If you are interested in working with Indian universities to launch technical writing courses, you should attend this session. If you have already approached a college or university, you can discuss your experience and ideas too.

Gururaj B.S. is a Senior Documentation Manager at BEA Systems (a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle) in Bangalore, India. He manages and owns Technical Writers of India (TWIN - www.twin-india.org), a professional discussion forum and community portal for technical writers in India. He has been an active volunteer of the STC India chapter for many years. He has been a membership manager, secretary, program manager, PR and sponsorship manager. He was the chapter president in 2005-2006. He is the Membership Manager and List Moderator for the STC (worldwide) Technical Editing SIG for the year 2009.

Gururaj was instrumental in conceptualizing and launching formal academic programs in technical communication at Christ University and Dayanand Sagar Institutions, Bangalore. He created the syllabus for the soon-to-be-launched PG Diploma in Technical Communication course of Sikkim Manipal University. He is currently writing a text book for IGNOU's Editing Scientific, Technical, and Medical Writing course. On weekends, he teaches technical communication to MS Mass Communication and MA English students of Christ University, Bangalore.

As with most other industries, the growth of the technical communication profession too is governed by the laws of demand and supply. There is little that we can do to influence the demand for technical communicators. On the supply side, however, we can do quite a bit. One step in that direction is volunteering to teach technical communication. Besides improving awareness about our profession, this volunteer activity also ensures a steady supply of trained technical communicators. It also provides us an opportunity to give something back to the profession.

In this session, Kumar Dhanagopal shares his experience teaching technical communication as part at Christ University in Bangalore. His presentation will be followed by a group discussion on the challenges that teachers of technical communication face. Several other fellow professionals who currently teach technical communication have agreed to participate in the group discussion.

The presentation and group discussion will cover all aspects of teaching technical communication – creating interest in the course, getting students to enroll, creating courseware, delivering content in the class, guiding students on assignments and projects, and assessing performance. This session would be useful for volunteers who currently teach technical communication as well as for professionals who want to volunteer for such activities in the future.

This presentation recounts the experience of making INDUS, the newsletter of STC India, the mouthpiece of STC India and a community-building and mindshare tracking medium. The paper tracks the evolution of INDUS and how it set up sustainable practices that allowed it to figure amongst best STC chapters’ newsletters in the world.

This paper is meant for all writers and marketing professionals interested in creating a long-term roadmap for a newsletter of a firm, community or NGO. The paper will cover:

• How to decide newsletter items/categories
• How to source and encourage volunteer contribution without compromising standards
• How to build themes that encourage readability and participation
• How to build communities and interaction
• How to balance reporting with articles (pure newsletter versus magazine)
• How to ensure minimal branding (explicit and implicit)
• How to document processes/ capture tacit knowledge
• How to build article/theme backlog (Define roadmap)

Practical examples from “Making of INDUS” will be used as examples.

Anupama A, and Gururaj B.S.

Anupama has over 13 years experience in the field of Technical Communication. She is currently Senior Manager, Documentation and User Experience at CDC Software, Bangalore. She is the Immediate Past President of the STC India Chapter for 2008. She is a Senior member of the India Chapter, and over the last 11 years, she has served STC India in various capacities such as Web admin, City Representative, Paper Selection Committee member, Conference Program Manager, Competition Judge, and President. During her Presidential tenure in 2007, the STC India Chapter won the Award of Distinction at the International level for its activities and initiatives.

Gururaj is the PR and Sponsorship Manager the STC India Chapter for 2008. He is an active member of the India Chapter, and over the last 5 years, he has served STC India in various capacities such as Membership Manager, Secretary, Program Manager, Competition Judge, and President. During his Presidential tenure in 2006, the STC India Chapter won the Award of Distinction at the International level for its activities and initiatives.

In a career spanning four decades in the Executive Branch of the Indian Navy, Mr. Bangara handled challenging assignments in diverse disciplines such as combat operations, platform and system acquisition, and Navy and subordinate level perspective planning, budget management and project development. He provided leadership to large and small organizations in the Navy, fulfilling operational and administrative aims in a variety of situations and managing day-to-day mission accomplishment while conceptualizing and planning long-term objective management and growth.

He commanded warships, a large flotilla, a premier military training academy and a Naval Command and shouldered a challenging diplomatic assignment and headed branches and directorates at Naval Headquarters that oversaw various aspects of naval functioning and capability development. He traveled extensively in Europe, USA, UK, Africa, Australia, Singapore, Japan and Philippines for military-to-military discussions, preparation of MoUs and participation in seminars. He has authored several papers and essays providing strategic inputs for managing the organization and developing institutional capability.

Objectives:

1. Project management – The road with too many directions

2. Phases of project management as defined by PMI

3. DDLC in SDLC

4. Risks in the different phases of DDLC

5. Inputs and outputs at the end of each project management phase with respect to different technical documentation deliverables and planning

6. Hands on exercises and case studies to understand DDLC in SDLC

7. Technical Documentation in an Agile environment

Intended Audience

Audience for this workshop can be anyone, a novice, a team leader, a project manager, technical documentation manager, product managers, etc.

Description

This workshop aims to educate the audience on managing technical documentation projects based on PMI and Agile project management principles. Most writers complain that documentation is often given the lowest priority in their organization, and this workshop will equip them with some good reasons to change this perception in their organization. There will be hands-on exercises at the end of every project phase discussed and this should help everybody involved in planning & executing a project understand the importance of different milestones.

