Moments of the 8th STC Annual Conference, Bangalore

”Exclusivity” was the theme for the recently concluded 8th STC Regional Conference held at Bangalore. The theme was appropriate as skilled technical writers presented multiple presentations on diverse technical writing topics in a gala event, spanning three days. Hotel Grand Ashok was the venue for the occasion, which it created a record turnout of more than 600 delegates. With companies like Infosys, Wipro, Dell, CSC, SUN Microsystems, Oracle, Symphony Services, and various others coming under the same roof, it was destined to be special, and it turned out to be so.

Conference Opens on December 7th

Geoffrey Hart opened the 8th STC regional conference on Thursday, 7th December. Popularly well-known in the technical writing circuit, Geoff Hart is a freelance writer, editor, and translator who specializes in scientific and technical communication. Geoffrey Hart delivered the first workshop on Editing, where he spoke of the intricacies of editing in detail, streamlined the editing process, and was never short of jokes. The audience couldn’t help but laugh when he addressed “technical writers as rabbits in a jungle.”

In a concurrent session, Timo Nevalainen addressed writers on the usefulness of content management for online writing. Timo emphasized the importance of content management saying that it is having “the Right systems for the Right People.”

Rajeev Jain (Zilog), Mary Ann Alexander (Pivotal), and Deepak/Siddarth delivered additional workshops that covered the API Style Guide, FrameMaker Insights, and Project Management. The highlight of the pre-conference workshop was undoubtedly the presentation delivered on Leadership Development/ Management excellence by SVP, HR, Symphony Services, Mahalingam. The speaker emphasized the importance of leadership in a project and supported the cause of “working with a business-oriented mind. Seasoned writer, Gyanesh Talwar, spoke on the “hot” topic brewing these days: XML in documentation and also spoke about Structured FrameMaker.

Conference Continues on December 8th

The following morning, December 8th, saw quite an unexpected turnout of technical communicators. The organizers were stunned to see the last minute registrations. Gururaj BS, the president for the STC India Community delivered the address keynote speech and shared the podium with Adobe Systems, Naresh Gupta, and Geoffrey Hart. After Gururaj’s welcome address, Chief Guest Naresh Gupta took the center stage. Naresh delivered a walk-through of Adobe’s products and the projects they are currently working on. Naresh also spoke a bit on the Adobe Captivate Beta version. During a Q&A session, when Naresh was asked if Adobe is planning to come out with a Content Management System (CMS), Naresh said they were not at all, and they are happy to work with their clients who are creating CMSs.

It was a red-letter day for STC India as Dr. Kiran Thakur, Head of the Department of Communication, University of Pune, talked on the inclusion of Technical Writing as a University program. It was the first such program in India, and Dr. Kiran introduced the gathering to the stalwarts behind the program, namely Makrand Pandit, Dr. Sunil Gokhale, and Frederick Menezes. He also gave a brief history of the program, the people developing it, its curriculum outline, and the challenges faced. He urged companies to support the program, as Pune University is a private institution and requires financial assistance to function.

Dr. Pradeep delivered “Exploiting the power of communication in Aerospace Industry,” which was followed by an interesting DITA session by Sandhya Ravishankar (Citec Academy), who suggested Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) for large documentation projects with large content. DITA is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information, which was developed by IBM. She also highlighted training as a core component for writers to fully use DITA.

Next in the pipeline were interesting presentations on “MS Office Security” and “Business of Technical Communication” by Khushboo Jitra (NII Consulting) and John Rosberg (Interwoven).). Khusboo, articulate in her presentation, provided a few strategies for the password protection of MS Word documents and related some document security incidents. John Rosberg identified the business aspects of technical writing and laid a path for technical writers to identify and analyze those issues in real-life scenarios.

But the speaker of the day (in my opinion) was Francisco Abedrabbo. Francisco delivered a keynote on “Tips to Grow Your Writing Career: A Manager's Perspective.”

Amidst all this activity, Frederick Menezes (Symantec) hosted the Quiz preliminaries. Four teams qualified for the finals from the written round. In the evening, a jam session was organized for the technical writers to unwind and "kick up their heels." It certainly grew entertaining as the DJ played some peppy numbers.

Final Conference Day Activities

The final day of the conference began with a presentation on “Documentation Program Management” by Vasanth Vaidyanathan and Anjana Sriram. It was followed by Suman Kumar’s (Dell) session on usability testing. Suman briefed the audience on the principles of usability testing, with suitable examples, but did not have of time, to not go into detail. Mary Alexander, a master in her own right, spoke on RSS Blogs and forums.

Everyone was geared up to witness the all-important panel discussion comprising stalwarts like Makrand Pandit, Gururaj BS, and Sai Kavitha, which was moderated by Manoj Bokil. Each of the dignitaries spoke on their respective arenas. Mak provided his views on making technical communication a business; Gururaj spoke on the career path for a technical writer; and Sai Kavitha delivered technical communication from a manager’s perspective as a panel discussion with a Q&A session following the presentation.

Frederick Menezes hosted the Quiz final session with the gathering cheering for their favorites. The team of Akash Dubey, Vasudha Rangarajan, and Anthony Francis took the winner’s title.

Conclusion

Amidst all this knowledge sharing, the conference was a hub for various companies to set up their stalls, not only to promote their companies, but also to solicit feedback from the delegates. In addition, there were organized contests and hordes of prize awards. The 8th STC Regional Conference–Bangalore proved to be a showcase for sharing knowledge and dispersing the diversity of technical communication.