Confluence of Knowledge and Trends

presentations on “API documentation” and “Source Code Documentation Using Doxygen” in the second stream.

The post-lunch session catered to both language freaks and DTP geeks. The articulate Freya Barua from Tata Consultancy Services warmed the cockles of many a comma expert with her superb presentation on “Better Language, Better Documentation.” Parallel workshop on “Structured Framemaker” of Asit Pant from Cadence delighted wannabe XML-enabled authors.

The morning of December 3rd saw a large throng of communicators queuing up for the registration, and it definitely looked like the conference organizers were prepared to take on the mob. We even got pretty conference-branded stationery and T-shirts!

Chandra Sekaran, Managing Director, Cognizant Technology Solutions, was the Chief Guest who had the audience’s undivided attention as he regaled them with his wit. The STC Annual Competition Awards ceremony followed, where the accomplishments of India’s brightest technical writers were rewarded. James V. Romano, Ph. D, President and CEO, Prisma International Inc., then delivered the keynote address with his facts-rich, insightful presentation on how technical writers can enhance their resourcefulness. 

The morning sessions that followed were two-track: track one was a workshop titled “Getting the Most Out of Team Meetings” conducted by Makarand Pandit, Director – Technowrites Pvt. Ltd. and Knowgence Technologies Pvt. Ltd. The first session of track two, a presentation liberally peppered with real-life examples and experiences, by Francisco Abedrabbo and Pavi Sandhu of Oracle Corporation, gave the audience tips on succeeding in a global economy. For the second track, Gurudutt Kamat, India’s veteran technical writer and champion of many battles notched yet another victory for himself as he conjured an impromptu presentation on “Shaping your Career as a Technical Writer/Instructional Designer” out of thin air as he stood in for another presenter.

The second session for the day was also two-track. Roshini Krishnamurthy of Computer Associates presented a paper on “Documentation Estimation,” while Rajeev Jain of Clovis Solutions covered the whole gamut of source code documentation in his paper “API Documentation – Trends and Opportunities.”

Post-lunch saw a veritable bouquet of paper presentations, workshops, and panel discussions. In her paper titled “Do Online Indexes Increase the Usability of Documentation?” Melanie Doulton of BMC Software described how good indexes add value even in online documentation. Trailing off the beaten track, Amandeep Singh Sandhu discussed the role of documentation in the open source environment in his paper titled “The Open Source Movement and India: Where are our Documents?”

Pawan Nayar and Tanvi Malhotra of Cadence Design Systems followed with an interactive workshop on creating multimedia demonstrations using ViewletBuilder. Close on the heels was a paper by Aoyon Chowdhury of Cadence Design Systems titled “Single Sourcing Using WebWorks.”

A panel of enthusiastic technical writers then tried their hands at clairvoyance, not exactly familiar territory, in the panel discussion “Future of User Documentation: New Directions.” The panel discussion was followed by a brief and tasteful ceremony celebrating STC, India Chapter’s notable achievements in the year 2004.

The serious events of the day behind them in the evening, most of the conference participants dispersed to their hotels to deck up in their finest party wear in anticipation of the evening’s bash. The STC powers-that-be huddled behind closed doors for the STC India Chapter Annual General Meeting, which, among other things, saw the new office bearers for the year 2005 being elected.

And when the clock struck nine, a crowd of technical-writers-now-morphed-into-party-animals descended on the venue. Conversation flowed easily as the wine as participants made new friends and chatted up with old ones.

Katriina Valli of Citec kicked off the events of the second day with a resourceful presentation on the technical issues involved in choosing a CMS. A typical technical publications team in a firm churns out vast amounts of data in the form of documentation, which could do well with efficient versioning, history management, and archiving.

In the next paper for the day, Erin Banks of Computer Associates shared her personal experiences and provided useful tips on building a successful, global technical publications team.

Next was the panel discussion on whether technical writers in India were globally competitive. Panel members quoted statistics and gladly traded pot shots at each other in what turned out to be a rather engaging session that ended with the panelists and the audience coming to a consensus – technical writers in India were evolving and were headed in the direction of global competitiveness.

Edwin Skau of BayPackets pulled off a class act with his excellent, albeit long-winded paper on research techniques. In a session peppered with tongue-in-cheek humor, Edwin provided interesting perspectives on the various facets of a vital activity that technical writers tend to treat as incidental to their job function. Running parallel with Edwin’s session was an excellent paper presented by Kiranmayee of iSOFT, where she discussed the various challenges presented by documentation maintenance.

There were two other parallel sessions before the participants broke for lunch. Dr. Beena Chintalpuri, Associate Professor of Psychology, Osmania University, presented a fascinating paper on the human side of interaction with computer software. Happening alongside was the paper presented by Rahul Prabhakar of Oracle Corporation and Saravanan Manoharan of think3 Designs on the different genres of technical writing and its allied fields, such as content writing, information architecture, information development, and so on.

The postprandial session was opened by Hemanth Basrur of Hewlett Packard Company, who presented a paper on how technical writers could leverage XML and the Open Source movement to create robust and cost-efficient single sourcing systems. Debjani Sen and Roger Dearth of BMC Software co-presented an information-rich paper on creating context-sensitive help using single sourcing.

The impact of accessibility on technical writing was the focus of the next paper by Mohammed Qais Mujeeb of VisualSoft Technologies. Mohammed’s paper focused on the need for accessibility and on Section 508, the legislation on accessibility of electronic and information technology passed by the US Congress. Prachi Sharma of Quark Systems held forth in a parallel session her paper titled “Technical Writing Practices: A case study” where she discussed diverse technical writing practices.

With all the information overload of the past two days now promptly coming out of the participants’ collective ears, the technical communication quiz conducted by Frederick Menezes of Veritas Software provided a much-needed respite. Some of India’s brightest minds in technical writing wrestled with the obscurantist grenades thrown by a quizmaster notorious for his penchant for technical communication theory and trivia. The team comprising Gururaj B.S., Pawan Nayar, and Uday Chava won the quiz title.

Their spirits revived by the brutal bloodletting in the quiz contest, the participants gathered for the closing ceremony. The conference done with, hurried farewells were bid with promises to keep in touch with the newly made friends, and participants broke out to check out of their hotels and head back home. And thus with a heavy heart did they leave, with only memories of a thoroughly delightful conference as consolation, and the premature longing for the ensuing conference the next year.