This workshop aims to be as interactive as possible and examples will be drawn from our daily life scenarios and this should help the audience connect closely with the scenarios. Some real time situations faced by the members in the audience will be taken as live examples and a discussion will be conducted to conclude the best possible solution. There will be questions and answers at the end of the workshop. Audience will get to take home the case study exercises.

Vasanth Vaidyanathan

Vasanth holds a bachelors degree in Electronics and Communication engineering, and a masters degree in software systems. His wide industry experience areas include software development, technical support, release engineering, performance testing, and technical documentation. Vasanth is a Certified Scrum Master (CSM). He is a senior member of Society for Technical Communication (STC), and is the current President of STC India chapter. He has presented papers in several conferences. Vasanth won the "Best Paper" award in the PMI APAC conference held in India (2005). Vasanth is currently a Program Manager in the Information Products Group (IPG) at Sun Microsystems, Bangalore.

Project & People Management

Technical writers and leads aspiring to get on the management track; practicing documentation managers.

Sandhya Prasad

Current job title:

Director, Information Management, BEA Systems (a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle)

Overall industry experience (including non-TechComm):

Twenty three years of global experience in business communications: technical communications, training, facilitation and management in the IT industry.

I have managed multiple clients and projects across geographical locations for many years (http://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhya7).

Brief description of current job:

Manage a cross-functional, multi-product, end-to-end documentation team for several products of the Oracle Fusion Middleware suite.

STC Activities:

• Weekend guest faculty teaching technical communication at Christ University, Bangalore.

• Conducted learning session on "7 Habits of highly effective technical communicators", Bangalore 2008

• Served as a judge for the Technical Publications and Online Communications competitions, 2007

• Participated in panel discussion: Technical writing in India, 2007

• Presented STC Salary Survey (2007) analysis, Career Day, 2007

• Moderated panel discussion on Salary Survey (2005): http://www.stc-india.org/indus/072005/empfair.htm

• Panel member, Documentation Management, Bangalore, 2005

• Conducted Instructional Design workshop (2004), Bangalore, http://www.stc-india.org/learningsessions/BloreSessions/sessions_blr.htm

• Served as a judge for the Technical Publications (2003) competition http://www.stc-india.org/indus/012003/competitions.htm

• Served as a judge for the Online Communication competitions, 2002
  Participated in panel discussion: Should technical communicators wear different hats, 2002

• Conducted learning session on "Creating documentation standards for the web", 2000

• Conducted 1-day workshop on Technical Writing, 2000
  Conducted session: “The world is a global village”, LA, 1999
   

Other information:

• I have a certification in Management Theory, Policy, and Process from UCLA Extension, USA.

• I am currently pursuing AMPM, an executive education program in Global Management offered by GDW Consortium. The program involves four of the top management institutes: Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, SDA Bocconi, Italy, City University of Hong Kong, and UCLA Anderson School of Management, Los Angeles, USA.
   

FrameMaker & DITA

Mahesh is Product Manager for Adobe FrameMaker. He has managed multiple products and made a key contribution to the first ever Technical Communication Suite. Prior to his MBA, he worked with IBM.

1. Cultural Secretary, Jadavpur University Arts Faculty, Kolkata

2. Leading role in seminars and debates across educational life

3. Leadership of ICONS Media Consultancy, Delhi

4. Managing Trustee, Generation Next Charitable Trust, Pune

5. Founded COMMITS institute, Bangalore, and NSHM Media School, Kolkata.

6. Chief Consultant, New Global Indian portal and publication: launched in January, 2008. in the Prabasi Bharatiya Diwas, backed by IPRMM, Boston, USA.

7. Addressed a session of UN Human Rights Commission, Geneva, on issues connected to human rights violations of people affected by leprosy even after their cure

8. Addressed a session on WHO on social stigma connected to communicable diseases

9. Addressed youth in 26 cities of India in 2003-04 on India: Vision 2020.

10. Lead India Contest: City Finalist.

Prof Ujjwal K Chowdhury

Dean, Symbiosis International University Director, Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication, Symbiosis Campus Viman Nagar, Nagar Road, Pune: 14.

Honorary Chairman, ICONS Media & I-Square (Delhi, Kolkata) Former Media Advisor, Govt of India (Textiles) and The Nippon Foundation

Current Occupation:

Dean of the Symbiosis International University, and Director of Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication Managing Editor, India Insight weekly and New Global Indian monthly.

Past jobs:

Media Adviser, The Nippon Foundation (Goodwill Ambassador, WHO), Delhi & Geneva Media Adviser, Textiles Ministry, Government of India, Delhi Director, NSHM Group, Kolkata Worked with Business India Group, Zee Group, Observer group, Blitz, et al.

Educational qualifications:

Masters and M Phil in International Relations, PG Diploma in Journalism and Communication, 9th in all India CBSE Exams in 1981 (Class X finals).

Championing Information Development: An Innovative Approach

Bernard Kaesmann

Mr. Kaesmann has an extensive career spanning 30 years as a Software engineer and technology leader. Bernard has worked as a leader in international technical Support, a director of customer service and as a training and knowledge officer in various technological organizations. He has worked over 26 international projects focused on change management and innovation in the United States, Australia, Asia Pac, Britain, and Belgium.  Currently Bernard serves as the Director of Central Information Solutions within the Chief Technology Office of Alcatel-Lucent.

