ON CONTENT STRATEGY AND TECHCOMM MANAGEMENT...Welcome to the 2015 LavaCon Conference on Content Strategy and Tech Comm Management LavaCon® is a gathering place for content strategists,

LavaCon ConferenceON CONTENT STRATEGY AND TECHCOMM MANAGEMENT

THE

A gathering place for content strategists, user experience designers, documentation managers, and other content professionals

October 18–21, 2015New Orleans, LA

Preliminary Program

LavaCon.org

All sessions Monday-Wednesday will be broadcast live and recorded in Adobe Connect. The icon indicates the session in each time slot that will include live video in the broadcast. See http://lavacon.org/2015/lavacon-2015-

Sunday, October 18, 2015Pre-Conference Workshops

8:00–noon Snakes and Ladders: Content Collaboration in the Real WorldNolwenn Kerzreho, Ixiasoft, and Joe Gollner, Gnostyx Research

REST API: Overview and Documentation Best PracticesMarta Rauch, Oracle

Honing Your Workplace Negotiation SkillsJack Molisani, ProSpring Staffing, and Kit Brown-Hoekstra, Comgenesis

1:00–5:00 Creating a Content Strategy EcosystemAndrea Ames, IBM

Adaptive Content Modeling for Omnichannel User Experience (UX)Noz Urbina, Urbina Consulting

New Manager BootcampEeshita Grover and Charles Rygula, Cisco Systems

Revenue Strategy 101: Unifying Your Content and Revenue StrategiesChristopher Ward, WebWorks

8:00– Cocktails and New Orleans Drag ShowMag’s 940 Bar and Cabaret, 940 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans~ followed by ~Frenchmen Street Art Market and Jazz Club Crawl619 Frenchmen Street, New Orleans

Monday, October 19, 20157:30–8:15 Registration, Continental Breakfast, Coffee

8:15–8:55 Welcome!Jack Molisani, Executive Director, The LavaCon Conference

8:55–9:15 Veni, Vidi, Vici: Win the Battle for Content Ownership and Take Back Your Content Career Victoria Koster-Lenhardt, Employment Consultant for Europe at US Department of State

9:30–10:30 Doc is Dead! How Walkthroughs Changed Saleforce’s Content StrategyLila Giuili and Gavin AustinSalesforce

Start with Empathy: Content Strategy and Design Thinking Karin Ikavalko and Catherine Walker, PayPal

Keeping the Content Train on the Tracks (and on Topic)Robert D. Anderson, IBMKristen James EberleinEberlein Consulting

The Internet of Things: When Machines Interact With Their Own Technical InformationScott YoungblomOberon Technologies

Win the Battle for Content Ownership (continued)Victoria Koster-LenhardtEmployment Consultant for US Department of State

10:45–11:45 Plan for Success: Implement a Content Triangle FrameworkAl MartineINKtopia (TechWhirl)

Improve the UX of Your Content, and Prove It! Pam Noreault and Tara KnappACI Worldwide

Content in an Agile WorldMegan Gilhooly, Ping IdentityAnne Grosvenor, INVIDI

Life with Guru D: Adopting a DITA Mindset and Converting OthersLiz Fraley, SSS

Scoping Level of Effort and Getting the Right Resources for the JobJason KaufmanIrrevo

11:45-1:15 Networking Lunch, Exhibit Hall Open, Vendor Demos, Bier Garden Open

1:20–1:40 What Problem Are You Trying To Solve? Achieving Organization and User Goals Through Content David Dylan Thomas, Senior Content Strategist, EPAM

1:40–2:00 How to Reach Those Who Hold the Power and Purse Strings Noz Urbina, Principal Content Strategist, Urbina Consulting

2:45–3:45 Integrating Content Planning and Delivery Across the EnterpriseConnie GiordanoINKtopia (TechWhirl)

Successfully Delivering a Personalized Content Experience: From Structured Content to Multichannel PublishingJim Edmunds, IngeniuxSuzanne Mescan, Vasont

Faster than Agile: Replacing the Publishing Process with Live Content Jang GraatThe Content Era

The Emerging 5th Model for Content Creation: Guided + Fluid DITA AuthoringLes Burnham and Patrick Baker, STILO

Achieving Organization and User Goals through Content (continued)David Dylan ThomasEPAM

Schedule at a Glance virtual-track for details.

Monday, October 19, 2015 (continued)4:00–5:00 Improve Your Customer

Experience with Cross-touch Knowledge DeliveryGal Oron, Suite SolutionsMegan Gilhooly, Ping Identity

Responsive Design: Delivering Content-Rich Customer Experiences

Julian Murfitt and Mark Poston, Mekon

Triple Tag: Managed Metadata and Taxonomies for Content ManagementChris McNultyMicrosoft

How DITA Can Advance Your Structured Content StrategyKeith Schengili-RobertsIXIASOFT

How to Reach Those Who Hold the Power and Purse Strings (continued)Noz UrbinaUrbina Consulting

5:00-5:20 The State of Structured Authoring Praveen Burri, Adobe Systems

5:20–6:00 Pre-Parade Cocktails Exhibit Hall

6:00–6:30 Second Line Jazz Parade Bourbon Street

6:30– Welcome Reception Bourbon Heat Club and Courtyard Restaurant, 711 Bourbon Street, New Orleans

7:30– Kamikaze Karaoke

Tuesday, October 20, 20157:30–8:15 Continental Breakfast, Exhibit Hall Open, and Coffee

8:15–8:40 Content Strategy vs. Content Engineering: The Emerging Role of the Content Engineer Cruce Saunders, Founder, Simple [A]

8:40–9:00 The Dark Arts of Content Leadership Joe Gollner, President, Gnostyx Research

9:15–10:15 The Dark Arts of Content Leadership (continued)Joe GollnerGnostyx Research

Let’s Talk Technical Marketing: Your Guide to Content for the Entire Customer JourneyAri HoffmanMindTouch

Why You Shouldn’t be Scared to Work with a Ghostwriter Chantielle MacFarlaneHyperwallet Systems

Making the Most of the New Math Domains in DITA 1.3Aaron GuigarDesign Science

How to Manage Change in Documentation (Time Travel and Other Techniques)Jim TivyBluestream Software

10:30–11:30 Repurposing Content for Multichannel PublishingLiz FraleySingle-Sourcing Solutions

When Easy Isn’t Enough: What Video Games Can Teach Us About Content Strategy and UXJohn Caldwell and Ria Hagan, Intuit

The Globalization of Technical Writing: Threat or Opportunity?Barry SaiffSaiff Solutions

Case Study: Converting Legacy Content to DITA—It’s Not Rocket Science!Pam Noreault, ACIHelen St. Denis, Stilo

Moving Your Organization Up the Knowledge Value Chain

Gal Oron and Joe GelbSuite Solutions

11:30–12:30 Exhibit Hall, Lunch

12:30–12:55

Developing Your Organizational Power and Influence Andrea Ames, Content Experience Strategist, IBM

12:55–1:15 The Art of Presenting to Upper-level Management Tom Aldous, CEO, The Content Era

1:30–2:30 How Content Strategy Can (Literally) Prove Its Worth Emily ShieldsFacebook

Monkey See, Monkey Do: Using Video to Support Your DocumentationAllie ProffBoeing

Winning Knowledge Spaces = 1 Wiki + “Every Page is Page One”Nitza Hauser, Medidata Solutions

Why Manufacturers Have Been Left Behind by Knowledge Management and Content DeliveryPatrick BosekEasyDITA

The Art of Presenting to Upper-level Management (continued)Tom AldousThe Content Era

2:45–3:45 Preparing for Augmented Reality: Moving from 2D to 3D DocumentationNabayan RoyAutodesk Singapore

Accessibility Matters: Making Your Products Available to EveryoneChar James-TannySchneider Electric

From Startup to the Big Leagues: Enjoying the JourneyJoseph Meyers and Meg Miranda, Cisco Systems

Taming the Beast That is Microsoft WordDoug Gorman, Simply XMLBryan Lynn, 36SoftwareTom Aldous, The Content Era

Collect Metrics...Like a Boss! Chris BridgenAlcatel-Lucent

3:45–4:15 Break, Exhibit Hall, More Coffee!

Sessions subject to change without notice.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015 (continued)4:15–5:15 A Little Content Fish in a

Big Company PondMarli MesibovContent Strategist

Ditching Words: How Interactive Media Improves the User Experience Matt SullivanTech Comm Tools

To be Announced Case Study: Streamlining the Translation Process to Expand Your Global FootprintDon Rasky, Mitchell InternationalEric Shipman, MadCap Software

The Communications Manager’s ToolboxEeshita GroverCisco Systems

5:15–6:30 Exhibotor Treasure Hunt and Network Reception Exhibit Hall

8:00– French Quarter Pub Crawl Tweet-up

Wednesday, October 21, 20157:30–8:15 Continental Breakfast and Exhibit Hall

8:15–8:45 Content Strategy Triage: Who Lives? Who Dies? Who Do You Fight To Save? Sarah O’Keefe, President, Scriptorium

9:00–10:00 Content Strategy Triage: Who Lives? Who Dies? Who Do You Fight To Save? (continued) Sarah O’Keefe, President, Scriptorium

Get Out of Your Office! Conducting Effective Site VisitsRhyne ArmstrongRouteMatch Software

Changing Your Authoring Tool with Zero Downtime: A Case Study in Change ManagementDeepa Aswani and Steve Anderson, Salesforce

Writing for MachinesFabrice LaCroixAntidot

Efficient Translation Management: Five Metrics That Will Lead Your Team to Continuous Process ImprovementScott Carothers, Kinetic

10:15–11:15 Online Customer Service Marketing: A Content Strategy Love AffairNikoletta Vecsei, EMCKirsten Gantenbein, ExtraHop

Improving AX (Content Author Experience) Melissa EgglestonUX and Content Strategist

Surviving Agile: A Case Study in Failure (and Success)Andy Watson and Jocelyn Emory, GENBAND

Coming Out: I Write in Word and I Love It! And You Can, Too!Johanne Lavallée, Ver-MacLisa Pietrangeli, 36Software

How to Prevent an International Incident: Communicating with a Global TeamMeredith Kramer, NetIQPaula Berger, Schneider Electric

11:15–12:55 Exhibit Hall, Lunch, Zentangle® Workshop

12:55–1:15 How to Get What You Want When You Want It Christopher Ward, Director of Sales, WebWorks

1:30–2:30 Managing and Reusing ContentCheri M. HagerInformation Mapping

Using Content Consumer Data to Improve Customer Engagement and Increase Revenue Demarcus WellsAvalara

Bar Napkins and XML: Eliminating the Hidden Cost of Content ConversionDustin VaughnAdobe Systems

Stalling at DITA—How Do You Get to the Next Step?Peggy SanchezCray, Inc.

How to Get What You Want When You Want It (continued)Christopher Ward, Director of Sales, WebWorks

2:45–3:45 Need Information Architects? You Can Grow Your Own! Beth ThomersonInnovatia

Bite Sized Training: Onboarding for Generation Y and ZOded IlanIridize

Wireframing, Mockups, and Prototyping Made EasyJohn CollinsAtlassian

Translation Quality and the Global Review Cycle: People and TechnologyShannon Rose FarrellArgos MultilingualShamus DermodyXTM International

Social Me: Taking Control of Your Online ImageBrenda HuettnerP-N Designs, Inc.

