An official chapter of the Society for Technical Communication

Contents

Lines and Letters

Volume 25, Issue 8, June 2009

Northeast Ohio STC award winners

Distinguished Community Service Award: Stephanie Webster. This award acknowledges the work of members who provide exemplary service to the Society.

Committees of the Year
Competitions: Jeanette Evans, Sherri Henkin, Kristen Jackson, Lori Neuman
Membership: Sharon Jendrisak and Julie Mason

Volunteers of the Year: Ginny Haas and Renee Murray

President’s Award: Denise Kadilak and Trish Spayer

NEO STC Pacesetter Award: Jean Church

New Senior Members: George Angelato, Lisa Mileusnich, Mark Blake, Theresa Sites, Jill Lutman, Linda Talboo, and Stacey Tomaselli. The STC organization bestows the rank of Senior Member after five years of membership.

Community Volunteer Recognition Awards: Thank you to the following members who have supported the NEO STC community through volunteer efforts and active participation throughout the 2008-09 year:

  • Jean Church
  • Bob Clark
  • Angie Dianetti
  • Elena Dunne
  • Ginny Haas
  • Sherri Henkin
  • Paul Holland
  • Kristen Jackson
  • Denise Kadilak
  • Kim Lindsey
  • Jill McCauslin
  • Renee Murray
  • Barb Philbrick
  • Trish Spayer
  • Amy Vogt
  • Bob Young

Upcoming events

NEO STC events

Other events of interest

Events reminder

Watch your e-mail for summer events, including networking lunches and social events. You can also check the calendar at http://www.neostc.org/calendar/.

Have a lovely summer!

President’s column: The agony and the ecstasy

By denise.kadilak@blackbaud.com

I start my year as NEO STC president very excited and a little nervous. I’m sure neither emotion is anything new to the position, but I do have the unique honor/horror of following in the footsteps of a president who guided our chapter to a Chapter of Distinction award. In addition, the incoming board faces an especially difficult challenge: dealing with the national Society’s financial crisis.

Our chapter’s responsibilities to the national Society in helping it deal with its financial crisis are still unclear. It’s likely we will not be able to count on the Society’s financial support through membership dues rebates for at least the next couple of years. As a result, we will have to make our reserve funds last and make sure we spend our money wisely, which means every dollar spent must have a measurable return to our membership. Fortunately for us, this has been the practice of the past several boards, so we do not at this point anticipate many changes, but I promise to keep you up-to-date on this issue as it evolves.

On a happier note, I can report that the NEO STC, truly a distinguished chapter, is fiscally healthy and we hope our financial health translates into another outstanding season — no promises that we can win the Chapter of Distinction award again, but I do promise we will keep our focus on members' needs. Our goals for the coming year are to provide training and employment guidance, in addition to having a good time networking and socializing. I'll provide more details on our plans later in the summer.

Thanks to the strength of the NEO STC, I know we will have another terrific year, and hopefully all chapters will pull together and help return the national Society to financial health. I very much look forward to our 2009/2010 season!

What I learned in Atlanta

By Tricia Spayer (tspayer@yahoo.com)

STC Conferences are always great learning experiences. You get to hear and meet speakers that might be active experts in your SIGs or other user groups. Putting a face to a written ‘voice’ always seems to deepen the online experience.

I was also privileged to share some experiences as a speaker for the first time at an International conference. A huge thanks goes to Amy Vogt for recruiting me to co-present our Cardboard Castles workshop, which we test-piloted in Cleveland in March 2009. Our workshop was one of the few that was not supposed to be recorded, as an active workshop didn’t lend itself to a stationary camera and microphone. They gave us two microphones, anyway, which seemed unnecessary. Regardless, to cut our nerves, we sang (badly) into our microphones, while attendees started to trickle in. This gave our workshop a fun start, with one comment from an attendee being “these girls are crazy.” I only hope that it really was NOT being recorded! Beyond that, we just had fun with it. The attendees seemed to enjoy the workshop — all were smiling and laughing, and everyone seemed to get a lot out of the discussion portion after building their castle. There was even a demand for people wanting to do a similar workshop back at their chapters for monthly meetings. This means our NEO STC gift of fun is contagious.