Mr. Kaesmann is a Software Engineer and has specialized in change management. Bernard is an accomplished linguist speaking: German, French, English and Spanish.

Objectives:

Gain an understanding of the state of the technical writing profession in China.

Intended Audience:

Anyone in the software development and/or technical writing profession. Description: Do you have development and QA teams in China but technical writing in other locations? Do you tend to assume that it’s not possible to write documentation in English in China? Does technical writing exist as a recognized profession in China? Is it truly feasible to consider creating documentation in China in English? TIBCO has a technical writing team in China! Learn how we approached and addressed this exciting challenge.

Suneeta Aggarwal, Director of Technical Publications & Localization at TIBCO Software Inc. will share her experiences with setting up a documentation team from scratch in Beijing, China. The technical writing profession in China is in an early nascent phase, similar to the stage it was in India about 15 years ago.

Here’s an outline of the presentation:

Definition of technical writing
About TIBCO's Technical Publications & Localization group

• Technical Writing in China
• Why hire writers in China
• How to find candidates
• Background of candidates
• Writers are hired; what's next
• Training
• Promoting an English Environment
• Challenges
• Areas of Improvement

Attrition
More Information
Conclusion
Q&A

Suneeta is a seasoned Director level manager with fifteen years managing local and global teams. She currently manages a large team spread across United States, India, China, and the UK, with occasional contractors in Canada as well. Suneeta has built teams from scratch in India and China; this is especially notable as when TIBCO entered these markets, the technical writing profession was just evolving in India and virtually non‐existent in China. Suneeta has been with TIBCO since 1990 when she joined as the first technical writer in the company. Before joining TIBCO, Suneeta worked as a software engineer.

Irrespective of the medium that they are writing for, most writers fall back on the book format when structuring documents – a book that has a cover page, table of contents, body made up of topics, and an index at the bare minimum.

However, times have changed, and most people searching for information don’t sequentially read through page after page to get the information they need here and now. This impatience is what has contributed to the success of search engines that wade through tons of information and display just those pages that are likely to contain the answer to a user’s immediate problem. However, writing content that is concise and complete and yet delivered in smaller neater packages can be quite a challenge to author. This paper attempts to provide insights into how you can create optimized browser friendly content without sacrificing the completeness that a long book may offer. This paper describes the distinct advantages creating web friendly articles have over traditional long chapters in a book.

The paper explores the task of planning, designing, and writing articles for effective content delivery in keeping with current information demands.
 

• Designing and delivering information in smaller chunks for quick access to relevant content
• Grouping articles into thematic buckets or ‘chapters’
• Creating articles that serve as landing points for context-sensitive help
• Planning navigational aids such as dynamic mini‐TOCs and browse sequences
• Optimizing articles for web search crawlers
• Building reusability in articles
• Planning articles for a printable output as well
• Using articles as launch points to more detailed alternatives

This paper addresses how well written articles are planned and designed rather than being just a collection of topics loosely chunked together.

Ashima and Preran are technical writers with Adobe India Pvt Ltd. They are currently working on projects that involve a web‐centric approach taking into account users that are used to the book format. This paper is a result of the challenges that they have faced in that path, and the ways in which those challenges were overcome. The paper should be of use to all those writers who will increasingly have to write for a different breed of users – those bred on the internet.

Summary:

IBM Task Modeler, is a free Eclipse-based tool for rapidly creating and analyzing a hierarchical model of tasks that a customer performs to achieve a specific goal. With IBM Task Modeler, you can analyse use cases to develop task models for user documentation, using the DITA information units of concept, task, and reference.

Objectives:

This session will provide an overview of the application, and demonstrate how you can use IBM Task Modeler to:

• Model use cases and scenarios (task models)
• Create and manage an information architecture using DITA maps
• Organize task flows
• Manage DITA topic files
• Visually edit DITA relationship tables
• Visually inspect topic links and relationships and other properties

You will get tips for installing, configuring, and working with Task Modeler to easily create a DITA map, initial DITA files, and a relationship table that links the DITA files. You will see examples of how you can use Task Modeler to edit and restructure existing DITA maps, develop new information units, and work collaboratively with development to verify your information.

Veena K Omprakash, works as Information Developer for IBM Rational, India Software Lab. Veena has ben working with IBM for the past 1.5 years and has around 4 years of experience in the technical communication field.

Veena works on different user assistance deliverables for various Rational products. At IBM, she works on Eclipse-based tool for creating our deliverables.

Over the past few years, Sun Microsystems has shifted its product development strategy to an open-source approach. This shift has influenced a change in the documentation development. More Sun documentation is being written in open and collaborative environments by using wikis and blogs to augment or even replace traditional authoring tools and approaches. These new interactive tools and approaches bring flexibility to the content development process and also increase the speed with which content changes. Consequently, writers and editors face new challenges.

Moving to this open and agile environment has transformed how writer's define and develop content in this nontraditional information age: moving from a solo activity where interaction with "others" usually took place only during predictable development and review cycles to an ongoing dialog with "others" --an activity of constant reciprocation,  adaptation, and participation.

