site: " Incorrect choice of Fonts and poor Page Layout can ruin an otherwise good advertising campaign or product promotion. Subconsciously the readers attention can be directed to other topics or store shelf products - it's a science! These are proven facts that should not be treated lightly." The emphasis is his. I like this site because he explains many of the principles behind basic design rules and discusses both page design and typography. There's also a section on proof reading and proof readers' markup and a PowerPoint presentation on printers's measurement (pica, em, en, etc.). I'm bookmarking this one.

Web Page Design for Designers focuses on web design for people who may be coming out of the print or graphics design world. It's in the format of a monthly magazine, with a new editorial and articles each month. The articles cover a wide range of topics and are extensively linked to resources on the net. My only complaint is the colour scheme, which is subtle to the point of illegibility at times. Design and Publishing bills itself as the "e-zine for Design, Typography, and Graphics". As well as articles in those areas, the site has articles for the professional designer, with industry news and tips on business.

The Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition is the online version of a book, although if my memory isn't playing tricks on me, the book came after the web site. It's quite comprehensive and has been up for long enough to have become something of a standard resource for web designers. Although oriented to web design, the advice on typographics, use of graphics, and editorial style could be applied to most kinds of technical writing, with good results.

Many authors have extensive collections of their articles or other writing available on the web. William Horton needs little introduction to Toronto writers, having given many excellent presentations here. His web site has handouts from many of those presentations, including "Databasics: Designing Information for Multiple format delivery", "Blunders in Information Publishing", and "Visual Fluency". Robin Williams is the author of many books about typography and design, including The PC Is Not a Typewriter and The Non-Designer's Design Book, both of which belong on every technical writer's reference shelf. Her Robin Williams Type Talk column concentrates mostly on typography, and I really should have included it in last month's column. If you haven't read any of her books, do yourself a favour and check them out. Lynda Weinman is one of the best known web designers. Her site, lynda.com has samples from some of her books and tutorial videos, most of which are for tools such as DreamWeaver and PhotoShop.

Principles of Graphic Design is a Flash-based primer on graphic design. There's not a lot of detail, but it does provide a good overview. I especially liked the section on the use of colour. You can download a copy to run off your PC.

When I first got into computing in the 1980s, ASCII and ANSI-based art was fairly common, and you still see ASCII art in people's signature files. Typographic Illustration updates the concept to use Flash, so we have Garramond does Dylan, Times New Roman rockng to Led Zeppelin, and so on. You'll need Flash for this and some patience but it's worth it. It's pretty hard to make art with nothing but type but this site succeeds.

The Google directory page on Graphic Design and the Yahoo directory pages on Graphic Design and Web Design provide many more links for you to explore.

Keith Soltys has been working as a technical writer for 16 years, and is currently at the Toronto Stock Exchange. He maintains the Internet Resources for Technical Communicators web site and has recently started a weblog. He lives in Pickering with his wife, two children, a cat, and an ever growing collection of Grateful Dead CDs.

Career Corner:

Interviewing Questions – Part III
Andrew Brooke - abrooke@insystems.com

This month, we continue our series on interview questions.

Where do you see yourself 5 years from now? 10 years?

The dreaded "crystal ball" question. Many of us have trouble knowing what we'll be doing 5 months from now, let alone 5 years. (By the way, a wrong response to this question would be to say to the interviewer: "Doing your job!")

A good way to handle this question is to turn it around by asking what opportunities will be available in the time period specified. From that, you can base your response, and say something such as: "It appears you're heading towards a more XML-based environment. XML is definitely an area that I'd like to be involved with."

Your response also depends, of course, on where you are now. There is no absolute standard on what constitutes a junior, intermediate, or senior technical writer, but the following guidelines are a start:

• Junior writer: 0-4 years experience
• Intermediate writer: 4-9 years experience
• Senior writer: 10+ years

So, if you're a junior writer, for example, you might want to say that you are planning to handle the larger and more complex projects that an intermediate writer would be expected to manage.

Who makes a better technical writer: a technical person who has learned writing skills, or a writer who has learned technical skills?

This is an actual question I've been asked. At first glance, you might be tempted to answer this question depending on which type you are: a technophile who's learned writing or a writer who has learned technology. You'd assume that you would defend your particular background versus the other type. But if you did, you might fall into a trap. Some interviewers will have strong opinions on this question - they will honestly believe, rightly or wrongly, that one type is favourable to the other. You want to avoid expressing an opinion that might be the polar opposite of the interviewer's.