4:00–4:30 Closing Session:Connections that Count: Building Relationships for Business Success Alyssa Fox, Director of Information Development and Program Management, NetIQ

4:30–5:30 Prime Time Trivia! Closing Social Event

8:00– Tweet-Up

Welcome to the 2015 LavaCon Conferenceon Content Strategy and Tech Comm Management

LavaCon® is a gathering place for content strategists, user experience designers, documentation managers, and other content professionals.

Our Mission

To help organizations increase revenue and decrease costs by solving content-related business problems.

It’s one thing to hear people talk about content strategy and usability; it’s another to meet peers who are successfully doing it. Our speakers are practicing industry professionals who have volunteered to share their best practices and lessons learned—both what worked and what didn’t.

Choose from over 80 sessions and workshops on how to plan, execute, and manage enterprise content development projects.

New! All sessions in our 2015 program will be broadcast live and recorded for future playback. The virtual track broadcast will include video of the speakers, and the other breakout sessions will be in webinar format (slides and audio only). We will have someone at the conference monitoring the chat windows, so all sessions will be live and interactive.

Ready for four days of great sessions, amazing food, and plenty of opportunities to network with your peers? See you in New Orleans!

Jack MolisaniExecutive Director, The LavaCon Conference

Contents

Sponsors and Exhibitors . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Keynote Speakers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Session Descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Speakers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Exhibit Hall Map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Meeting Room Maps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68

facebook.com/LavaCon

twitter.com/LavaCon

vimeo.com/LavaCon

google.com/LavaCon

Sponsors and ExhibitorsMany thanks to this year’s sponsors and exhibitors!

Diamond

Adobe SystemsAdobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information. Adobe’s innovative solutions for technical communicators are market-leading best-of-breed software, and include:

• Adobe FrameMaker 12—Easily author, enrich, manage, and publish XML/DITA content with this complete solution for technical documentation.

• Adobe FrameMaker XML Author 12—Experience best-in-class XML/DITA authoring with complete DTD support.

• Adobe RoboHelp 11—Easily create, manage and deliver rich, interactive content experiences across screens.

• Adobe Technical Communication Suite 5 (TCS 5)—Deliver game-changing technical communication with this future-ready toolkit.

• Adobe FrameMaker Publishing Server 12—Automatically publish technical content virtually anywhere, from anywhere with this enterprise software.

Sapphire

Quadralay® CorporationQuadralay Corporation, based in Austin, Texas, builds software and creates solutions for a variety of content publishing and web based applications. The company was incorporated in 1992 and eventually went on to graduate from the University of Texas’ prestigious Technology Incubator (ATI) program in 1996. Since its founding the company has been a premier player in developing solutions for the Internet and related web application programs.

The Company has prospered since its beginning and now provides services and products to thousands of customers in over thirty five countries worldwide. It has also partnered with numerous companies to collectively provide solutions to complex publishing and information deployment challenges.

WebWorks®

WebWorks is the brand under which Quadralay markets its products and services; the company utilizes the registered name WebWorks as its corporate URL (webworks.com) and its toll-free telephone number (877.8.WEBWORKS).

6 LavaCon | www.lavacon.org

The company’s WebWorks line of products and services enables the automated delivery of online content into multiple formats, languages, and devices, including the packaging and delivery of content into its own exclusive web applications. These applications are designed for

providing online help using only standard web technologies that function with numerous web browsing devices. WebWorks solutions are used by over 2,000 corporate customers in 6,000 locations across 35 countries.

Platinum

ProSpring StaffingProSpring is a staffing agency that specializes in engineers, project managers, and content developers. Need a contract or perm Technical Writer, Content Strategist, or User Experience Designer? Contact us at prospringstaffing.com.

Gold

MadCap SoftwareMadCap Software, Inc. is a trusted resource for the thousands of companies around the globe that rely on its solutions for single-source multi-channel authoring and publishing, multimedia, and translation management. Whether delivering technical, policy, medical, marketing, business, or human resources content, MadCap’s products are used to create corporate intranets, Help systems, policy and procedure manuals, video tutorials, knowledge bases, eBooks, user guides, and more to any format, including high-end print, online, desktop or mobile. MadCap services include product training, consulting services, translation and localization, and an advanced developer certification program. Headquartered in La Jolla, California, MadCap Software is home to some of the most experienced software architects and product experts in the content development industry.

Argos MultilingualArgos Multilingual was founded in Kraków, Poland in 1996. We began as a translation company that specialized in Eastern European languages and have since grown into a full-service Global Language Solutions provider, servicing clients in the life sciences, industrial manufacturing and software/hardware industries. Our business is built on three core values:

Quality at Source, Partnership Approach, and Technology Agnostic Solutions, as we are committed to giving you choice while providing the best customized strategy to fit your business needs. Our business and processes are ISO 9001, EN 15038, and EN ISO 13485 certified. With production centers in Kraków, Poland, and Kansas City, USA, we bring value to you through our dedicated customer service and subject matter expertise for your specialized industry.

For more information, head to our website at argosmultilingual.com. Or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.

2015 Conference on Content Strategy and Tech Comm Management 7

Twitter: twitter.com/ArgosMultilingFacebook: facebook.com/ArgosMultilingualLinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/argos-multilingualGoogle+: google.com/+ArgosMultilingual

Silver

Antenna HouseFounded over 30 years ago, Antenna House is a leader in the document formatting industry. Our signature product, AH Formatter, is based on the W3C recommendations for XSL-FO and CSS and has long been recognized as the most powerful and proven standards based formatting software available. AH Formatter has been expanded over the years to support over 60 languages, including the newly supported Indic scripts. Today, AH Formatter is used to produce millions of pages daily of technical, financial, user and a wide variety of other documentation for thousands of customers in over 40 countries. The latest release of AH Formatter V6.2 now supports MathML V3.0 and features enhanced support for layered PDFs, embedding multimedia, and numerous extensions. Learn more at antennahouse.com.

Design ScienceDesign Science is the leading producer of math editing, display and accessibility software for technical publishing. Stop by the Design Science booth in the exhibit area to learn about the advantages of using MathML in your technical content, and using MathFlow with tools like Oxygen, FrameMaker, XMetaL, Content Mapper and more.

easyDITAeasyDITA is a one-of-a-kind product that makes collaboration fun—because anyone and everyone can use it with little to no training. easyDITA has been receiving rave reviews because it is so intuitive and user-friendly that even SMEs use it with enthusiasm. Our customers tell us that easyDITA gives them the freedom to concentrate on their writing instead of their tools. Now that’s more like it! Learn more at easyDITA.com.

Fluid TopicsAntidot is proud to introduce Fluid Topics, its new dynamic content publishing solution, transforming the way users benefit from your technical documentation.

Break the bounds of static content, empower users and develop actionable insights with Fluid Topics dynamic publishing. Our solution gives users the power to find and navigate technical information from any source on any device. By combining it from a variety of content silos, you create a unified access point and enhance customer support. Fluid Topics gives life to digital information so that your company, partners and users are free to dynamically

reuse, shape and share the content they need whenever they need it.


Fluid Topics also gives you the tools to examine how people actually use your documentation. Now you know what they look for and what you should focus on.

Since 1999, Antidot has helped more than 150 clients in the areas of publishing, e-commerce, healthcare, corporate portals and intranets.

For more information, visit fluidtopics.com.

FontoXMLFontoXML enables subject matter experts to produce structured and rich content even with no knowledge of XML. FontoXML can be seamlessly integrated into any tool your authors are used to. It handles large documents and is compatible with any E-CMS. Visit FontoXML.com for more details.

IXIASOFTFounded in 1998, IXIASOFT is a trusted global leader in the XML content management software industry. Its signature product DITA CMS is an award winning, end-to-end component content management solution (CCMS) deployed by industry leaders such as SAP®, ARM®, AMD and

BlackBerry®. From authoring to reviewing, localizing and publishing, DITA CMS provides all the tools required for large, global organizations to support their entire DITA documentation process. IXIASOFT is also the developer of TEXTML Server, a native XML database and powerful search engine. IXIASOFT solutions are accessed by thousands of users worldwide in various vertical markets such as software, hi-tech, newspaper, and medical device manufacturing.

For more information, please visit ixiasoft.com or connect with IXIASOFT on Twitter and LinkedIn. Already a DITA CMS user? Join the IXIASOFT DITA CMS User Group on LinkedIn.

KineticKinetic is the only company in the world that works exclusively on your behalf—putting you, the translation buyer in full control—to improve quality, shorten delivery times and lower translation expenses. We’re revolutionizing the translation procurement and management process. Our unique, vendor-independent translation process management software puts an end to the countless phone calls, meetings, emails and texts it typically takes to manage multiple projects. It transforms the translation buying process from a series of hurdles to a strategic competitive advantage in today’s global marketplace for you and your company. What translation buyers want, Kinetic delivers. Learn more at thetechnologyagency.com.

MekonFounded in 1990, Mekon are leading UK consultants and systems integrators. We are focused on increasing the effectiveness of your content creation, management and delivery. Faced with insufficient staff and ever increasing demand for output, organizations today often require some support to ensure project success. That support should incorporate best practice, risk management and customer- and ROI-led planning. Mekon provide a well-defined, end-to-end methodology and service that balances strategic


guidance and training with the technical capabilities to make a solution a reality. We specialize in systems that allow reuse and recombination of content for flexible, scalable two-way publication, across multiple formats and via the latest publishing media.

Experience with all the major publishing, DITA, S1000D and XML technology vendors gives Mekon a unique and unbiased insight into which technologies are suitable for specific client needs. We are one of the few organizations to successfully implement XML in both the non-technical

enterprise content space and traditional technical and professional publishing. As a result, Mekon are ideally placed to help you use your content as a strategic business asset. Learn more at mekon.com.

Oberon TechnologiesOberon Technologies partners with our customers and leading software suppliers to provide innovative solutions for creating, sharing and delivering information. With hundreds of customers, we are known for our integrity, accountability and commitment in every engagement.

Our solutions enable you to:

• Automate your content creation, sharing and delivery processes.• Deliver personalized information• Synchronize content across CMS, translation and publishing systems• Deliver your content to any device

Our services include:

• Content assessments and strategy• Systems/software analysis and integration• Software implementation, configuration and customization• (Authoring, Publishing, and Content Management software)• Custom dynamic-assembly publishing and delivery solutions

ScriptoriumScriptorium helps companies with large amounts of technical content streamline their publishing processes, which results in cost reduction and quality improvements. If you are responsible for technical content, you face a bewildering

array of possibilities: XML-based authoring, traditional help authoring tools, wikis, customer-generated content, and much more. In a content strategy analysis, we review your existing content lifecycle, identify requirements, and then recommend a solution that fits your organizational constraints.

SDLSDL is the leader in global customer experience. We untangle the complexity of managing your brand's digital footprint as it grows across multiple languages, cultures, websites, devices and channels. With a complete integrated cloud solution for content management, analytics, language and documentation, SDL doesn't just bring your brand to the

world. We bring the world to your brand. Learn more at SDL.com.


Stilo InternationalStilo International is the developer of Migrate, a cloud service that enables subject matter experts to automate the conversion of their content from various source formats including FrameMaker, Word, InDesign, and RoboHelp to DITA XML. Stilo also developed AuthorBridge, a DITA authoring solution that enables browser-based contributions to a CCMS at extremely low cost. Learn more at stilo.com.

Vasont SystemsVasont Systems provides component content management software and XML data services to Fortune 1,000 companies and global organizations from a variety of industries, including manufacturing, technology, publishing, financial, and healthcare.

Since 1992, Vasont Systems has helped companies organize their critical business assets, manage productivity, and disseminate information in many languages to multiple media channels while reducing their costs by an average of 63% and shortening overall cycle times by 75% on average. The Company has been named multiple times to the EContent 100 list of “best and brightest digital content companies.