This new paradigm of engaging with the community has raised a number of questions for the editor such as "how, when, and at what level should I edit material developed in an ongoing process?", "what is the best approach to facilitate wiki editing?", "how do I alertly track this ever-changing content?", "are there unique structural considerations that require a new form of developmental editing to quickly adapt to changes?"  For some, the new paradigm has signaled the end of editorial involvement, as we know it. Others have assumed that due to constant changes, wiki text should never be edited.

The editors at Sun recognize that the content development model has changed. However, "being in the open and agile world" has not changed the need for clarity, consistency, and coherence. The role of the editor is still to ensure that information, whether in a wiki or on a static web page, is readable and usable. Editing should continue to be a value-added activity in this era of rapidly-changing content development and mutual exchange of information to create trusted content for the audience.

This paper presents how Sun's editors worked with technical writers to define a new content development work flow, ensure coherent and complete structural relationships between parts of the documentation, determine the most effective moments in that flow to provide editing, and define the appropriate level of editing to apply at each of those moments. Working with a team of editors and writers, and by using wikis as an example, Sun's Information Products Group defined a Best Practices approach to editing content developed in wikis.

Shubha Girish is a technical editor in the Information Products Group at Sun Microsystems, India. She has worked in the industry for about 15 years. She has edited a variety of documentation types at Sun ranging from wikis, documents, articles, blogs, newsletters, demos, voice-overs, white papers, and presentations. Shubha has written and edited technical documentation related to chip design, server technology, software applications, digital signal processors, etc. She has driven initiatives and contributed to enhancing documentation quality, product usability, creating modernized content, and defining new processes and guidelines. She has co-authored papers for the STC India 2000 and 2001 conference.

Title:

A splash of design in documentation – bringing colour into technical writing

Objective:

• To introduce a design perspective in technical writing

• To create the role of technical designers in the field of technical communication

• To provide narrative manuals, illustrative online help tutorials and creative concepts to present guides and collaterals in technical communication.

Intended Audience:

• Writers with a passion for designing

• Writers who want to introduce creative concepts in the field of technical communication

• Graphical designers

Description:

The outcome of internet, wikis and pod casts has brought a new light into the art of technical writing. People prefer interactive tutorials and illustrative procedures apart from the traditional

method of user documentation, white papers, release notes and online help.

Creatively designed technical documentation – possible?

It is necessary to conduct an extensive research on the target audience to develop a user manual. Similarly, it is necessary to know the type of audience for creatively designing documentation. For example, a creative approach was initiated during the development of a user manual for software called Incredible Machine which was presented in the form of a mad scientist’s lab notebook.

Creative technical writing is no more an oxymoron statement. Similarly, designing in documentation will prove to be a strong competitor against the increasing development of e‐learning tutorials and

interactive CDs. Technical writing will change from the traditional black and white print outs and

outputs to a more colourful and illustrative form of writing and designing.

The proposal will explain in detail about the various forms of creativity and design that can be introduced in user manuals, online help, setup guides, and other types of documentation.

Role of technical designers, Instructions and Entertainment!

A collaborative effort by technical writers and designers can create an entertaining form of technical documentation with the right mix of enthusiasm and active learning for the audience. The technical

designers will introduce a design perspective in technical writing through interactive instructions, step‐by‐step procedures in the form of illustrative scripts and pictorial representations (movie clips, comic strips, dialogues, mascots, graphics and so on) instead of the traditional way of technical writing.

A splash of design in documentation – bringing colour into technical writing

The proposal will explain in detail about the role of technical designers, their contribution to documentation and the knowledge they require to innovate new ideas into this field.

A drop of design and a bottle of creativity!

This section provides samples of design in documentation and ideas to introduce different forms of documentation and online help such as graphical layouts, interactive guides, manuals with dialogue entries or narrative explanations, video strips or animations (such as MANGA, 3D illustrations and so on) in online help, mascots for release notes and so on.

A complete research will be documented to find out the usability perspective of designing in documentation and the technological support to invent more ideas into the field of technical

communication.

Vandhana S

Vandhana is part of Technical Communication practice in the Content and Design team of Cognizant Technology Solutions. Her bachelor degree in Visual Communication gives her the in-depth knowledge in design making her a forerunner in the technical design field. She has worked on many Technical Writing projects for clients and has brought a creative aspect to the regular style of documentation. Her exposure to art and technical skills combined with an exposure to myriad of multimedia tools has helped her give an interactive edge to the regular technical documentation. She is part of the research team that works to bring new life to technical documentation including various industry leading concepts such as 3D, Interactive Help and so on. As a speaker, she brings her real life experience in adding creative design to various technical writing projects.

Key Objectives of the presentation

Discuss the factors that lead to an emotional situation in technical writing professional’s work environment Discuss the factors that govern emotions Introduce the Interaction, Tolerance, Acceptance (ITA) approach to overcome emotional situations and improve the productivity as a technical writer Introduce the tools for ITA: Psychological, Philosophical, Cognitive, and Perceptive dimensions of a person’s overall psyche

Presentation Format

We will be presenting this topic/idea as a Skit/Docufiction.

This will be a collaborative effort of a team of technical writers in our group. Our idea is to leverage perspectives from our observations as writers who spend some time in the industry. We also bring in experience from our colleagues. The presentation will contain excerpts from a technical writer’s day-to-day work, candid observations/contexts in the form of interviews and role-plays.