The truth is that people from either backgrounds can make good technical writers, and this is true for most "hybrid" professions. For example, a medical illustrator may have started out in the medical profession, and then learned illustration. Another medical illustrator may have started out in art and design, and then become interested in medicine. It would be impossible to determine solely from these facts who is the better illustrator: you'd have to look at their portfolios to see.

This is the point to make in responding to this question: that either type of writer has their strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately the only way to judge these writers is on the quality of their work. You might briefly emphasize how your particular background has helped you, but don't paint yourself into a corner by dismissing a particular type of writer.

Do you prefer writing from specifications or writing based on actually using the application?

Generally, the correct response is "the application". Employees will hope that you become an expert user in the product itself, so that you can more accurately document what a typical user would need to know.

However, keep in mind you may not always have access to the application as early or as frequently as you'd like. Therefore you may want to add that you can use specifications, white papers, product descriptions, marketing documents, use cases and other internal documentation to get a good head start. Then, once you have access to the product, you can flesh out your documentation, verify it and fill in all the missing pieces. As many of us our painfully aware, the final, released product is often very different from its specifications!

What is the purpose of technical communication?

Andrew Brooke is the STC Toronto Job Bank Manager and Membership Manager, and is a full-time technical writer at InSystems in Markham.

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From the President's Desk:

Springtime at STC Toronto
STC Toronto President Robert Milkovich - robert.milkovich@sympatico.ca

At last, the winter is almost over and we turn our thoughts to the springtime. It’s been a very busy winter here at STC Toronto. Here’s a bit about what’s coming up this spring:

• First of all, I want to take this opportunity to remind you again about the trip that we’ve planned to the STC Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland in May. We’ve chartered a luxury coach and a block of discount rooms right beside the Baltimore Convention Center. There is really no better way to go and take advantage of these great prices. The trip is open to STC members and their companions (who may be non-members). I encourage you to register by the end of March. Please visit http://www.stctoronto.org/baltimore for details and the registration form.
  
  
• Ann Rockley, our resident single-sourcing guru, is presenting her Information Modelling and Structured Writing workshop in Toronto on March 15 and 16. Sponsored by the STC Toronto, this two-day workshop will teach you how to developed structured content supported by information models. Check our web site for details and the link for online registration.
  
  
• We will create a member-only area on our chapter web site. Using your STC member ID, you will be able to log in and access special services that will only be available to members. Our first member-only service will be online registration for our STC Telephone Seminars.
  
  
• Later in the spring, we plan to make the Job Bank a member-only service. We have received feedback from employers who say that they have received hundreds of resumes from posting on our Job Bank, and yet fewer than 20 per cent of those applicants mention STC affiliation. This situation is putting our members at a disadvantage when it comes to searching for work. Since it is our members who pay for this service, we feel that it is only fair that the service be available only to members. This decision was sanctioned by the STC head office, who themselves restricted access for members only to the STC Jobs Database a few years ago.
  
  
• September seems like a long way off, but we have to start planning for our next season as early as possible. Every spring, new positions open up on the Executive Committee – now is your chance to get involved. Over the course of the spring we will announce vacant positions on our web site and in our newsletter. If you have been thinking of getting involved in a dynamic organization to enhance your network, learn new job skills, and give something back to your profession, then we would like to hear from you. Please send an email to me at robert.milkovich@sympatico.ca, and we’ll talk about ways that you want to get involved.
  

Happy spring!

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About the STC:

The Society for Technical Communication is an individual membership organization dedicated to advancing the arts and sciences of technical communication. It is the largest organization of its type in the world. Its 25,000 members include technical writers and editors, content developers, documentation specialists, technical illustrators, instructional designers, academics, information architects, usability and human factors professionals, visual designers, Web designers and developers, and translators - anyone whose work makes technical information available to those who need it.

The STC Toronto Chapter was founded in 1959 (then the Society of Technical Writers) and is the largest chapter in Canada.

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About this Newsletter:

This newsletter is produced monthly by the STC Toronto Chapter and is sent to all registered members just before the General Meeting. We will not share nor sell our address list and will only send e-mails with information we believe to be useful and relevant to our members.

Our mailing list comes directly from the STC, so if you want to receive the newsletter at another address you will need to login to their members profile section and update your information.

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