XeditorXeditor delivers a web-based and highly intuitive XML authoring platform that not only satisfies end-users but also developers who need a modern and extensible framework. The user-friendly front end leads authors intuitively through a defined document structure with real-time validation. Our innovative JavaScript architecture allows seamless integration into existing technologies and systems (CMS, DMS, PIM, etc.) and may be configured for any DTD/Schema. We currently provide out-of-box support for DITA, DocBook, and PI-Mod. Learn more at xeditor.com.

Dakota SystemsSpecializing in enterprise publishing and content management solutions, Dakota Systems creates opportunities for customers to maximize the return on their technology investment. Recognized as experts in the industry, our consultants help organizations design the best solution for

their individual situation. Whether working with technical manuals or scientific journals, Dakota Systems' proven analysis and development methodologies enables quick and cost effective integration of customers' business intelligence with their publishing strategy. Learn more at daksys.com.

IridizeIridize is the professional solution for real-time training of web products. Our platform empowers product owners to create to create interactive walkthroughs and guides “on top” of a product’s web interface in order to train users, support them, and communicate with them. Iridize is used by organizations to train employees and by product owners for their customers.


Easy to install and manage, Iridize provides product owners with continuous updates about guide usage, user specific reporting, and powerful measurement tools.

The product is used today by large and small firms, as well as Fortune 500 companies. Our customers include Nuance Communication, Network for Good, and Towers Watson—to name a few.

Whether you are an organization that wishes to:

• Quickly train and monitor new employees• Upgrade existing employees' knowledge • Increase customer and user satisfaction• Reduce support and training costs • Enhance communication with customers

Iridize is your professional choice.

Media Sponsors

EContent MagazineEContent is a leading authority on the businesses of digital publishing, media, and marketing, targeting executives and decision-makers in these fast-changing markets. By covering the latest tools, strategies, and thought-leaders in the digital content ecosystem, EContent magazine and EContentmag.com keep professionals ahead of the curve in order to maximize their investment in digital content strategies while building sustainable, profitable business models. Subscribe to our free eNEws letter at econtentmag.com.

Social Media ExaminerThe world’s largest online social media magazine, Social Media Examiner® helps millions of businesses discover how to best use social media, blogs, and podcasts to connect with customers, drive traffic, generate awareness, and increase sales.

Our mission is to help you navigate the constantly changing social media jungle.

Our editorial team works with the world’s top social media pros to bring you original and comprehensive articles, expert interviews, reviews of the latest industry research and the news you need to know to improve your social media marketing. Learn more at socialmediaexaminer.com.


Other Sponsors

MindTouchAn open-source collaboration leader since 2005, MindTouch provides the world’s most respected social knowledge base, with a focus on product help, support, and technical documentation.

Great companies like Oracle, Cisco, Intuit, Paypal, Autodesk, Hewlett-Packard, Mozilla, HTC, Viacom, Panasonic and EMC rely on MindTouch commercial products. Learn more at mindtouch.com.

Exhibitors

Astoria SoftwareAstoria Software is the world's most successful Enterprise solution for XML Component Content Management and the first to deliver both an Enterprise-wide SaaS/On-Demand and an On-Premises approach to structured content management. Cisco Systems, Teradata, Xylem (formerly ITT), Siemens Healthcare, Northrop Grumman, LexisNexis, ShoreTel, and other Forbes Global 2000 organizations rely on Astoria to meet increasingly competitive demands for product documentation-high volume, accelerated time-to-

market, and globalized output. Astoria Component Content Management, whether On-Demand or On-Premise, is an enterprise-wide solution for Translation-Enabled Content Management, reducing documentation costs up to 90%, compressing product launch times from months to weeks, and generating productivity and management benefits with its flexible delivery model. Astoria Software, a division of TransPerfect, Inc., is based in San Francisco, California.

Information MappingFounded over 40 years ago, Information Mapping is a world leader in solving critical documentation issues for enterprise-level organizations and governments, enabling them to operate more efficiently and profitably. The company offers a full suite of consulting services, training programs and software based on its proprietary methodology, the Information Mapping® Method.

The Information Mapping® Method is a research-based, systematic approach to analyzing, organizing and presenting clear and user-focused information. It is widely recognized as an international content standard for creation, management and deployment of mission-critical content. Information Mapping provides organizations all over the world with measurable

improvements in compliance, safety, knowledge management, customer service and operational efficiency.

For more information about Information Mapping, please visit our website at informationmapping.com/us. Follow Information Mapping on Twitter and LinkedIn.


JustSystemsXMetaL Author Enterprise helps you get to market faster by bringing structure and automation to content creation. Using XML standards, such as the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), XMetaL enables authors and contributors to collaborate effectively and repurpose high-value information into the myriad of languages and formats your customers

demand. For more information, visit xmetal.com.

Saiff SolutionsSaiff Solutions is a technical writing outsourcing company based in the Philippines, led by Founder and CEO Barry Saiff, a technical communications leader with over 30 years of experience, most of it in the USA. Saiff Solutions provides the best of both worlds — outstanding documentation with excellent quality control, at a fraction of US rates. Find out more at saiffsolutions.com.

SimplyXMLSimply XML™ provides simple solutions for creating and publishing XML content. Our goal is to allow everyone in the enterprise to take advantage of information standards including DITA, NLM, DocBook, other industry or custom standards by providing authors with simple, cost effective tools for creating, storing, managing and publishing valid, high-quality XML from Microsoft® Word. We

believe that standards adoption and the related benefits will accelerate when the vast majority of authors who use Microsoft Word can easily contribute content and documents to the corporate publishing system. Simply XML offers software and related training that is changing the value proposition for this industry. Learn more at simplyxml.com.

Single-Sourcing SolutionsSingle-Sourcing Solutions specializes in everything related to dynamic product information creation, publication, and delivery. With experts for every piece and every phase of the single-source development process, we have implemented single-sourcing systems from scratch and have improved existing systems as well. Our unique partnership approach appeals to groups looking to not only implement solutions or migrate to more innovative content structure, but to become experts themselves.

SQUIDDSSQUIDDS is a Technical Communications Solution provider and vendor of Finalyser® a collection of very efficiently plug-ins and scripts for Adobe FrameMaker. TERM CHECK is part of this Finalyser family and with UniTerm a package for one and hundreds of users in Terminology management and checking.

SQUIDDS is vendor of TechCommApp® the mobile TechComm App using worldwide HTML5 responsive (Reverb) on 6 platforms: iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Desktop PC (Windows) and Mac.


Georg Eck is the founder and CEO of SQUIDDS, a Technical Communications Solution provider, with over 25 years of experience in TechComm workflow strategies. He was the first Adobe Certified expert in Germany, specializing in Tetra4D and WebWorks. His unique skills and expertize has allowed him to serve the German Engineering Industry with some of the most advanced and complete DITA, 3D interactive PDF and HTML5 publishing solutions. His success in Germany has earned him a current position at Technische Hochschule, Nuremberg teaching “Scientific Publishing.”

TechWhirlTechWhirl is an online resource for anyone interested in the world of Content Management and Technical Communication. experienced veterans, up-and-coming professionals, students, and leaders in the business can explore TechWhirl to find new, compelling, thought-provoking, and helpful information on creating and managing the information assets critical to every enterprise. From educational and research content to the latest news, features, and commentary, TechWhirl offers something for everyone who needs to know about technical communication and content management. We love this stuff and think that you should, too, so visit us at TechWhirl.Com or @techwritertoday.

Suite SolutionsSuite Solutions helps you engage your customers by providing quick access to relevant information. Our advanced intelligent content delivery solutions and DITA Quick Start approach allow you to quickly realize the benefits and ROI of XML-based

information. Our flagship product, SuiteShare, is a content delivery platform that delivers personalized and consistent content to customers at all touchpoints, reducing customer effort and increasing brand loyalty. Suite Solutions' one-stop DITA Quick Start services include style sheet development, content conversion, training, consulting, information architecture guidance, custom integration, and support. Learn more at suite-sol.com.

ZoupioDiscover Zoupio by Lexum, a completely new way of publishing your text-heavy documentation.

There’s no need to change your authoring process or active drafting software! Zoupio is a cloud-based, white-label UI that seamlessly unites with your website or e-commerce portal. Zoupio integrates within any structured workflow (DITA, XML, HTML, even MS Word) and revitalizes any long and complex documentation. If your industry is complex and your documentation has hundreds and even thousands of pages, then Zoupio can help redefine how your clients interact with your manuals.

Zoupio helps publishers propel their documentation to another level with layering of textual and multi-media content within a collaborative and mobile-ready environment. Beyond web help, users will not only learn from your documentation, but they can also participate and share their knowledge with fellow group members.

For over 20 years, Lexum has enabled the web publishing of over 10,000,000 pages of content on the public Internet and client intranets with private industry, professional editors, international and domestic government entities, education, legal, and medical sectors, as well as the telecommunications industry.


BluestreamBluestream's flag-ship product, XDocs, enables organizations of all sizes to realize the benefits of DITA at a lower cost than the competition, with comparable or better quality, thus offering unparalleled value. XDocs is an out-of-the-box, DITA-enabled component content management system that deploys in hours rather than weeks, is easy to use, and has a tight integration with various XML editors. Its flexible unlimited user licensing and

optional modules, such as workflow, knowledge base, online reviewing, and translation manager, allow for economical end-to-end content creation, management, and publishing. XDocs customers range from Fortune 100 organizations seeking complex cross-departmental DITA solutions to small businesses containing single-author documentation teams. Bluestream has been in business since 1997 and has customers in many verticals, among them software, oil and gas, health care, military, manufacturing, and finance. Learn more at bluestream.com.

Society for Technical CommunicationThe Society for Technical Communication is the world's largest and oldest professional association dedicated to the advancement of the field of technical communication. For more information, visit stc.org.

euroscripteuroscript is a leading provider of global content lifecycle management solutions. euroscript divisions deliver comprehensive solutions that help customers design, build and run content

management operations of all sizes. Thanks to its employees’ expertise in the fields of consulting, system integration, language services as well as content and document management, euroscript is able to help businesses worldwide to manage content more efficiently. In its 2014 Language Services Market Report Common Sense Advisory ranks euroscript as the seventh largest language services firm globally. With a market presence in 21 countries, euroscript serves customers in a variety of business sectors, including the public sector, aerospace, defense and transport, manufacturing, life sciences, financial services, as well as energy and environment.

36SoftwareDITA isn’t for everyone. SmartDocs is.

SmartDocs is the only content management solution that allows any type of writer in your company author, track, manage, and reuse content without leaving their Microsoft Word environment. With SmartDocs, content is authored once, approved once, and then reused over and over again wherever it is needed. And because your writers stay in Word, anyone can benefit from your company’s approved content.

Your legacy Word content is ready for SmartDocs. SmartDocs is easy to get started right away. Take advantage of content reuse directly in MS Word by incorporating features such as reusable snippets, conditional text, and reusable variables. Automate document creation out of your approved content with our most powerful, fully customizable feature SmartBuilders.

No lengthy content migration. Low learning curve. On-demand training. Easy. Take the guesswork out of content reuse. Learn more at 36Software.com.


KantanMTKantanMT.com is a leading SaaS based statistical machine translation platform that enables the KantanMT community to develop and manage customised machine translation engines in the cloud. The innovative technologies offered on KantanMT.com allows members to easily build MT engines in over 750 language combinations, seamlessly integrating into localization workflows and web applications. The secure, highly scalable MT solutions are quick to deploy, so large volumes of content can be translated on demand and to a high quality. KantanMT is based in the INVENT Building,

DCU Campus, Dublin 9, Ireland.