Intended Audience:

All

The topics listed below will be presented in covered in skit/video/PowerPoint format in 40 minutes followed by 5 minutes questions and general discussion.

Sriramana Muliya

Sriramana Muliya has over 10 years of experience in the writing and editing industry. A Mass Communication post graduate from the Department of Mass Communication, University of Mysore, Sri started his career with The Hindu Bangalore as a journalist. He later moved into Advertising as a copy writer and then to content writing and editing. Eventually, Sri entered into the world of Technical Communication and has been associated with SysArris, Manhattan Associates, and Oracle before joining Cisco Systems.

Varughese Cherian

Varughese Cherian holds a Master’s degree in Communication and Journalism from the Department of Mass Communication, University of Calicut. Varughese started his technical writing career in 2003 with HCL Technologies, Chennai. He then joined Symbol Technologies (now Motorola, Inc.) before moving to Cisco Systems.

Jyoti Nayak

Jyoti, an engineer by education, started her technical writing career with Wipro in 1996 and later moved to Alcatel-Lucent Technologies. Currently, she is a Technical Writer with Cisco Systems.

Shanthi Sharma

Shanthi holds a Master’s degree in English Language from the Department of English, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam-Kerala. Shanthi started her technical writing career in 1996 with Exmisoft Technologies, Bangalore before moving to Tektronix and then to Alcatel-Lucent Technologies, Bangalore. Currently, she is a Technical Writer with Cisco Systems.

Title:

Effort estimation for documentation projects

Objective:

To provide a framework that helps in coming up with documentation project estimates for better planning.

Intended Audience:

Technical writers and managers who provide estimates for their documentation projects.

Description:

Scope, Cost, and Time are the triple constraints project management. Often times we are confronted with tight schedules to complete our documentation work. Providing realistic estimates and getting the buy-in of your stakeholders right during the planning phase can help you in reducing conflicts and meeting the milestones. The process of estimating efforts varies from project to project and from organization to organization. This presentation provides the tools and techniques, along with sample estimates, to help you in better managing the projects.

Day 1

Warm-up exercises include the following:
 

• Sit down first for OM chanting 3 x (people of other Faith can chant Amen or Amin)
• Stand up - on the spot brisk walking
• Ankle rotation
• Knee rotation
• Hip rotation
• Katichakrasan(hands parallel swinging back and bringing back to position.)
• Konasan (waist stretch)
• Elbows, hands and fingers exercises.
• Eye exercises- stretch hand with thumb erect- turn hand to left and then back- all the while stare at the thumb without turning next
  Neck rotation
• Chair aasan- sit slowly (and painfully!!)
   

Asanas on Day 1

 

• Lie on stomach
• Bhujangasana
• Makarasana (lie down with right hand on top of head and left hand close to the chest. Turn head to right. Make humming noise)
• Viparita shalabasana (superman posture)
• Turn and lie on back
• Pusn-ups
• Sethubandhasana (lift torso and hold the posture)

Pranayaama

Bhastrika demo


Meditation

Pancha Kosha meditation- very relaxing

Day 2

Warm up exercises remain the same

Asanas on Day 2

 

• Lie on stomach
• Shishu asan (child posture)- very relaxing
• Maarjalasan (cat posture)
• Bhungasana
• Lie on back
• Artha pavana muktasana (bring knee to the chin and hold the posture. Bring head down first and then the knee)
• Purna pavana muktasana (bring both knees close to the chin and hold the posture)
• Sethubandhasan

Pranayaama
Kapaala bhati demo
Nadi shodhana demo

Stand up. Some fun dancing?

Sit down
Meditation

Guided meditation - probably SPACE meditation by Guruji

Manjula Kandula and Makarand (Mak) Pandit

Manjula Kandula

A biochemist by training who meandered into science journalism before entering the tech pubs profession as an editor. Is currently Tech Pubs manager at VMware, Bangalore. Also was a guest faculty at the Indian Institute of Science- taught 'Communication skills for managers' for three consecutive years at the Management Studies department.

Joined Art of Living Foundation three years ago and has completed several courses at the ashram. Is a Teachers' Training (Phase I) graduate. Currently takes free yoga sessions in the neighbourhood and also gives introductory talks for the Basic course offered by the Art of Living Foundation.

Makarand (Mak) Pandit

An engineering graduate and a marketing post-graduate. Mak is the managing director of Technowrites Pvt. Ltd. He has 15 years of experience in technical writing and more than 7 years in teaching. Mak is a visiting faculty at the University of Pune and a number of other educational institutes in Pune. Mak joined Art of Living three years back and has completed the Part I, Part II, Sahaj Samadhi, and the DSN course. Mak served STC India in various roles (including Chapter President in 2005). He is currently serving as Program Manager for the 2008 Pune Conference. Mak is nominated for the post of Director of STC Worldwide (elections will be held in March 2009).

The presentation will cover a demo on using the tools, JavaDocs, and Doxygen. Currently, writers spend more time on gathering information for an API guide, which developers have documented in the code. To understand such information writers require some basic understanding of the programming language in which the application is written. But, these automated tools would gather such information and present it in a format such that writers can then work on the generated information easier than documenting them manually. The presentation also covers some basic information on the contents of an API Guide.