Other things I picked up:

  • Donte Ormsby from Tuscon presented “Lights! Cameras! Training!” where he used training videos similar to Hollywood blockbusters, using techniques like cliffhangers in serial components to get people to want to view the next training module. I can see some of these techniques as being very useful. It reminded me of our STC trailer, which might serve well as leadership training material (or maybe not).
  • Structured Authoring for Personalization. Ann Rockley talked about user experience. What does a particular piece of information mean to that specific customer? What level of information should you present to each persona? She talked about adding metadata to information, hierarchy of information, XQuery to look at the structure of your content, and just-in-time delivery of personalized information. This gave me some insight into what I’m already doing in Author-it; now I need to package user-specific information into more usable documents.
  • Importance of sentence-level quality in globalization. Alexia Idoura talked about using a program such as Acro-check to look at sentence structure, grammar, passive-vs-active voice, gerunds, and so on. Her company uses Acro-check, then sends information through machine translation to translate much of their documentation. Speaker recommended to reduce translation costs: focus on terminology first, grammar rules second.
  • Collaborating around the world from Kirsty Taylor of MinCom. Kirsty is an Author-it user, one of the experts on the Author-it user group. She talked about how their offices in Australia to Denver work through meeting times, templates, along with personal and cultural needs to keep workflow running smoothly. She recommended having things like processes and supporting documents, and a standards document on an intranet so collaborators can access them from a common place, as well as project schedules and deadlines.
  • Documentation & EU Regulations from Chris Durban. Although the speaker did not give us specific information about what needs to be translated for EU Regulations, she did give advice on making sure things like packaging, safety, and workers rights are all translated into a person’s native tongue. She also mentioned the fact that European customers may not tell you that they expect their docs to be in their native languages, but they will tend to prefer vendors whose documents are. Also, a poorly translated document is viewed in Europe like dandruff — people will notice it, but not tell you about it. Enough of it, and they will be offended. Thus the importance of good translation. For EU Regulations, she recommended getting a lawyer or specialized company to look at your documentation package and advise exactly what needs to be translated.
  • Content Re-Use from Rob Hanna. When you’re writing, try not to focus on the fact that a piece of information can be re-used. But the information needs to have a descriptive title, must be able to stand alone, and must have navigational references for context.

Outside the ’classroom’ environment, you would have been proud of how NEO STC was perceived. We traveled around in a big group, having lunches and dinners together, and we became a magnet that attracted people from around the country. The awards banquet was great — we got to see Bob Dianetti and Jill McCauslin receive their much-deserved Associate Fellow awards. Our Community of Distinction and Pacesetter awards at the end of that evening were the icing on the cake! Everyone present from our chapter got to go up on stage to accept the awards. On our way up to the stage (twice), we chanted N E O, N E O, N E O!!!
Next time, I hope to see you there!

In the spotlight: Rob Catalano

By Jeanette Evans (jeanette.evans@sbcglobal.net)

Rob Catalano has been a classroom facilitator and instructional designer for over 20 years. He earned a B.A. in Communication and Theater and an M.A. in Instructional Technology from Miami University of Ohio. Rob is a national member of the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) and resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He is a professional services manager for Radcom, Inc. where he oversees the execution of a wide-range of technical writing, instructional design, training, and e-learning projects with clients throughout Northeast Ohio. Some of Rob’s facilitation ideas have been published in Bob Pike’s Creative Training Techniques newsletter (see http://www.bobpikegroup.com/).

Prior to joining Radcom, Rob was the manager of training for TacoTime International and traveled the globe facilitating classes on how to successfully operate quick service restaurants in addition to developing training materials and strategies for over 300 worldwide Mexican restaurants. As the director of Success Through Caring Staff Development Center, he worked with a collaboration of human services agencies to develop a comprehensive curriculum and facilitated classes on professional development.

Rob also served as Deputy Director onboard the Steamship William G. Mather Maritime Museum, where he managed the training of staff and volunteers, and was in charge of visitor experience and PR/Marketing.

In his spare time, Rob volunteers for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park as an actor and storyteller, the Lake Erie Nature & Science Center as a wild animal presenter, and acts in area community theater productions.

While not a current member of NEO STC, Rob is a frequent contributor to Lines and Letters on behalf of Radcom, Inc., which has many NEO STC members. He attends NEO STC events from time to time. Many Radcom staff, both currently and over the past thirteen years, have served on NEO STC committees, the board, and have held regional and national positions. Six of this year’s NEO STC award winners are Radcom employees. Rob also coordinates PR/Marketing for Radcom, is a facilitator for many Radcom training classes, and distributes the training schedule noted in this issue’s “Upcoming Events” section.

Handy hint: Create and edit videos with Windows Movie Maker

By Lisa Mileusnich (lmileusnich@parker.com)

You don’t need to have expensive video editing software to create a presentation for your company or a slideshow set to music for your family reunion. If your computer uses a Windows operating system, it probably came with Windows Movie Maker already installed. In the Start menu, check under Accessories or Programs (actual location will depend on the operating system).

The application allows you to import pictures, video clips, and music, and organize them using a drag-and-drop timeline or storyboard interface. You can also add text to a video with titles and credits. Movie Maker will save your movies in a variety of different formats.

Handy hint: Troubleshoot Windows Internet Explorer if it hangs

Barb Philbrick (BarbPhilbrick@caslonsvcs.com)

I recently had a problem with Microsoft Internet Explorer 8. It would open, but then hang while trying to connect. I discovered that this problem was caused by a corrupted add-on. It can also be caused by damaged browser toolbars.