For more information, please visit kantanmt.com or send an email to [email protected]


Keynote Speakers

Tom AldousTom Aldous, the Founder/CEO of The Content Era, has over 25 years of experience in the Technical Communications industry. Besides being the managing partner and lead XML/DITA/CMS consultant at Integrated Technologies for over 20 years, Tom has also served as the Director of TechComm Business Development, Evangelism and TechComm Consulting at Adobe, as well as a SVP of Global Operations at Acrolinx. At Tom’s new venture, The Content Era, his knowledge of content tools, markup languages and best practices reduces cycle time and increases efficiency for his clients.

Andrea AmesAndrea L. Ames, M.S., is a Senior Technical Staff Member and Enterprise Content Experience Strategist, Architect, and Designer on IBM's Enterprise Content team where she is responsible for driving broad initiatives to improve integrated content experience. Prior to IBM, Andrea was a content strategy, architecture, and usability consultant, helping large and small businesses to engineer their product development processes to design and create content in ways that enhance product usability, increase and accelerate user productivity, increase product adoption and customer loyalty, and support business and marketing goals.

Andrea has more than 30 years of experience in technical communication. She is a Fellow and past President (2004-2005) of STC, a Distinguished Engineer of the ACM (the first technical communicator to achieve this distinction), a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a member of SWE, ASIS&T, IAI, UPA, and ATTW. Andrea designed, coordinates, and teaches in the UCSC in Silicon Valley certificate program in Technical Writing and Communication; she has published two award-winning technical books and more than 50 papers and articles; and she speaks regularly at conferences and professional organization meetings around the world. Get all of her social connections, blog links, and more at about.me/andrealames.

Kit Brown-HoekstraKatherine (Kit) Brown-Hoekstra is an STC Fellow and STC 2015-16 Society Immediate Past President, an experienced consultant with over 25 years of experience in technical communication, much of it working with localization teams. As Principal of Comgenesis, LLC, Kit provides consulting and training to her clients on a variety of topics, including localization, content strategy, and content management. She speaks at conferences worldwide and publishes regularly in industry magazines. Her blog is pangaeapapers.com.


Praveen BurriPraveen Burri is a Product Manager at Adobe Systems, where he manages product strategy and roadmap of Technical Communication Suite line of products—more specifically FrameMaker. Prior to Adobe, Praveen worked on disparate industries in various roles. He led front office IT projects at a hedgefund and managed product strategy for seller facing portal at a marketplace-based loyalty program provider. Praveen has keen interests in technology innovations and Indian philosophy.

Alyssa FoxAlyssa Fox is Director of Information Development and Program Management at NetIQ Corporation in Houston, Texas. She has been involved in technical communication for over 15 years. Her interests and skills include technical communication, user experience, process improvement, project management, and agile development practices. Alyssa is a member of User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA), a senior member of Society for Technical Communication (STC), and is currently serving as the STC Secretary.

Joe GollnerJoe Gollner is the managing director of Gnostyx Research (www.gnostyx.com), an independent supplier of objective guidance and open content technology solutions. He has been a content gladiator for over 25 years, implementing content technology solutions of every possible size and shape, and participating in a wide range of standards activities. He blogs as the content philosopher (www.gollner.ca) and continues to work on his magnum opus, a book about engineering content. He’s also an avid and sometimes self-destructive trail cyclist, a family man with four grown children, and something of a world traveler.

Victoria Koster-LenhardtVici is a US Government contractor consulting on overseas family member employment issues. She supports more than 40 US embassies in Europe by coaching family members of US Department of State staff on finding meaningful work while living overseas. It's her latest stop in a journey that started with a job in journalism in New York City. Vici worked at The Coca-Cola Company in Vienna for 21 years, managing the Documentation Department for 16 years, then moved into global corporate communications.

Jack MolisaniJack Molisani is the Executive Director of the LavaCon Conference. He has been organizing this conference for over 12 years. Originally, LavaCon was created as a conference based on the island of Hawaii. Recently, this conference has made its home in Portland, Austin, and now New Orleans.


Sarah O'KeefeSarah O’Keefe, President, is the chocoholic founder of Scriptorium Publishing and a content strategy consultant. Scriptorium offers content strategy services to help customers solve business problems and achieve strategic goals. Since founding the organization in 1997, Sarah has worked with numerous organizations to assess content issues, develop solutions, and implement new technologies that unlock content value. She is the coauthor of Content Strategy 101: Transform Technical Content into a Business Asset.

Cruce SaundersFounder and principal consultant at Simple [A], Cruce brings more than 15 years leading firms focused on content delivery technology. [A] teams manage large-scale content engineering engagements in partnership with global agencies. Cruce has directed more than 250 application and content engineering engagements. Author of Content Engineering for a Multichannel World, Cruce advocates for content engineering practices, intelligent content, enterprise adoption of intelligent content in order to build more human, personalized digital experiences.

David Dylan ThomasAs a senior content strategist at EPAM, David Dylan Thomas has developed strategies for major clients in entertainment, publishing, and retail. He is the founder of Content Camp, co-organizer of Barcamp Philly, head of Content Strategy Philly, and the creator, director, and co-producer of Developing Philly, a web series about the rise of the Philadelphia tech community. He has given lectures on such topics as the future of content in a post-ownership economy and the hidden power of online links.

Noz UrbinaNoz Urbina is a globally recognized leader in the field of content strategy and customer experience consultancy. He has designed interfaces and processes that have saved organizations hundreds of thousands per year, recommended solutions that have avoided headcount increases, and delivered dozens of budget-winning internal presentations in a language to which executives can relate. Above all, he has a passion for helping people communicate.

Christopher WardChristopher Ward, Director of Sales at WebWorks, specializes in helping small teams accomplish big things by better aligning departmental processes with overall company strategies. Christopher's experience in strategy development began as an Analyst for U.S. Army Intelligence and then later moved in to the corporate world when working for Dell computers.


Session Descriptions

Sunday, October 18

8:00–Noon Pre-Conference Workshops

Snakes and Ladders: Content Collaboration in the Real WorldNolwenn Kerzreho, IxiasoftJoe Gollner, Gnostyx Research Inc.

This workshop will equip participants with planning tactics for laying out your next content change initiative. The participants will leverage a planning framework and participate in an interactive process of identifying key project opportunities and risks as well as exploring their own project roadmap.

This workshop sets out to achieve these goals by having a little fun. In the modern spirit of gamification, the topic will be approached using the familiar board game of Snakes and Ladders. Essentially, Snakes are hazards that set you back and ladders are strategies and tactics that help you along towards your ultimate goal. The workshop facilitators, as well as past workshop participants, have contributed a library of game building blocks and, over the course of this workshop, participants will add their own. Participants will also develop their own game-board populated with the Snakes and Ladders drawn from this expanded collection of building blocks. The point here is for everyone to tap into, and to benefit from, the project experiences of other practitioners. And using a game model

helps to keep this process moving along quickly so that the early steps in framing out a practical content strategy can be accelerated.

Your workshop facilitators will kick things off by introducing the typical organizational landscape to be traversed, some examples of key Snakes and Ladders you will encounter, the general rules of the game, and the benefits that come with winning. The results of the workshop will be compiled and shared with all workshop participants so that they can try it out for real within their own organizations. This workshop, as an exercise in collaborative learning, is designed to help both new and experienced content strategists, team leaders, and project managers.

REST API: Overview and Documentation Best PracticesMarta Rauch, Oracle

Laptops are required to participate in the hands-on exercises in this workshop.

If you haven't yet documented a REST API, you might be asked to do so soon. REST APIs are growing quickly, with enterprise and finance the fastest growing categories. The job market for REST API writers is hot, and technical communicators can increase their marketability and value to their company by learning about REST APIs. Be prepared by getting a head-start on what you need to know!


Attend this session to:

• Get an introduction to REST APIs.• Understand characteristics of the REST API

architectural style.• Learn about pros and cons of REST API

implementation.• Look at an example REST API and watch a

demonstration of performing operations on a resource using the REST interface.

• Learn about emerging documentation best practices for REST APIs.

Honing Your Workplace Negotiation SkillsJack Molisani, ProSpring StaffingKit Brown-Hoekstra, Comgenesis

Negotiation. Just saying the word makes many people quake in terror or withdraw in discomfort because it feels adversarial to them. But, change the word to collaboration and people smile and

lean in to hear more. And yet, that is what negotiation really is-collaborative problem-solving. You have something someone else needs and they have something you need. Identifying how each person can get their needs met in a way that satisfies both parties is the core of what negotiation is all about. In this energetic workshop, we will change the way you look at negotiation, give you some tools that you can use immediately, and opportunities to practice your new skills.

At this workshop, you will gain the following:

• Understanding of how to negotiate and when

• Techniques for effectively negotiating• Practice in these types of negotiations:

• Salary• Vendor• Client

Noon–1:00 Lunch (on your own)

1:00–5:00 Pre-Conference Workshops

Creating a Content Strategy EcosystemAndrea Ames, IBM

You've defined a content strategy, so all you have left to do is implement it, right? Well, maybe. If you're in an enterprise of any size, your strategy encompasses far more than the content for which you are personally responsible. The most critical precursor to successfully implementing your strategy is to define and develop the right cultural ecosystem (people, processes, etc.) to ensure the best information experience for your customers while enabling your content creators to flourish and be productive. Understanding the influencers and inhibitors of that ecosystem will enable you to create the best possible environment for implementing your strategy.

Join Andrea to learn more about:

• Understanding the end-to-end lifecycle of your product/service to ensure efficient business processes and methodologies from the outside in, including• Gathering, analyzing, and prioritizing

market and user requirements• Understanding the business goals

affecting your strategy• Effectively influencing the human

component of the ecosystem, including:• Collaborating across the enterprise to

establish and maintain communication, business controls, governance, and standards

• Ensuring transparency, community, and the organic growth of content

• Measuring success using metrics for internal efficiency and external effectiveness


Adaptive Content Modeling for Omnichannel User Experience (UX)Noz Urbina, Urbina Consulting

One of today’s most daunting content delivery challenges is adapting your message for personalized, even context-specific distribution, on a diverse array of target devices and channels. This session will teach a proven methodology to analyze, enrich and structure your content to help authors create omnichannel, personalization and automation-ready content.

Content modeling is the backbone of an omnichannel content strategy. This session will show you how it’s done, and connect the dots between semantic content, content reuse, responsive design, omnichannel and multichannel delivery and user experience.

Single-source, multichannel content—also known as “Single source of truth” or “COPE (create once, publish everywhere)” content—is a bit of a holy grail right now. Multichannel’s big brother “omnichannel” is quickly gaining wider awareness. Our trade is discussing content being freed from the browser, available for reuse, and accessible in apps, kiosks, responsive mobile deliverables, eBooks and syndication services to our partners—even in wearable technologies. All this should improve the experience of users, and of course, benefit the organizations that serve them. Adaptive content unifies all these concepts and makes such a paradigm possible.

This practical session will show you why you want and need to have adaptive content structures to optimize user experience today. Its hands-on introductory exercises will help you model your own content in a future-proof way.

New Manager BootcampEeshita Grover and Charles Rygula, Cisco Systems

In this session, you will be exposed to ideas and techniques to adopt as a new Communications Manager. Some of the key focus areas include, getting to know my team, getting to know my content, and what it is to play the role model.