Swaminathan Moorthy works as a Senior Information Developer with Sterling Commerce, an AT&T company. Swami holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Applications and has worked in various domains such as Healthcare, CRM, and Banking.

Abstract

Online Help has gone through several transitions, from WinHelp to CHM and now to cross platform WebHelp and FlashHelp. Despite is promise of cross platform cross browser support, innovation in WebHelp delivery has not kept pace with emerging trends in a Web 2.0 world. Online Help is not a static document anymore and as products mature, knowledge available with end user community oftens exceeds the documented functionality. A large number of companies are now taking advantage of community participation. In this presentation, we will explore these trends and examine different options.

Presentation Outline

Online Help has gone through several transitions, from WinHelp to CHM and now to cross platform WebHelp and FlashHelp. Despite is promise of cross platform cross browser support, innovation in Online Help delivery has not kept pace with emerging trends in a Web 2.0 world. We will compare the different output formats for Online Help and consider their pros and cons.

Online Help is not a static document anymore and as products mature, knowledge available with end user community oftens exceeds the documented functionality. A large number of companies are now taking advantage of community participation. We will talk about specific customer examples and mechanisms used to enable the community participation. For example, LiveDocs by Adobe, use of Wikis by companies to collaborate, risks and opportunities.

The discussion will then introduce Adobe AIR as a delivery format and compare it with existing formats. Specific examples will be shared on how community involvement is enabled through Adobe AIR. In the end, guidelines will be provided on who should consider moving to Adobe AIR as the delivery format. I will also be touching on issues related to globalization impacts community participation.

Note to the committee - Adobe AIR was acknowledged as the future of Online Help as part of delibrations at Writers UA.

Breaking-off from the traditional documentation process to cater to the changing needs and technologies

Objective:

The aim of this presentation is to popularize Wiki as a medium for documentation and project management in agile projects. This approach enables extensive collaboration and contribution across globally distributed teams.

Audience:

This presentation is intended to all.

It's a team by all, for all.

Description:

Overview of Agile and Wiki

Agile means responding to change - both technological and changes in requirements. Scrum is one of the agile development patterns. It is an iterative, incremental process of managing work

that produces potentially deliverable set of documents at the end of each iteration.

Wiki is a collection of web pages that enables users to access, modify, or contribute by adding information or comments. Wiki enables content collaboration and provides users with the most

up-to-date information. Apart from using the Wiki as an authoring medium, it can also be used for Project Management, Knowledge Base, and Meeting Management.

Adopting Wiki as a medium in agile projects ensures better collaboration and interaction between developers, testers, writers, stakeholders, and customers who work as a team.

Summary:

Documentation in the waterfall method involves considerable time for authoring, implementing feedback, and publishing. Writers should be trained to use authoring tools. Release dates are

often rescheduled leading to confusion in publishing the correct version of the document.

In contrast, while authoring Wikis in a scrum project, the markup language used in the Wiki is easy to learn and adopt; the document is live and the information is real-time; feedback implementation is quick as feedback can be given as comments to the Wiki. Wiki also helps in maintaining and updating the tasks taken-up by the team. This approach helps in generating leads as

it gives good publicity to the product through live documentation and wide visibility.

Shanthi Srinivasan has been working at Sun Microsystems for a year and has more than 3 years of experience in technical writing. She has worked on documentation of telecommunications and virtualization applications.

Anjana Kulkarni has been working at Sun Microsystems for the last 7 months and has over 2 years of experience in technical documentation. She has worked on the documentation of CRM, Healthcare Business Intelligence, Asset Management, and Communications Client applications.

Title Tagging Along with Metadata:

A Primer on the Role of Metadata in Technical Documentation

Abstract:

This presentation introduces writers to the role of metadata in technical documentation. It provides an overview of metadata standards and then goes on to describe the process of creating metadata using a sample document. Finally, this presentation looks at the future of metadata such as user generated metadata in the form of social tagging and their possible applications in technical documentation.

Selvakumar T.S is a Technical Publications Consultant with Cadence Design Systems, NOIDA, India. He has around 14 years experience in Technical Writing.

Objectives

• Why personalize
• Learning from web personalization
• Tracking tools and technologies
• Authoring the experience
• Designing the experience
• Delivering the experience
• Conclusion

Sudhir has been in the interface design and usability field since the last eight years. At Human Factors, he is leading projects in a variety of domains from State governments to fortune 500 companies in all aspects of user-centered analysis and design. Sudhir previously worked at Computer Associates and Quark at various levels in usability engineering.

Prachi is an accomplished technical writer at CA. She has more than six years of experience in technical documentation and has presented at the STC India Annual Conference in 2004 at Chennai and at STC India Annual Conference in 2005 at Hyderabad. Prachi has previously worked at Quark as a technical writer.

Objective

The proposed presentation aims to present an interesting facet of our work and offer a few known cases of undocumented features and discuss the history and reasons for them. The proposal also aims to present strategies in dealing with such situations, even avoiding such mishaps and the quintessential question of whether to document or not.

Intended Audience

This topic is likely to evoke interest and discussion from writers who have just embarked on their writing careers to fairly senior folks.