The solution was simple, but tedious. You can disable browser toolbars and add-ons using the instructions below. For more detail and other links regarding this problem, see http://support.microsoft.com/gp/pc_ie_methodfour0100.

To temporarily disable browser toolbars and add-ons and check for problems:

  1. Click Start, and then click Run. The Run dialog box opens.
  2. Type iexplore.exe –extoff, and then press ENTER.
    Internet Explorer opens without add-ons, toolbars, or plug-ins, but that you can still surf the Internet in this browser window.
  3. Use this browser window to check whether the Internet Explorer problem is resolved. If you know that this problem occurred by visiting a particular Web page or by following certain steps, try doing that now to see whether the problem still occurs. If this did resolve the problem, you have a damaged or conflicting add-on.
  4. To determine which add-ons were causing the problem, in the Tools menu, point to Manage Add-ons, and then click Enable or Disable Add-ons. The Manage Add-ons dialog box opens.
  5. In the Show box, click Add-ons that have been used by Internet Explorer.
  6. Under Name, click an add-on in the list, and then under Settings, click Disable.
  7. Repeat the last step until you have disabled all add-ons except one.
  8. Click OK.
  9. Restart Internet Explorer normally and see if the problem still occurs when you have only this one add-on enabled.
  10. If the problem does not occur, the enabled add-on is not causing the problem.
    12. Enable another add-on and restart Internet Explorer. (Did I mention this is tedious?)
  12. When you enable an add-on that causes the problem, disable that add-on. If the add-on is important to you, contact the manufacturer of the add-on to see whether the manufacturer has an update for the add-on that will make it behave correctly.

India’s STC newsletter

“The Personable Manual” by Suman Kumar, India Chapter

By Jean Church (jchurch5566@att.net)

In an email discussion from the STC group on LinkedIn, the STC-India Chapter just released their April-May edition of their newsletter. Curious, I visited their site and enjoyed reading their articles, in particular the one called “The Personable Manual” by Suman Kumar. I enjoyed the warm, friendly tone of the article and felt I could immediately apply his advice in some instances to my own writing. So on behalf of Mr. Kumar, I’d like to “put an arm around you and request, like a friend, to go to http://stc-india.org/indus/index.htm, to read the article, and to do the needful.”

Please tell us about the sites and articles you find on your journeys this summer. We’ll have a wrap-up article next fall and compare notes. Bon voyage!

Of interest: The rules for job hunting have changed

See http://www.thenewstribune.com/voelpel/story/770211.html?story_link=email_msg

Chapter reminders

Amazon.com helps fund STC

Reaching Amazon.com through the portal on the home page of STC’s website (www.stc.org) contributes to funding programs that have no direct revenue stream, such as committee work. STC receives a small percentage from every purchase made through the portal.

Join NEO STC on LinkedIn

Our chapter now has a group on LinkedIn named Northeast Ohio STC Community.

Join us on http://www.LinkedIn.com (you must be a member of LinkedIn, which is free for a basic membership). To join the group:

  1. In the left navigation, click Groups or User Groups.
  2. In Group Directories box on the right, click Find a Group.
  3. In Search Groups, enter Northeast Ohio STC Community.
  4. Click Search.
  5. Select Join this group (under the group description).
  6. Follow the instructions. There will be waiting period while your membership is approved.

NEO STC listserv

To subscribe or change your settings for the Northeast Ohio STC listserv, see http://mailman.stc.org/mailman/listinfo/stcneohio-l.

Please let Kris Henige, the NEO STC Listserv Administrator, know if you have any questions.

Premium pages for members

NEO STC has some Premium pages for NEO STC members only. These pages include links to our very own Wiki, an Employer Directory — a listing of businesses that hire technical communicators — and more.

To enter the Premium pages, you will need a user name and password — this is different from the STC International site. Please contact our Webmaster for password information.

Change of address? Remember to tell the STC office

Send new addresses to the STC office to avoid interrupted delivery of Intercom and Technical Communication. Some members assume that informing the post office of their new address is enough to ensure that all of their mail is forwarded. However, the United States Postal Service forwards only first-class mail, not publications such as Intercom and Technical Communication.

Members may also update their contact and mailing information on the STC website.

Lines & Letters information

Editors and contributors

Managing Editors: Barbara Philbrick (BarbPhilbrick@caslonsvcs.com), newsletter co-chair

Jeanette Evans (jeanette.evans@sbcglobal.net), newsletter co-chair

Additional editors and contributors:

Love it? Hate it? Let us know! Contact us: newsletter@neostc.org

See something interesting? Tell us about it!

Many of our NEO STC members are also members of another STC community or SIG. If you receive a newsletter and find an interesting article, please consider passing it on to the Lines and Letters editors at newsletter@neostc.org.

You can also submit articles directly through http://www.neostc.org/lines/submit.html.

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www.neostc.org/lines/Archives/index.html. Archives include PDF and HTML versions of the newsletter from 2000 to last month’s issue.

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