Through role play activities, you will be exposed to some real life challenges, some up and downs that you will be exposed to as a Communications Manager.

Revenue Strategy 101: Unifying Your Content and Revenue StrategiesChristopher Ward, WebWorks

This workshop will help you define content’s role in a revenue generating strategy. We will identify the major factors that have caused a paradigm shift in the way businesses view of content: The informed consumer, Big Data (the informed business), and unprecedented access to advanced technologies. With this understanding, you will begin to build your own strategy that aligns with your business goals. We will then move into the next phase, which is how to have the conversations that will transform the role of content in your business. This proven methodology will help bring those conversations to the executive level, so you can uncover and address the true obstacles to achieving your goals. Make content the most pivotal asset to a company’s continued success and position yourself as a business leader.

8:00– Social Events

The evening starts with cocktails and a New Orleans drag show at Mag’s 940 Bar and Cabaret, 940 Elysian Fields Avenue, in New Orleans. After

the show, we’ll explore the Frenchman Street Art Market at 619 Frenchmen Street and go on a jazz club crawl.


Monday, October 19

7:30–8:15 Registration, Continental Breakfast, Coffee

8:15–8:55 Welcome!

8:55–9:15 Veni, Vidi, Vici: Win the Battle for Content Ownership and Take Back Your Content Career

Victoria Koster-LenhardtEmployment Consultant for Europe at US Department of State

Vici’s most recent endeavors have involved rolling out a mix of communication vehicles to create a blended learning experience for a very specific global audience. Her current job title doesn’t have anything to do directly with a communications function, but her success has everything to do with the soft and hard

communication skills won fighting the battles in newspaper and magazine publishing, techcomm, corporate communications, and business development.

Vici’s keynote and follow-up breakout session will explain how she used her hard-earned wisdom to avoid the war this time. It turns out that winning the battle of content ownership is easier than you might think!

9:30–10:30 Breakout Sessions

Doc is Dead! How Walkthroughs Changed Saleforce’s Content StrategyLila Giuili and Gavin Austin, Salesforce

Customers no longer have the patience to read online help or user guides. To help customers better understand why they should use a variety of features, and renew their subscription-based apps, Salesforce conducted research to determine the content types that engaged customers most. The result—Salesforce changed its content strategy.

In this session, you will learn:

• What types of interactive content we’re creating at Salesforce

• Why Salesforce moved to interactive content over documentation

• How a large company changed its content strategy and how customers responded

Start with Empathy: Content Strategy and Design Thinking Karin Ikavalko and Catherine Walker, PayPal

Your brand’s voice is critical to building meaningful relationships with customers. It turns touchpoints into conversations and brings


meaning to your products and services. At PayPal, we’ve been focusing on customer needs and emotion in a new approach to content design. Using empathy and design thinking, we created a repeatable and scalable methodology that brings voice and content strategy to the forefront of the design process and hits the mark with customers. Join us as we share how empathy can bring your brand’s voice to life, transform your customer experiences, and help you influence your teams.

This session will show you:

• Why it’s critical to balance customer needs with business objectives and how you can lead the charge.

• Ways to build empathy, connect with customers, and make content strategy a key part of your design process.

• An actionable approach to developing your own methodology and influencing stakeholders.

Keeping the Content Train on the Tracks (and on Topic)Robert D. Anderson, IBMKristen James Eberlein, Eberlein Consulting

How do you keep your content moving forward, while you are weighed down with baggage from the past? How do you change course when the tracks ahead seem to have washed away? Come hear the editors of the DITA 1.3 specification talk about creative strategies they put into place to streamline the process of developing a version of the specification, improve the quality and usability of the content, and get to their destination on schedule.


• What process changes allowed us to add new content quickly, while simultaneously reducing page count

• How we dealt with the audience tug-of-war, balancing precision and readability

• How we found the right incentives to improve participation in this (entirely volunteer-based) team effort

• How we managed to keep going after running out of steam

The Internet of Things: When Machines Interact With Their Own Technical InformationScott Youngblom, Oberon Technologies

The focus on technical information to date has typically been about your customer being able to find the right content, quickly. As we move into the age of the Internet of Things (IoT), the discussion must move to how can machines proactively push the correct information to your customers. Imagine if a machine populated an installation guide or curated its own service information based on fault codes and other environmental readings to increase first time fix rate and overall customer satisfaction.


• How to prepare your content for IoT• How to add intelligence to your content• How devices can push content to customers

Win the Battle for Content Ownership (continued)Victoria Koster-Lenhardt, Employment Consultant for US Department of State

Vici’s most recent endeavors have involved rolling out a mix of communication vehicles to create a blended learning experience for a very specific global audience. Her current job title doesn’t have anything to do directly with a communications function, but her success has everything to do with the soft and hard communication skills won fighting the battles in newspaper and magazine publishing, techcomm, corporate communications, and business development.

Vici’s keynote and this follow-up breakout session explain how she used her hard-earned wisdom to avoid the war this time. It turns out that winning the battle of content ownership is easier than you might think!



Plan for Success: Implement a Content Triangle FrameworkAl Martine, INKtopia (TechWhirl)

Rather than thinking about Content Strategy as a fully baked cake, why not think about content in its core parts: the technology used to manage it, the approach being used to guide its development and the techniques used by your authors to create it.

By looking at the content triangle technology, strategy and development you’ll be able to assess what you do today and make comprehensive decisions on where you want to go tomorrow. Our framework allows business managers and content strategists to diagnose and provide strategic recommendations for improving their companies & avoiding the big-bang changes that doom so many business plans and initiatives.

During this session, we will:

• Review content technologies types (creation, management, publishing and distribution)

• Cover business and content development strategies

• Content creation approaches• Talk through scenarios for improving your

company’s triangle and the case for each improvement.

Improve the UX of Your Content, and Prove It! Pam Noreault and Tara Knapp, ACI Worldwide

Users are your biggest advocates when you involve them in your efforts to improve content quality. Users can convince writers, who may be stuck in their “old ways,” to adopt new ideas and methodologies.

We’ll take you through our UPLift evolution to:

• Improve content.• Create model documents.• Implement a repeatable methodology.• Validate our models with customers.

What you will learn:

• Our UPLift methodology• What our before and after models look like• How we engaged our customers to validate/

test our UPLifted content• What metrics we gathered and the results

we touted• Challenges, lessons learned, and how our

(re)evolution continues

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn from our missteps, and you’ll see our testing results.

Content in an Agile WorldMegan Gilhooly, Ping IdentityAnne Grosvenor, INVIDI

The company is moving to Agile development. What’s a Technical Communications team to do? Two content professionals-turned-certified Scrum Masters discuss various options and suggestions for making the move to Agile. In this session, you will discover:

• How DITA makes Agile possible• Which parts of Scrum work well for content

development• How to tweak Scrum artifacts that aren’t a

natural fit• How to do Scrum even if your company isn’t

Life with Guru D: Adopting a DITA Mindset and Converting OthersLiz Fraley, Single-Sourcing Solutions

DITA methodology is often difficult for people to grasp. It does require a complete shift in how you view and author your content. You can’t take a book and shove it over. It doesn't work like that. You need to deconstruct and then reconstruct in the new architecture. It doesn’t always mean that


all of the content you had before is scrapped. Some can be salvaged. But you need to look at it from the DITA viewpoint to pull content in rather than looking at it from the Book Brain and trying to shove it all in.

Additionally, you need to keep constant diligence is paying attention to the tendency to “fudge things” to make it work the way you want. DITA is not a tool; it is an architecture. Yet time and time again people fall down the trap of “tricking the software” to do things that are not germane.

Over the years, I have worked with so many people making this transition, and the stories of what they have done to shift their mindset from Book Brain to DITA cult member can save a struggling author. If you are managing a team and trying to help them navigate to success, then understanding what Book Brain is, how to spot it

in others (as well as yourself), and how to help others make the transition is priceless. It can save you hours, if not months, of struggle.

For this session, Liz will share entertaining and informative real-life stories as anecdotes to aid the learning.

Scoping Level of Effort and Getting the Right Resources for the JobJason Kaufman, Irrevo

In this session, you will learn proven methods used for scoping the level of effort involved in achieving successful content project outcomes. You will also learn how to leverage this data to strengthen the case for the resources needed to successfully deliver on project goals.

11:45–1:15 Networking Lunch, Exhibit Hall and Bier Garden Open, Vendor Demos

1:20–1:40 What Problem Are You Trying to Solve? Achieving Organization and User Goals Through Content

David Dylan ThomasSenior Content Strategist, EPAM

In this session, Senior Content Strategist David Dylan Thomas will walk you through a case study where content, UX, and design teams joined forces in a way that increased a client’s sales by 200%. Through a carefully crafted hands-on workshop approach, the development team identified organization and user needs and discovered together—with stakeholders—how content could achieve project and organization objectives.

Thomas will share the exercises he lead stakeholders through, such as:

• What business problem are you trying to solve?

• Why are you creating content?• What do your users really care about?• How can we tell if we achieved the project

goals (success criteria)?In this hands-on interactive session, you will do similar exercises yourselves to see just how powerful (and simple) it is to gather insights into organization objectives and get stakeholders invested in the solution you’re creating.


1:40–2:00 How to Reach Those Who Hold the Power and Purse Strings

Noz UrbinaPrincipal Content Strategist, Urbina Consulting

A jam-packed introduction piece to the full session to follow in the afternoon. We’ll address the true nature of strategy (it’s not about your pay grade) and how to address a mixed managerial

landscape. The short and long sessions on this topic feature unique content and are designed to work together. This session features some proven key tips and techniques to the positioning of content up the organization chart and help you move your initiative forward.


Integrating Content Planning and Delivery Across the EnterpriseConnie Giordano, INKtopia (TechWhirl)

You know that getting content out of organizational silos is a good thing. An integrated approach benefits the whole organization. The hard part comes when it’s time to go from idea to execution. Solo efforts had their place, but now it’s time to orchestrate this content production for maximum effect.

This session will provide you with tools and inspiration to produce a symphony that is music to the ears of your customers and your management:

• What’s in your company’s repertoire?• The challenge of arranging pieces fit for

your players and audience.• Auditions and Rehearsals: Pulling the right

talent, instruments, and program together.• Handling the reviews, and the rest of the

season.• Performing with a garage-band budget.

Join Connie Giordano for a practical approach delivering great content as well-tuned orchestra.

Successfully Delivering a Personalized Content ExperienceJim Edmunds, IngeniuxSuzanne Mescan, Vasont

Content is moving quickly from traditional print to print and digital channels. The key to delivering these projects is to ensure that content is authored once and reused intelligently across all channels including print, web, and mobile in a personalized fashion. Many projects focus on the authoring challenge in isolation and personalization as a secondary concern. For today’s projects to be successful, it is vital that an integrated approach to personalized content is considered at both the authoring and publishing level. In this presentation, you will learn:

• Core requirements needed for personalized projects

• Essential elements for success• How to target content by categories (e.g.,

product, audience, sector)• The important role that personalization plays

within effective CXM strategies

Faster than Agile: Replacing the Publishing Process with Live Content Jang Graat, The Content Era

This presentation aims to reset your minds when it comes to publishing large bodies of content. Instead of simply following the examples of agile development from our software departments,


there may be opportunities to do away with scrum masters, sprints and automated builds. We will investigate the differences between software and content and see what agile, or faster than agile, opportunities can be derived from revisiting our most basic preconceptions about publishing. The presentation includes a live demo, a proof of concept that live documents can be created and maintained with a fraction of the work involved in old-fashioned publication cycles. The demo even includes in-browser targeted reviewing by subject matter experts and versioning on the server.