Description

As writers we have the onerous responsibility to ensure all features of the product are documented so that users get the best assistance and be most productive. However, some features go undocumented. There are a variety of reasons for not documenting them:

• Features that product vendors choose not to support
• Missed due to plain oversight (a common documentation issue)
• Marketing strategy not to sell the feature
• Competition and intellectual property
• Quite often an existing feature manifests its functionality in a multiple ways (and not all are documented)
• Gaps in the product and project management, engineering development and documentation.

Vendors guarantee the product documentation to constitute a contract for the product behavior. Undocumented features are generally left unsupported. When users discover them and don't find them in documentation, there are several possible repercussions:

• Chaos
• Lack of trust
• Threats from competition
• Interpretations and misinterpretations

Sometimes, this could prove to be a costly mistake for product developers. What role should writers play in such scenarios? What strategies should they adopt to resolve these situations?

Uday Chava is a senior information developer and currently works as a Manager of Information Development at the India Software Lab, IBM. He has previously worked for Manugistics (now JDA), Microsoft and Nokia. He has also worked closely as a consultant with over a dozen start up technology firms.

Vikrant works at Cadence Design Systems and is a Technical Writer and Content Management specialist with experience in documenting for a wide variety of business applications, including enterprise publications, demand-chain optimization, and Electronic Design Automation. He has previously worked at Quark and Manugistics. He is particularly interested in documentation methodologies and production technologies, with a special emphasis on UX and changing user-needs and expectations. He thinks that writing/designing for the print media is very challenging, and spends whatever free time he gets, designing brochures, posters, logos etc for anyone who requests kindly and offers design freedom.

Title

"Lights....Camera....Action" - Directing a Voiceover Screencast
 

Key Presentation Objectives

• What is a screencast?

• Types of screencasts

• Stages involved in creating a voiceover screencast

• Writing a storyboard

  • Technical review

  • Editorial review

  • Recording

  • Editing

  • Publishing

• Best practices in directing voiceover screencast

• Impact produced by a voiceover screencast with great quality

• Questions from Audience

Intended Audience

For all, who plays an essential role in a product development life cycle

Description

A voiceover screencast is a video capture of the computer screen that includes an audio narration. With the advent of Web 2.0 tools, screencast has gained popularity as one of the most compelling options for delivering content. In my presentation, I will focus more on the process involved in creating a voiceover screencast. The presentation has been entirely based on my experience in creating a dozen voiceover screencasts in Sun Microsystems for the Portal Server product. From the gained experience, I can share the challenges involved and the best practices followed to avoid them in creating a nearly-perfect quality voiceover screencast. On a closing note, I will share some metrics with the audience to justify the impact that a voiceover screencast has created among internal and external customers of the Sun's Portal Server product.

In my experience, I felt that creating a voiceover screencast is similar to directing a movie. Here, the writer plays the role of a director, co-ordinating with engineers, media, editorial, and voiceover artist. Now, you can guess why the presentation has been titled like this.

Title:

To be a Manager or an Individual Contributor.

Objectives:

To help writers understand/evaluate the choice between opting to or aspiring to become a manager after x yrs of experience versus the decision to be an independent contributor with hands on expertise, and the opportunity to keep evolving and learning.

This session will help writers to analyze their strengths and capabilities before choosing a technical track or a managerial track. Instead of going with the flow, writers should be able to make informed decision and choose the right career path.

Intended Audience: Primary audience for the session (beginners, experienced, experts, managers, directors, all).

Description:

It seems a given that most writers aim to start off in the industry, gain a few years of experience, after which they all aspire to become managers. The reasons could be multiple - the general mindset that after a few years of experience, the natural progression is to become a manager; that if they don’t, it means they are not doing something right or else they would have been managers by now; that it may impact how their peers view them; cultural issues and obsession with designations, and lastly the presumption that becoming a manager brings inherent monetary benefits which they wouldn’t get as an independent contributor.

For the most part, many such "independent contributors" would fit the requirement of a managerial role as well. So what makes them to choose the technical path than the managerial path?

This session aims to discuss the pros and cons of choosing to be a documentation manager versus being an independent contributor. It will discuss reasons behind both choices, advantages and disadvantages of both the roles, common perceptions, and the value independent contributors bring to prospective employers by virtue of their breadth of experience, ability to handle complex tasks in shorter span of time, and work with minimal or no supervision.

Some initial points for Presentation:

• Career Path of an Independent Contributor

• Career Path of a Manager

• Pros and Cons of both

• Reasons and mindsets

• Peer opinions and common perceptions

• Monetary Considerations

• Should promotions always mean moving to supervisory/managerial roles?

• What benefits do independent contributors offer companies/prospective employers?

• Whether you are fit to become a manager or individual contributor?

Bhavana Sontakke has been working in the field of Technical Communication for more than twelve years. Currently, she is working with TIBCO Software India Pvt. Ltd. at the Pune office as an Individual Contributor. Before joining TIBCO, she worked in PTC Software India as a Project Leader.

Bhavana holds a post-graduate degree in Electronics and has worked in the Electronics industry before getting into the technical writing profession.

Objective

Demonstrate how writers can quickly build help systems on a shoestring budget with Search Maker Pro and other open source tools.

Abstract

A majority of the organizations that have internal or external documentation deliverables do not have budgets for high cost authoring and publishing tools like the Adobe RoboHelp (US $999 online price), Adobe FrameMaker (US $899 online price), Quadralay WebWorks (US $1495 online price) and so on. As a result, they end up delivering documents in Microsoft Word or PDF format. A primary issue with delivering documents in these formats is that they have to be delivered as standalone documents that users have to access one-by-one. Users are not able to access them from a single location and search across the documents.

