(A)Las! Vegas Conference is Over…

Mak Pandit

While I got off at the Las Vegas airport on the sunny afternoon of May 7th, my mind was filled with images of a city filled with entertainment, casinos and gambling outfits and I kept wondering how a serious activity like an STC Annual Conference would fit into the picture.

I walked straight to the scene of action as I met a group of Technical Writers from Korea who sought my guidance in setting up a STC Chapter in Korea.

At the evening reception for international members, I met John Limon of the South Nevada chapter, which hosted this conference. I could also exchange views with Preeti Mathur from the Twin City chapter, hosts for the next year's annual conference.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

• Simplified Technical English

• Cool Tools

• Applying Six Sigma

Mak Pandit with Rich and Kelly at the
Honors Reception and Banquet

The inaugural session was quite a crowd-puller with Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn- members of an elite group of scientists credited as "Fathers of the Internet"- fielding a wide range of questions in a highly interactive session. And that set the rhythm and pace for the action-packed conference.

At the exhibitor's lounge, Adobe and Madcap representatives debated on the future of RoboHelp and Flare. Adobe touted its next release of RoboHelp in the first quarter of 2007 in response to queries on whether the product will be continued by the publishing giant. At the same time, Adobe wondered how Madcap's Flare with a low user base (as yet) could be sustained in the competitive market. I got a feeling that Flare will add to the competition.

It proved quite a formidable task to choose from the 200-odd sessions slated for the following three days. Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and the various tools that support it generated a lot of interest as these were discussed in many sessions. A couple of sessions were devoted to the increasing demand for Technical Writers in Software Development Kit (SDK) documentation and Sarbanes-Oxley documentation.

My own session in the Academic Progression was on the Pune University's Technical Writing course. The audience showed a lot of interest when I displayed some of the projects carried out by the students.

Prior to the conference, I had signed up as Co-manager of the STC's Global Membership Committee. Katherine Brown (my co-manager on the committee) and Jim Romano (STC Director) were at the conference and we discussed future plans and activities for the committee.

Even though the STC India Chapter missed the Award of Distinction this year, we maintained our winning streak with the third consecutive Award of Excellence. The Accessibility SIG in which I worked as a membership manager last year received the Award of Distinction.

The STC Jam session was really entertaining, with some specially written songs and skits adding a bit of humor amidst all the serious business happening at the conference.

At the closing session, Anita Salem recounted her experience of working as a Red Cross volunteer helping Katrina Victims. I was reminded of Prema Lawrence's service following the Tsunami disaster in India. Anita emphasized that we need to understand the significance of our actions within the context of our organization, society and humanity at large.

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Mak Pandit is the CEO of Technowrites and Immediate Past President of
STC India chapter.

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