• That information is not software• That on-demand publishing is much more

effective• That expensive content management

systems are not always required• How structured content can be accessed by

human and non-human readers alike• That effective technical information is alive

(and kicking)

The Emerging 5th Model for Content Creation: Guided + Fluid DITA AuthoringLes Burnham and Patrick Baker, Stilo

DITA implementations in large organizations have typically been confined to the domain of tech docs. Unfortunately there are several barriers to the more widespread adoption of DITA, including the cost and availability of appropriate authoring tools. SMEs who make occasional content contributions don’t want to know about DITA or its complexities, or invest a lot of time and effort learning new tools.

Up until now, there has traditionally been four classic models of content authoring: free-form, form-driven, structure-driven and template-driven. All have their relative merits, but still fall short of what is required for widespread enterprise DITA adoption.

In this session, you will learn about an emerging 5th model for content creation—guided DITA authoring. We will demonstrate how AuthorBridge, a new web-based editor, can provide the best of all four classic models and more, while providing a paradigm shift in the affordability of structured content authoring.

Achieving Organization and User Goals through Content (continued)David Dylan Thomas, EPAM

In the continuation of this keynote address, Senior Content Strategist David Dylan Thomas will walk you through a case study where content, UX, and design teams joined forces in a way that increased a client’s sales by 200%. Through a carefully crafted hands-on workshop approach, the development team identified organization and user needs and discovered together—with stakeholders—how content could achieve project and organization objectives.

Thomas will share the exercises he lead stakeholders through, such as “What business problem are your trying to solve?”, “WHY are you creating content?”, “What do your users really care about?”, and “How can we tell if we achieved the project goals (success criteria)?”

In this hands-on interactive session, you will do similar exercises yourselves to see just how powerful (and simple) it is to gather insights into organization objectives and get stakeholders invested in the solution you’re creating.


Improve Your Customer Experience with Cross-touch Knowledge DeliveryGal Oron, Suite SolutionsMegan Gilhooly, Ping Identity

According to Econsultancy's Digital Intelligence Briefing, over 80% of companies see the delivery of excellent customer service as the primary way to truly differentiate over competition. In looking


to provide a truly personal and interactive customer experience, organizations are revolutionizing the delivery and access of product documentation and shifting away from cumbersome PDF books. Today's end users access product content through more than six different touchpoints to find information, submit questions, share knowledge and get answers across various channels and platforms. In this webinar, we will explore how companies can deliver personalized and consistent product documentation across all customer touchpoints to include web search, documentation portals, support knowledge bases, contact centers, and social customer communities while providing a cohesive and consistent user experience.

Responsive Design: Delivering Content-Rich Customer Experiences Julian Murfitt and Mark Poston, Mekon

Many of the websites we browse as consumers provide a customer experience far in excess of those found in the B2B market place. Simply put, when browsing the web, consumers are getting a personalized experience--whether they want it or not.

Social networking and online shopping sites use various techniques to deliver content or products that are tailored to you. Consequently our natural expectations are changing and yet too few B2B sites meeting this expectation.

So how does achieving this customer experience translate to content? What needs to be considered to deliver content in the same way as those other sites? This presentation looks at the business case for delivering a more personalized customer experience and provides examples of how authors can enhance content with metadata in order to facilitate these experiences.

There are times when a completely standalone solution can be delivered. But it is also common that documentation needs to be integrated with an existing web site, and while needing to keep documentation up to date and in sync, there is a need to integrate with other backend systems. This presentation also explores the relationship

between different systems within an organization such as CRM and how they can work together to provide a single coherent solution that is seamless to the customer.

Triple Tag: Managed Metadata and Taxonomies for Content ManagementChris McNultry, Microsoft

Information architecture gets easier with the second edition of Managed Metadata Service in SharePoint 2013. This session will assume a base familiarity with metadata, and will dive ahead to the newest functions—extended properties, pinning, and hashtags. Attendees will learn about architecture and usage for content management, catalogs, social networking, library and site navigation. We’ll also be diving into upgrade, governance, scripting, and development. Next, we’ll use taxonomy in ECM workflow and review the industry standard “Dublin Core” metadata and how to use and adapt it in a SharePoint world, along with best and worst practices. Finally—how tagging is established for content on Delve Boards using the Office Graph.

How DITA Can Advance Your Structured Content StrategyKeith Schengili-Roberts, IXIASOFT

What does DITA have to offer Content Strategists? Plenty as it turns out, and more than just content reuse and dynamic multi-channel publishing. DITA provides built-in content consistency, more efficient multi-language translation, and even the ability to handle a myriad of product and version outputs. The updated DITA 1.3 specification includes additional features designed with user interaction in mind, including targeted troubleshooting, improving the ability to add metadata to content—aiding with Search Engine Optimization—and linking across different deliverable types. From a content management perspective there’s also new metadata for keeping track of releases, branch filtering, and more control over handling a diverse set of publication outputs.


How to Reach Those Who Hold the Power and Purse Strings (continued)Noz Urbina, Urbina Consulting

The full session leading off from the earlier keynote. This session is back by popular demand from LavaCon 2013:

It seems sometimes like management engagement with your content strategy is like a great mystical prize sealed up in the highest tower of a maze-like castle; and there’s a huge moat; and the whole thing is on top of a mountain.

To actually reach it is a challenge that will in itself take a strategy, special tools (and weapons?), and a great mountain-climbing, maze-solving team.

Noz Urbina shares some of his experience on how we can get closer to our content strategy objectives by not falling at the first barrier: getting the necessary support to develop and implement it. Based on a career

selling content strategies into a diverse range of organizations—from a few hundred staff to tens-of-thousands—some of his tips will involve judicious use of common sense, and others will be potentially surprising.

Learn how you can storm that castle, and claim your prize.

5:00–5:20 The State of Structured Authoring

Praveen BurriAdobe Systems

Businesses are demanding for increased efficiency in content development. These demands are evident from the stable software budgets but increased workloads. Structured authoring has emerged as a predominant solution to satisfy such demands. By separating content from form and by incorporating modular or topic-

based authoring, writers benefit by reusing content and in reducing publishing and localization costs.

In this session, we will learn about trends in structured authoring and benefits that are being realized by its users. We will also analyze how content authoring, collaboration and publishing workflows are changing within organizations that have already employed structured authoring.

5:20–6:00 Pre-Parade Cocktails (Exhibit Hall)

6:00–6:30 Second Line Jazz Parade

We will line up with the band in the lobby and walk to the Welcome Reception on Bourbon Street. Total distance: 10 blocks.

6:30– Welcome Reception

The reception will be held at the Bourbon Heat Club and Courtyard Restaurant at 711 Bourbon Street.


7:30– Kamikaze Karaoke

Tuesday, October 20

7:30–8:15 Continental Breakfast, Exhibit Hall Open, and Coffee

8:15–8:40 Content Strategy vs. Content Engineering: The Emerging Role of the Content Engineer

Cruce SaundersFounder, Simple [A]

The Content Engineer now plays a central role in delivering intelligent content, and the role has shown itself as critical to successful Customer Experience Management, personalization, and content publishing to multiple platforms and channels.

In this session, you will learn about:

• The territory covered by Content Strategy and Content Engineering practices

• How to distinguish between Content Strategy and Content Engineering functions

• Why Content Engineering is an organizational function that cannot be left out without tremendous project cost

• How to build a Content Engineering practice with existing staff

• Key Content Engineering deliverables and functions

• A call for intelligent content, and more human digital experiences

8:40–9:00 The Dark Arts of Content Leadership

Joe GollnerPresident, Gnostyx Research

In an increasingly sophisticated and integrated world, the work of content professionals has become very challenging as budgets shrink,

timeframes shorten, needs evolve, and products grow in complexity. In this session, you will learn about:

• What makes content such a special resource in organizations today;

• How the role of content professionals is being recognized as one that builds


connections across functions and organizations;

• What challenges will confront you as a content professional as you are asked to work closely with an expanding array of teams;

• What tactics you can use to break down barriers, to mend fences, and to win over reluctant stakeholders; and,

• What content leadership means and why you will increasingly need to start developing this skill.

In this session, special attention will be given to showcasing some of the many foes that you will encounter on your journeys and what to do about them.


The Dark Arts of Content Leadership (continued)Joe Gollner, Gnostyx Research

In an increasingly sophisticated and integrated world, the work of content professionals has become very challenging as budgets shrink, timeframes shorten, needs evolve, and products grow in complexity. In this session, you will learn about:

• What makes content such a special resource in organizations today;

• How the role of content professionals is being recognized as one that builds connections across functions and organizations;

• What challenges will confront you as a content professional as you are asked to work closely with an expanding array of teams;

• What tactics you can use to break down barriers, to mend fences, and to win over reluctant stakeholders; and,

• What content leadership means and why you will increasingly need to start developing this skill.

In the continuation of this keynote address, special attention will be given to showcasing some of the many foes that you will encounter on your journeys and what to do about them.

Let’s Talk Technical Marketing: Your Guide to Content for the Entire Customer JourneyAri Hoffman, MindTouch

In today's search driven world, we tend to look at Marketing as the answer to new business development. We overlook the power that product and support can play in marketing and sales.

Learn how to leverage your product and support content as a Marketing goldmine. Unlock the Search Engine potential of your “How To's” and FAQs to engage your customers throughout the entire customer journey. Transform static PDFs into a rich, dynamic self-service channel where prospects and customers can self-educate and watch as the sales cycle shortens and your NPS (Net Promoter Score) increases.

Why You Shouldn’t be Scared to Work with a Ghostwriter Chantielle MacFarlane, Hyperwallet Systems

In this session, Chantielle will bust out the proton pack and provide you with an inside look at how to properly engage a ghostwriter within your organization. Citing real-world examples from her


role as the Lead Content Strategist at Hyperwallet Systems Inc., Chantielle will educate session participants on:

• How a ghostwriter can improve the quality of your organization’s content

• The benefits of including ghosts in strategic planning

• Tactics/tools for executing ghosted projectsYou’ll leave the session armed with road maps for managing executive/ghost interactions, as well as actionable approaches for nurturing phantoms into fully visible members of your content team.

Making the Most of the New Math Domains in DITA 1.3Aaron Guigar, Design Science

Although many organizations have long been using MathML with DITA, DITA 1.3 will include new math domains standardizing inclusion of mathematics in DITA content. This is great news if you have any math in your content: It means that the amount of time needed to implement DITA will be shorter, and it also allows you to capitalize on your transition to XML for mathematical content.

Using MathML in DITA, you’ll be able to make document-wide style changes to your equations, localize your mathematical content, and re-use or adapt the mathematics as needed.

During this session, you will learn about the following:

• What are the benefits of MathML in DITA?• How to use the new DITA math domains• What tools can be used to publish DITA

MathML

How to Manage Change in Documentation (Time Travel and Other Techniques)Jim Tivy, Bluestream Software

Change in products and procedures is a constant in organizations. New features are being added to products in an every changing world. In a multiple product release environment, product releases may be happening in sequence or in parallel. In this session, Jim will present a survey of the problems and solutions in managing change in documentation using DITA and CMS technologies.


Repurposing Content for Multichannel PublishingLiz Fraley, Single-Sourcing Solutions

When Management decides to go to an XML publishing system, it’s not always clear to the authoring and editing staff why the decision was made. Ever wonder why they choose to go this route? In this presentation, we’re going to talk about some of the reasons companies choose to go away from desktop publishing systems to something more dynamic, so that you not only understand it better but can get excited about the change.