This presentation demonstrates how organizations can build an integrated online help system that users can use to access all the documents from a single location and search across the documents with Search Maker Pro and other open source tools with a shoestring budget that is as low as US$59.

Sangeeta Alam and Selvakumar T.S work as Technical Writers with Cadence Design Systems, NOIDA, India.

Day 1

Warm-up exercises include the following:
 

• Sit down first for OM chanting 3 x (people of other Faith can chant Amen or Amin)
• Stand up - on the spot brisk walking
• Ankle rotation
• Knee rotation
• Hip rotation
• Katichakrasan(hands parallel swinging back and bringing back to position.)
• Konasan (waist stretch)
• Elbows, hands and fingers exercises.
• Eye exercises- stretch hand with thumb erect- turn hand to left and then back- all the while stare at the thumb without turning next
  Neck rotation
• Chair aasan- sit slowly (and painfully!!)
   

Asanas on Day 1

 

• Lie on stomach
• Bhujangasana
• Makarasana (lie down with right hand on top of head and left hand close to the chest. Turn head to right. Make humming noise)
• Viparita shalabasana (superman posture)
• Turn and lie on back
• Pusn-ups
• Sethubandhasana (lift torso and hold the posture)

Pranayaama

Bhastrika demo


Meditation

Pancha Kosha meditation- very relaxing

Day 2

Warm up exercises remain the same

Asanas on Day 2

 

• Lie on stomach
• Shishu asan (child posture)- very relaxing
• Maarjalasan (cat posture)
• Bhungasana
• Lie on back
• Artha pavana muktasana (bring knee to the chin and hold the posture. Bring head down first and then the knee)
• Purna pavana muktasana (bring both knees close to the chin and hold the posture)
• Sethubandhasan

Pranayaama
Kapaala bhati demo
Nadi shodhana demo

Stand up. Some fun dancing?

Sit down
Meditation

Guided meditation - probably SPACE meditation by Guruji

Manjula Kandula and Makarand Pandit

Manjula Kandula

A biochemist by training who meandered into science journalism before entering the tech pubs profession as an editor. Is currently Tech Pubs manager at VMware, Bangalore. Also was a guest faculty at the Indian Institute of Science- taught 'Communication skills for managers' for three consecutive years at the Management Studies department.

Joined Art of Living Foundation three years ago and has completed several courses at the ashram. Is a Teachers' Training (Phase I) graduate. Currently takes free yoga sessions in the neighbourhood and also gives introductory talks for the Basic course offered by the Art of Living Foundation.

Makarand Pandit

An engineering graduate and a marketing post-graduate. Mak is the managing director of Technowrites Pvt. Ltd. He has 15 years of experience in technical writing and more than 7 years in teaching. Mak is a visiting faculty at the University of Pune and a number of other educational institutes in Pune. Mak joined Art of Living three years back and has completed the Part I, Part II, Sahaj Samadhi, and the DSN course. Mak served STC India in various roles (including Chapter President in 2005). He is currently serving as Program Manager for the 2008 Pune Conference. Mak is nominated for the post of Director of STC Worldwide (elections will be held in March 2009).

Objectives

The objectives of this presentation are to:

• Help you install and configure Joomla!
• Describe the various types of Users and their access permissions.
• Provide detailed instructions for both Front-end and Back-end input and site management within the Joomla! User framework.
• Help you easily manage project documentation.

Intended Audience

The target audience includes all levels of user from Technical Writer to Super Administrator. We are mainly designing our presentation for newcomers to Joomla but still, experienced users (of Joomla) will find it useful and interesting too.

Description

As documentation evolves and content generation reaches to the limits, continuous efforts have been on, to come out with ideas on how the content deliverables medium can be enriching and powerful. One of the potent means to deliver the content is Wikis. 

Wikis are content written for the users and driven by the users, with a strong emphasis on "develop quickly, deliver often". Joomla is looked as a powerful tool to generate project documentation.

The purpose of the presentation is to display how Joomla can be used as a tool to develop Wiki-based documentation. Besides, the presentation will also try to cover how you can set up and manage simple project documentation.

Joomla is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) used to power all kinds of websites, around the world. The Joomla User Framework consists of Authors, Editors, Publishers, Managers, Administrators and Super Administrators.

The benefits of Joomla include:

• Easy Installation
• Simple website maintenance
• Top-notch security and stability
• Powerful, free and proprietary extensions
• Plentiful templates, to easily change the look of your website

We plan to make the session interactive and lively by using many demos and practical scenarios.

Rajdeep Gupta has nearly 4+ years of technical writing experience and is currently working with Misys Finance Systems, Bangalore. He is also the Bangalore STC India City Representative for the year, 2008-09, and the Assistant Organizer of the Bangalore Technical Writers Meetup Group-Supported by STC India. His areas of expertise include Usability Testing and User Experience Design.

Saravanan Manoharan has nearly 6 years of technical writing experience and is currently working with Mtree Software, Noida. He is also the Delhi (NCR) STC India City Rep for the year 2008-09, and the Organizer of the Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi (NCR) Tech Writers Meetup.