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Jan-Feb 2006 |
Newsletter from the India Chapter of STC |
Volume VIII, Number 1 |
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Look for Reactions and Voices on the Conference...
STC India Annual Conference 2005 – A Bird's Eye View
By Deepa Aswani
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When you think conference, you think silver-rimmed glasses, sleek laptops, business suits, clipped diction, somber conversations, and a grave atmosphere. The last thing you expect is a mélange of colorful interesting personalities, information overflow, fun activities, and high-tension planning and organization. This is exactly what I encountered at the 7th STC Annual Conference 2005 held at Hyderabad from December 15 to 19. |
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• Hidden Information for All to See • Application of Bloom's Taxonomy in Technical
Documentation
• Client-Friendly Atmosphere : The Polish and The Lubricants |
The STC Annual Conference, for me, was an opportunity to tap
into the minds of people who have been in the industry for years. Their
perspectives change the way you look at technical writing. It's like
finally getting to look at a map of the terrain you have been charting
with merely a compass.
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While most presentations and discussions revolved around the theme of the conference, Making Written in India a Brand, this year's conference also saw innovative presentations on technical writing such as Zen and the Art of Writing by K Narissimhan, who went on to win the Best Speaker award at the conference. Similarly, Kiruba Shankar of Sulekha Inc. spoke on the recent proliferation of blogs and how they can be leveraged to share information online. On the emerging technologies front, Jyoti Jandhyala, BEA Systems introduced us to DITA (Darwin Information Type Architecture), an architecture designed specifically for information storage and single-sourcing documentation using XML. Some of the speakers looked beyond the current documentation scenario and spoke about their vision for the future. Andrea Ames from IBM Corporation, for instance, spoke about how it is easy to commodify technical writing and make it available for the masses. |
Andrea and Srini inaugurating the conference |
At this level, a writer delivers, but it's no challenge and all scope for innovation and customization is lost. Andrea explained how one could be a strategic contributor in a documentation team and could add to the customer satisfaction quotient and value to the products.
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Makarand Pandit, Immediate Past President, STC India elaborated on the theme of the conference and said, "To make Written in India a brand, we will need to take care of: Product, Price, Place, Promotion, and People". Rachna Ganguli, Cadence Design Systems, also spoke comprehensively on the theme of the conference. In a scenario where the booming outsourcing industry enables us to march ahead of our |
Keynote Address by Andrea Ames |
competitors because of low operational costs, we conveniently neglect our own flaws, failures, and blind spots, she pointed out. She supported her findings with a SWOT analysis of the current Indian technical writing environment.
From the picture Rachna presented, it is clear that the Indian technical writing industry has a long way to go. However, it is also evident that India is riding high on the technical writing wave; that we were making mistakes, but these are fewer now and that we are reaching reasonable quality levels.
The very fact that over 350 people registered for the conference is testimony to the rapid growth the industry has seen in the past, and an indicator that the community will continue to grow with guidance and support from corporates. In an unprecedented effort, for this year's conference, STC India and Oracle joined hands to host a special contest, in which 22 candidates were selected and sponsored to attend the conference. In another initiative, the STC India Chapter arranged to have two Pakistani writers, Ayesha and Farzana, to attend the STC Annual Conference this year. STC members Makarand, Uday, and Qais played an instrumental role in making this happen. Such endeavors act as a shot in the arm for the technical writing community.
Not all of the conference activities were serious though. Taj Krishna played perfect host with an awesome spread both for lunch and dinner. In keeping with tradition, all conference attendees lined up for a group photograph. Frederick Menezes, Symantec conducted the quiz preliminaries and finals at the conference. At the entertainment night, all the technical writing mavens got together with one common goal, to have fun. The mere sight of documentation biggies shaking a leg nonstop for almost 2 hours and asking for more was quite an experience.
The conference drew to a close on the 17th when 350 writers left Taj Krishna with at least a slight change in perspective, if not a paradigm shift. The next STC Conference is to be held in Bangalore. Until then, a toast to the STC India spirit for its constant efforts at bringing all us technical writers together. Cheers!
Deepa Aswani is a Technical Writer with Oracle, Server Technologies Documentation.
Few Reactions and Voices…
“This was a memorable conference for many reasons, some of which are easy registration process, sponsorship by Oracle and STC to spot technical writing talent, visit to the Golconda Fort, Sound and Light show. Three cheers to Uday Chava and his team.” - Sudheer Birodkar, GE
“Overall, the STC conference was well-organized. However, I found a lot of overlaps of topic content. One session that was very interesting and well-presented was “Zen and the Art of Technical Writing” – kudos to K. Narssimhan! The pre-conference workshop sessions were very good. Andrea Ames’ workshop on “Human Factors for Technical Communicators” was extremely interesting. I am not sure if the presentations are screened adequately before the conference – if yes, then I suggest that the STC conference organizing team does a better screening so that the audience does not end up listening to the same kind of information across multiple presentations.” Lakshmy Menon, Lead Engineer – Documentation, Symphony Services Private Limited.
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“It was a wonderful opportunity to learn and network with the technical writing community at the conference. The presentations provided a platform to learn various aspects of technical writing. Presentations by Makarand Pandit, Andrea Ames, Srini Koppolu, Francisco Abedrabbo, Peter Fernandez, Raghuraman Sesharaman were very informative for aspiring technical writers. The entertainment evening was choreographed in a professional way; it was fun to dance with like minded people.” - Harry Anthony, Sun Microsystems India Pvt. Ltd. ___________________________________________________________________________
“Overall the conference can be summarized in one word as 'superb'. The conference was memorable for me as a winner of the STC-Oracle contest. The idea of getting recognition from STC was exhilarating and gave me immense satisfaction. Thanks to STC and Oracle for providing me this opportunity.” - Raju Tiwary
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“Attending the STC India 7th Annual Conference was a wonderful opportunity for us, especially so when technical writing has hardly gained recognition as a profession in Pakistan, with the result that very few software houses have specialized technical writing teams. On one hand, the conference proved to be a unique platform to interact with technical writers from different regions and cultures; on the other, it allowed us to familiarize ourselves with cutting edge tools, technologies, and trends in technical writing. What all we learnt was intellectually motivating. It filled us with a new spirit for the effective implementation of the newly learned ideas and techniques. We look forward to meeting the family of technical writers again, who made us feel so much at home in spite of being away from home.
On the conference agenda page, the title of each session should be accompanied by a brief introduction to the session. Some of the topic titles and their content were misaligned. Hence, a brief introduction to each topic on the agenda sheet would prepare us for what would follow.” - Farzana Jafar and Ayesha Haroon, NetSol Technologies, Pakistan.
“I attended the conference and was much pleased to meet so many people so serious about technical writing. Workshops and presentations that were of relevance to me were, Making an XML DTD, DITA – XML Architecture for Managing Information, Human Factors for Technical Communicators, 10 Steps to Implement a Successful Customer Survey, Building, managing and Sustaining a Winning Documentation Team, Creating UNIX-Based Product Demonstrations using Captivate and X-Browser, Blogs & Documentation.” - John Gallagher, ZyXEL, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
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Compiled by Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Program Manager, Information Products and Anjana Sriram , Program Manager, Information Products, Sun Microsystems India Pvt. Ltd.
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