When Easy Isn’t Enough: What Video Games can Teach Us About Content Strategy and UXJohn Caldwell and Ria Hagan, Intuit

When there’s no meaning in our UX, especially in our content, our customers are likely to drift away. We can’t just make it “easy.” Game designers and writers have faced the same problems we have as content strategists, and they’ve found ingenious ways to create an all-important emotional connection with their audience—a “silver arrow.” Join John Caldwell and Ria Hagan as they share some of the powerful things narrative video games can teach us about content strategy, including the importance of the “non-player character” and the evolution of content in the digital age.


During this session, you will learn:

• Why we need to accept that people are irrational

• How your customers, like the players of video games, are telling themselves a story about the experience

• Why there needs to be both “magic” and “meaning” in the experience

• The power of creating a set of aspirational principles based on emotion

The Globalization of Technical Writing: Threat or Opportunity?Barry Saiff, Saiff Solutions

Is outsourcing content development right for your organization? How do you tell? The growth of outsourcing is driven by powerful economic forces. How outsourcing decisions are made — and how outsourcing is managed – will largely determine the impact, positive or negative, of outsourcing on an organization.

In this session, we will explore the ins and outs of technical writing outsourcing. How is outsourcing changing the profession? How can you play an effective role in influencing outsourcing decisions that can impact your organization and your career?

In this session you will learn:

• The key success factors for technical writing outsourcing

• The pitfalls to watch out for, and how you can you avoid them

• What does your organization stand to gain, or lose?

• What will happen to technical writing as a profession?

Case Study: Converting Legacy Content to DITA—It’s Not Rocket Science!Pam Noreault, ACIHelen St. Denis, Stilo

Many companies shy away from implementing DITA due to the false perception that converting legacy content to the DITA standard is expensive and tedious.

In this case study session, Pamela Noreault from ACI Worldwide (the market leader in banking and payments software products) and Les Burnham from Stilo International, will share a first-hand look at how ACI approached the task of converting 85,000 pages of legacy content as an integral part of their DITA implementation project.

Pam and Les will share insightful tips, tricks, best practices and valuable metrics, ensuring you come away with a better understanding of what it takes to convert content to DITA – and the realization that it really isn’t rocket science!

Moving Your Organization up the Knowledge Value Chain Gal Oron and Joe Gelb, Suite Solutions

As organizations migrate more of their content to structure, they increasingly seek to leverage that investment to overcome business challenges: providing quick access to relevant knowledge, joining disparate silos, and gaining business insights from how customers use content.

In this presentation, we will present a Knowledge Value Maturity Model that portrays the key tracks leading to increased business value and helps you build an incremental and actionable roadmap to optimize your content use at a world-class level. We will walk you through a “day in the life” of a world-class organization that uses this model to leverage their structured content infrastructure for enhancing customer and partner interactions and reaping tangible business benefits.

You will learn:

• How to craft a long-term content roadmap for your organization

• How others in the industry are maximizing the value of their content

• Several use cases for optimizing your own content use


11:30–12:30 Exhibit Hall, Lunch

12:30–12:55 Developing Your Organizational Power and Influence

Andrea AmesContent Experience Strategist, IBM

Becoming influential and powerful within your organization is not magic, a talent that you must be born with, or an unreachable goal for the mere mortal. Applying a few key concepts using some basic tools and techniques can greatly improve your influence quotient.

In this TED-like talk, Andrea will share the most critical approaches that she's found to boost influence and increase power at work. Join her for a few KPIs (key performance indicators), an entertaining story or two, and maybe even a surprise cape!

12:55–1:15 The Art of Presenting to Upper-level Management

Tom AldousCEO, The Content Era

You’ve traveled to conferences, sat through product demonstrations and eaten a metric ton of continental breakfast to get the opportunity to see what some of the best products in the world can do to improve your quality of life at work. Finally, you find it. What do you do now?

Unless you are the sole decision maker for your company, there is usually a ladder you have to scale, a mountain you have to climb and the

always demotivating corporate procurement policy. What if you knew how to navigate this “gauntlet”, and champion your idea all the way to successful procurement?

Tom will be walking you through the management decision making process and giving you tips on how to build the right business case, talk to the right people and eventually gain executive sponsorship.


How Content Strategy Can (Literally) Prove Its Worth Emily Shields, Facebook

Someone read your words. They clicked your links. And they decided to buy your stuff. So why did they quit at the very end? Even when someone has already decided to spend their hard-earned money with you, there are lots of basic content mistakes that can stop people in

their tracks. This talk will get into specifics on how content strategy can lead directly to more money, using real examples and metrics from Facebook.

Monkey See, Monkey Do: Using Video to Support Your DocumentationAllie Proff, Boeing

If a picture is worth a thousand words (as well as some likes, retweets, and +1s), then how much is a video worth?


Ever find yourself on YouTube, looking to learn how to do something?

Join Allie as she shares her experiences creating and using short help videos and tutorials to improve her target audience’s learning experience.

Some of the topics include:

• Why video?• What tool is right for me?• Common setup options.• Editing and publishing recommendations.• Resources and real-world examples.

Winning Knowledge Spaces = 1 Wiki + “Every Page is Page One”Nitza Hauser, Medidata Solutions

This case study will tell the story of a company’s move to wiki authoring and delivery, based on “Every Page is Page One” principles. Combining theory with practice, you will hear about the challenge, the steps to plan and implement the solution, and lessons learned. Most importantly – you will be able to view real live examples of the implementation, and understand how key principles of Every Page is Page One were applied.

You will:

• Hear why we chose a wiki-based solution• Understand the importance of Every Page is

Page One principles• See how they were incorporated into the

planning and execution of our knowledge system

• Watch actual examples from the implementation which address a few key principles

• Learn about workflow and pathfinder topics, and how they were implemented

• Get practical advice on overcoming common implementation problems

Why Manufacturers Have Been Left Behind by Knowledge Management and Content DeliveryPatrick Bosek, EasyDITA

Many manufacturers face a unique set of challenges with their product information and the systems designed to deliver this information to customers and prospects.

The root of the challenge is product variants. The fact that products must be delivered in many configurations means that product content must be delivered in many configurations. But most delivery systems (e.g., wikis, help portals, webhelp from help-authoring-tools) don’t enable this situation. On the contrary, they produce confused results, piles of nearly-the-same output, and terrible search experience.

So, what happens? We revert back to PDF. Not ideal.

• How do we effectively deliver product and product variant content on the web?

• How do we ensure users receive content for the right version and variation of a product?

• Can any of this work with Google?We’ll explore these questions as we look at publishing high quality product content in a web delivery world.

The Art of Presenting to Upper-level Management (continued)Tom Aldous, The Content Era

You’ve traveled to conferences, sat through product demonstrations and eaten a metric ton of continental breakfast to get the opportunity to see what some of the best products in the world can do to improve your quality of life at work. Finally, you find it. What do you do now?

Unless you are the sole decision maker for your company, there is usually a ladder you have to scale, a mountain you have to climb and the always demotivating corporate procurement policy. What if you knew how to navigate this “gauntlet”, and champion your idea all the way to successful procurement?


Tom will be walking you through the management decision making process and giving you tips on how to build the right business case, talk to the right people and eventually gain executive sponsorship.


Preparing for Augmented Reality: Moving from 2D to 3D DocumentationNabayan Roy, Autodesk Singapore

In 2005, we predicted that you could open up the hood of your car, point your device at the engine to (a) identify the part and (b) call up instructions on how to repair/replace a part.

We’re not quite there yet, but we need to start laying the groundwork to move from two-dimensional (2D) to three-dimensional (3D) documentation.

The Maintenance Repair Overhaul (MRO) industry, in particular, is challenged by 2D documentation—up to 50% of a technician’s shift can be wasted finding and reading procedural information. As a consequence, technicians lose focus, lose efficiency, and increase costs.

The future of technical documentation will be authoring and delivering 3D-enhanced instruction manuals.

In this hands-on session, you will learn:

• Why companies need to change the way they provide user assistance in the future

• The component parts of 3D-based user assistance

• How Autodesk software helps in creating 3D content

• About the process, including a demo

Accessibility Matters: Making Your Products Available to EveryoneChar James-Tanny, Schneider Electric

The World Health Organization currently estimates that globally, 1 billion people have at least one disability. Yet this group has the highest

unemployment (over 60%), $8 trillion in disposable income, and is most ignored by mainstream content developers. And it's a group that anyone can join at any time (temporarily/permanently).

Our job is to make sure that everyone can understand the content we create. And for the most part, we are successful—except when it comes to people with disabilities. (Or people using devices and websites in ways that we didn’t plan on, such as a traveler trying to view a restaurant’s website when hungry.)

During this session, you’ll see examples of what it means to be a person with a disability when using websites, mobile devices, and documents. And you’ll learn some things that you can do now to make your information more accessible, using WCAG 2.0 as a reference.

From Startup to the Big Leagues: Enjoying the JourneyJoseph Meyers and Meg Miranda, Cisco Systems

We’ve each worked at startups that were subsequently acquired by big companies. We’ve learned a few things along the way.

In this session you will learn:

• Our experience before, during and after the acquisition process.

• What you can do now to make potential transitions easier for you and your team.

• The many facets of preparation and adaptation.


Taming the Beast That is Microsoft WordDoug Gorman, Simply XMLBryan Lynn, 36SoftwareTom Aldous, The Content Era

Content Architectures are now changing at the enterprise level to allow reuse and flexible publishing to PDF, HTML, ePUB, and more. Organizations recognize the need for a standard architecture. But, with the vast majority of authors creating content in MS Word, standards are hard to implement and the cost of intermediate editing is prohibitive. Most non-technical staff will not use a traditional XML editor and have primary roles to fill every day. In this session, attendees will learn about the issues when moving from out-of-control Word to a content standard. We will briefly highlight two approaches to getting control of

Word-based content. One approach is entirely MS Word-based and the other uses MS Word on the authoring side with XML in the background.

Collect Metrics...Like a Boss! Chris Bridgen, Alcatel-Lucent

You probably know what metrics your boss wants from the team. Do you know what your boss’s boss wants? Or what her boss wants? How can you be sure that the metrics you are collecting and the KPIs you are measuring actually matter to anyone? Learn about three key measures higher ups value without learning them from a nerve-wracking skip-skip-skip level meeting, and understand how those measure make the CDOC group look like business geniuses.

3:45–4:15 Break, Exhibit Hall, More Coffee!


A Little Content Fish in a Big Company PondMarli Mesibov, Content Strategist

When I worked at a design agency, I always had internal support from my team, even when working with difficult clients. Then I moved to Fidelity, a giant enterprise where our clients were our managers and superiors. I learned to hate and fear the phrase “we know it’s a problem, but we won’t/can’t/don’t want to try to fix it.”

I lost faith, and I lost interest in my work for months. When I awoke from my stupor, it was thanks to a conference, a book, and a plan. Now I want to save others from getting lost in the big pond.

In this talk, you will learn:

• How to make a “design problem” into a “company problem”

• How to walk the fine line between useless gossip and necessary rabble rousing

• How to recognize when process is helpful, and when it’s harmful—and how to fix it

Ditching Words: How Interactive Media Improves the User Experience Matt Sullivan, Tech Comm Tools

Do your procedures take longer to write than the procedures should take to complete? Do your writers then spend even more time defending their style and jargon choices?

Style guides help but often there’s no one answer, and navigating jargon can be tough, especially when you toss localization into the mix.

Here’s a thought: Give the user an experience instead of describing the experience to them.


