Director Sponsor Candidate for Region 8: Alison Reynolds, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Greetings to all of you from ‘down under’, home of ‘Lord of the Rings’. I am very honoured to stand for election as Director Sponsor for Region 8. Let me tell you what I can offer if I am elected.

My greatest ‘claim to fame’ is my experience building virtual and real communities of technical communicators and information designers from all around the world. In recognition of this experience, I have recently been asked to be a member of the STC Board Communities Support Committee.

My ‘community’ experience has grown from my association with STC and from my role as the director of the world’s first international online Graduate Diploma of Information Design (formerly Technical Communication) beamed ‘live’ from Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology here in New Zealand. We have a talented student group from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the US, India and Europe. Our staff and advisory board also span the globe and we have a virtual STC student chapter of over 100 students. I arrange and supervise work placements nationally and internationally and I have worked steadily to raise the profile of technical communication among employers and in organizations.

In my role as an academic, I am a frontline leader in the development of technical communication and information design as a profession and as a research-based discipline. I have a master's of business management and a graduate diploma of business administration in communication management from Massey University (New Zealand). My thesis was a comparative study of technical communication and information design trends in New Zealand and North America.

Forget flightless birds! This ‘bird’ is a sought-after international speaker. I have presented papers at STC's 45th, 49th, and 50th Annual Conferences; at the 2002 region 7 conference; and at the 1998 region 8 conference. I taught in China and India as part of an STC initiative to promote technical communication in developing countries, was a guest visitor at the San Francisco chapter meeting 1998, and attended STC's 43rd Annual Conference in Seattle.

In 2003 I trebled the New Zealand chapter membership with the creation of virtual student membership. I also established the first New Zealand STC student scholarship and arranged seminars by international STC speakers such Carol Barnum, JoAnn Hackos, and Raymond Urgo.

I believe my experience, innovativeness and skills to represent the international face of the region will ensure its continued growth, strength and diversity.

Tegal - a petaluma company - in financial difficulties

Content Mangement: Strategies for Single Sourcing

For Immediate Release:
Contact:
Lovonya Thomas
The Center for Information-Development Management
710 Kipling St, Ste 400
Denver, CO 80215
303.232.7586
lovonya.thomas@comtech-serv.com


Content Management Strategies Conference
San Francisco, CA
April 19-20, 2004

JoAnn Hackos and the Center for Information Development Management announce the Content Management Strategies conference in San Francisco, CA, April 19-20. We invite you to join us in Union Square for the definitive conference on content management.
Learn industry best practices and the tools you'll need to successfully implement content management or single sourcing in your organization! Find the content you need, store it for easy access, deliver content in multiple media, in multiple languages, through the channels of marketing, training, customer support, and documentation. Develop a strategy for managing content that saves you time and money.
Our speakers include industry expert consultants, tool developers, and people working on real content-management and single-sourcing projects. You'll learn about the relationship between process maturity and content management implementation, the successful design of an enterprise-wide content management solution, the use of topic maps to deliver content in multiple contexts from a DITA source, the unique requirements of enterprise technical communication, the impact of reuse on content design, management of content for a global enterprise, and much more.
Then enjoy one of the post conference workshops “How to Plan and Implement a Single-Source Project” or “User and Task Analysis for Information Modeling” on April 21, 2004.
For more information on this conference and workshops, visit the conference website at
http://www.cm-strategies.com/

Sonoma County Web Developers (SCWD) March Meeting
http://www.sonomawebsig.org

Location: Volunteer Center of Santa Rosa
Date: Tuesday, March 9, 2004
Time: Networking 6:30 PM to 7:00 PM; Program 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Admission: STC NorthBay members - $5.00
Speaker: Anne Marie Smith, President, InfoPros


Writing for the Web


Communicating online successfully so that your message is read and understood requires applying specific online information principles and using effective, proven techniques. In this presentation, you will learn the knowledge and techniques necessary to write effectively for online readers. Specifically, you’ll learn how to:

- Identify unique characteristics of Web users and the Web medium
- Plan and organize online content
- Say more with fewer words in less space
- Label information effectively for easy access
- Transform your writing into “scannable” content
- How to write the critical first paragraph


Anne Marie Smith is President of InfoPros (www.infopros.com), a technical communication and staffing firm started in 1995. InfoPros offers a range of technology services, including Web site design and hosting, information architecture and usability consulting, and Web-based training and multimedia development, and technical writing services. InfoPros was listed on Inc. magazine’s Inc. 500 list of Fastest Growing Private Companies in both 2001 and 2002.

With over 17 years in the technical communication field, Anne Marie’s expertise is in the areas of usability, user interface design, information architecture, and content development for hypertext systems. Anne Marie leads the InfoPros team of analysts and developers in the creation of effective, user-focused Web sites that elicit a positive user experience.

Anne Marie holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from California State University, Chico and earned minors in Computer Science and Technical Writing.

Anne Marie is a frequent speaker at in the areas of online information usability, Information Architecture, and Web-based training. In addition, Smith is an instructor for the California State University, Sacramento, Regional and Continuing Education Program and the University of California, Davis, Extension Program.


For more information, visit our website at www.sonomawebsig.org.

For Immediate Release:
Contact:
Lovonya Thomas
Comtech Services, Inc.
710 Kipling St, Ste 400
Denver, CO 80215
303.232.7586
lovonya.thomas@comtech-serv.com




XML for Writers
Oakland, CA
March 29–30, 2004

JoAnn Hackos’s Workshop Series announce the “XML for Writers” workshop in Oakland, California, March 29–30, taught by Tina Hedlund. We invite you to join Tina for a two-day workshop on basic concepts that you, as a technical writer need to write documentation using XML.

Learn how XML editors work within the context of a well-thought-out information design, which includes an information model (information categorization framework), information types (subject-matter-related categories of information, like procedures), and content units (the most basic building blocks of information types, like paragraphs).

With a clear understanding of the information design and an understanding of how the structure of the information design is applied in XML, technical writers will be well on their way to creating well-structured XML (and maybe enjoying it!).

Find more information on this workshop, visits our web site at www.comtech-serv.com/workshops/index.shtml.