Sandra’s Miscellany

Whew. I’m not as young as I used to be…

I got back last Thursday from the Society for Technical Communication annual conference and finally feel relatively normal. I went early to attend the Master Writers 2-day course held over the weekend, and then spent 3 long days going to various workshops and sessions. The Master Writers course was a blast — all about cognitive theory, how people learn, child psychology, learning styles, etc. Taught by Sharon Burton, a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology, the course gave me a lot to think about in terms of how I present technical information. Way cool.

The conference itself was a bit bland. There’s nothing like a tech writer for stating the obvious….As a result, I didn’t feel like I got all that much out of most of the regular sessions. I kept waiting for the presentation to state the obvious and then for the speaker to say, “So what this means to us is…” and then present a list of practical tips and suggestions for dealing with said obvious stuff. Nine-tenths of the time, that didn’t happen.

In one case, that did happen, and it turns out that the speaker used to work for the company I’m working for (very cool) and is now working for IBM. He presented all kinds of practical stuff that I can use immediately (as did the Master Writers course).

Other than that, it took most presenters 1.5 hours and 43 slides to say what could have been said in ten minutes and 2 slides…. Maybe it’ll be better next year. The general consensus of folks I talked to was that this year’s conference was much better than last year’s.

And one final observation: While tech writers are a lovely bunch, they’re nowhere near as entertaining and fun to be with as romance writers. Romance writers seem to be my tribe.