In this session we will look at how interactive media can address those issues. You will learn to:

• Analyze for cumbersome content.• Use QR codes in print and physical

environments to improve access.• Use dynamic filtering to avoid “sipping from

the firehose.”• Deploy content on media servers (Wistia,

Vimeo, YouTube) to reduce load times for content.

Case Study: Streamlining the Translation Process to Expand Your Global FootprintDon Rasky, Mitchell InternationalEric Shipman, MadCap Software

Don Rasky, Sr. Technical Writer at Mitchell International, Inc., a leading provider of claims management and collision repair processes, and Eric Shipman, Senior Technical Support Engineer of MadCap Software, will discuss how they worked together to develop a streamlined translation strategy scalable for organizations around the world.

Recognizing the need to move away from their antiquated online-translation tools, Mitchell embarked on an extensive research, request for proposal (RFP), and evaluation process to identify the translation and localization service provider

that could best support its needs. With upwards of 5,000 pages of documentation to be translated, quality combined with customer service was critical to the company's evaluation process.

In this session, Don will provide an overview of their search for a translation partner and how they established a results-focused RFP process, a consistent evaluation process and a thorough cost analysis. Finally, key results will be presented, including how Mitchell published nearly 50 multilingual Help file deployments for North America and Europe in 2014 alone—to French, Canadian French, Spanish, and German.

The Communications Manager’s ToolboxEeshita Grover, Cisco Systems

This session focuses on building a keen focus on vision and strategy for your team as a Communications Manager. You will learn techniques you can use to impact rate of adoption for your product and creating an environment for innovation. We will discuss parameters to build a holistic team and the path towards defining your team’s brand and presence. We will also learn key aspects for managing performance including criteria and expectations for the rock stars and the ‘not quite’.

5:15–6:30 Exhibitor Treasure Hunt and Network Reception (Exhibit Hall)

8:00– French Quarter Pub Crawl Tweet-up


Wednesday, October 21

7:30–8:15 Continental Breakfast and Exhibit Hall

8:15–8:45 Content Strategy Triage: Who Lives? Who Dies? Who Do You Fight To Save?

Sarah O’KeefePresident, Scriptorium

Triage means quickly evaluating patients to maximize everyone's chance of survival. Hopeless cases are ignored and noncritical

patients are deferred. The goal is to find those patients for whom quick treatment is the difference between life and death.

Content strategy triage involves prioritizing content strategy efforts. Which ideas are dead on arrival? Which ideas cannot be saved? What problems can be deferred until later? Where will early action make the biggest difference?


Content Strategy Triage: Who Lives? Who Dies? Who Do You Fight To Save? (continued) Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium

Triage means quickly evaluating patients to maximize everyone's chance of survival. Hopeless cases are ignored and noncritical patients are deferred. The goal is to find those patients for whom quick treatment is the difference between life and death.

Content strategy triage involves prioritizing content strategy efforts. Which ideas are dead on arrival? Which ideas cannot be saved? What problems can be deferred until later? Where will early action make the biggest difference?

Get Out of Your Office! Conducting Effective Site VisitsRhyne Armstrong, RouteMatch Software

The day has come when we are no longer bound a desk when it comes to learning about our customers and clients. Whether you work for yourself or an organization, getting out of the office and meeting with customers offers valuable insight to learning how solutions are deployed, how user-assistance is used, and how your customers work.

In this session, we will discuss:

• Building a business case for conducting visits

• Planning for a successful visit• Tips you can use to make sure you get the

most out of the time you spend with your clients

• How your visit can turn into much more than info to help you improve your content


Changing Your Authoring Tool with Zero Downtime: A Case Study in Change ManagementDeepa Aswani and Steve Anderson, Salesforce

Last year, the entire Salesforce documentation team of 70+ writers switched to Oxygen Author in a single day, with zero downtime.

In this case study, you’ll see how we made this happen:

• Managing change for a large doc team—scope, moving pieces

• Why zero downtime = awesome (and necessary, in our case)

• Planning: automation, DITA, and communications

• Training, rollout, and post-rollout support

Writing for MachinesFabrice LaCroix, Antidot

Historically, technical content has been written for humans. But with the rise of artificial intelligence, machines will consume this content to solve problems automatically or help solve problems. This means that machines need to leverage the content in the easiest, most unambiguous way possible.

Structured content authoring has been created to optimize the writing process (minimize cost and increase reuse). But this way of writing has a lot of impact on what algorithms and content can do

with it. Through a set of examples, Fabrice will show the benefits and limits of structured content, and how structured content impacts what modern tools and algorithms can do.

Efficient Translation Management: Five Metrics That Will Lead Your Team to Continuous Process ImprovementScott Carothers, Kinetic

What steps is your localization team taking to consistently improve the translation process? Is each project tracked through each stage with comprehensive metrics? Whether projects are tracked manually or automatically, five specific metrics will give you a clear picture of which areas have the most room for improvement, and what changes are needed to improve efficiency and further elevate the performance of your enterprise translation process.

In this session, you will be provided actionable details on:

• Which specific translation metrics hold the most value to your Enterprise

• How and when to analyze the metrics• Quantifying data to validate the

performance of all involved, and continuously improve the process

• Clarity, accountability, and process improvement are the three keywords that describe this LavaCon-exclusive presentation


Online Customer Service Marketing: A Content Strategy Love AffairNikoletta Vecsei, EMCKirsten Gantenbein, ExtraHop

Discover how a passion for helping customers can bring together two unlikely partners (from marketing and technical writing) and help break all the rules of silo-d content creation in the process.

Many companies are starting to notice that their social-savvy customers are expecting a more personalized content experience from them. To deliver this type of content, however, technical (post-sales) and marketing (pre-sales) departments must begin collaborating with each other. In this lecture, we’ll talk about how marketing strategies can help solve challenges with technical content curation, content distribution, and UX research. We’ll provide insights into how social customer service can


serve as a new multichannel digital platform in your content strategy. Finally, we’ll share a social media case study with results and metrics to inspire others.

Improving AX (Content Author Experience) Melissa Eggleston, UX and Content Strategist

Have you high-fived a content author today? Content authors are critical in the quest for great content and UX. Improving AX (content author experience) can often better UX. Great AX also increases the happiness of everyone involved in the content development process. If we spend so much time working, we may as well make it as joyful as possible.

We’ll discuss the differences and similarities of these types of content authors:

• Writers• Photographers• Videographers• Graphic designers

Learn what these key people typically dislike and what they want instead from the people who hire them.

Since writing her first online articles about soccer in 1997, Melissa has been in both the “manager” and “managed” roles in large and small organizations. She has ideas that will help you better your content author relationships immediately. Let’s move toward a blissful experience in content development – unicorns and rainbows included.

Surviving Agile: A Case Study in Failure (and Success)Andy Watson and Jocelyn Emory, GENBAND

Agile software development may work well for design teams, but the impacts to the documentation teams are usually not considered when changing methodologies. Our company moved half of its products from a 9-month Waterfall release cycle to a 1- to 4-month agile cycle overnight and expected us to adapt our process and planning. If your company is about to make (or has already made) the switch, learn from our mistakes (and a few best practices).


• The challenges our team experienced moving from waterfall to agile development methodologies

• Our successes and failures as we tried, on multiple iterations, to work within agile

• Where we are now as we continue to try to improve our processes

• How agile design and doc would work together in a perfect world

Coming Out: I Write in Word and I Love It! And You Can, Too!Johanne Lavallée, Ver-MacLisa Pietrangeli, 36Software

Sometimes DITA, rather than breaking silos, just creates one more. Johanne was asked for a content reuse solution but her needs and DITA conditions quickly locked horns. Is it possible to stay in Word with SmartDocs and keep exchanging files with other colleagues? This is a use case of a solo writer with simple needs and a little time, discussing how easy it was to start reusing quickly; so easy the solution is catching on with proposal writers. She will describe the operation of the snippets, variables and conditional texts, the challenges of working in two languages with variables, and what remains to be done.

You will learn about a content reuse strategy within Word for your customers, your team, and even the whole company, right away, with no conversion period. You will also take home strategies for variables with different genders inside, a challenge for DITA writers as well.

How to Prevent an International Incident: Communicating with a Global TeamMeredith Kramer, NetIQPaula Berger, Schneider Electric

Technical communication has gone global. Today we work on teams with subject matter experts and writing colleagues in other time zones and different environments. Communication is always key to working successfully, but it’s even more important on global teams.


Global teams really are different. Gain insight into dealing with practical issues that come up when you’re working with people you’ve most likely never met. Learn behaviors and approaches that

will help you avoid having a frustrated team, missed deadlines, and a blown budget – all due to communication issues.

11:15–12:55 Exhibit Hall, Lunch, Zentangle® Workshop

12:55–1:15 How to Get What You Want When You Want It

Christopher WardDirector of Sales, WebWorks

What is missing in your day-to-day work life that is keeping you from your goals? I bet you have that all figured out, but you are stuck on how to get it. “We don’t have it in the budget, but maybe next year.” “There is a spending freeze right now in the department.” “The company is pulling resources to fund another project.” We have heard them all

before, but have we stopped to really think about those answers? Requesting resources is never as simple as just asking for them. I want to teach you how to position yourself so you can get the company’s buy-in no matter what the situation. We will go over a simple five-step process that anyone can execute, but it is powerful enough to tackle the most hostile environments.


Managing and Reusing ContentCheri Hager, Information Mapping

Successful strategies for managing and reusing content can provide organizations with strategic advantage and yield significant increases in operational efficiency.

In this session we will:

• Discuss how Information Mapping US (IM US) has specifically helped organizations in different industries redesign the organizational structures of their information and present it so that it is easier to author and use, equating to lower costs across the organization.

• Introduce the basic features of the Information Mapping® Method, a proven topic-based authoring methodology.

• Demonstrate, using examples and exercises, techniques for designing structured modular

content that is easy to manage and repurpose.

Using Content Consumer Data to Improve Customer Engagement and Increase Revenue Demarcus Wells, Avalara

We will discuss how utilizing value-based content to positively engage consumers throughout the customer journey has transformed the way Avalara approaches our sales cycle. Through a strategic use of self-service content, Avalara has accelerated the sales cycle, as well as improved our customer retention and upsells while simultaneously cutting support costs.


Bar Napkins and XML: Eliminating the Hidden Cost of Content ConversionDustin Vaughn, Adobe Systems

Hidden costs are often associated with major purchases like vehicles and homes, and they can result in an “actual” price that is dramatically higher than what is initially quoted. In the same way, an XML workflow includes a major cost that often goes unnoticed—the ongoing cost of converting content provided by an SME. In this session, we will discuss how to dramatically reduce this cost and how it positively impacts the SME, the technical writer, and the organization.

Stalling at DITA—How Do You Get to the Next Step?Peggy Sanchez, Cray, Inc.

Implementation of DITA is one thing for a technical publication department but what about after the implementation – where’s all the great advantages of DITA? If you are still producing PDFs after your implementation, you are not alone. This is the stalling point for many

companies. How do you make the leap to publishing dynamic content? What are the next steps? Who can help?

In this session, you will learn how the Cray Technical Publication department went from multiple tools, styles, and output to a new infrastructure using DITA and a Component Content Management System (CCMS) and now producing dynamic content to the web. Although this is a case study you will learn to manage and define:

• Expectations• Tools• Challenges• Results

How to Get What You Want When You Want It (continued)Christopher Ward, Director of Sales, WebWorks

In this session, we will explore the five-step process deeper and go over exercises to help us put it in to practice. When we are finished, everyone in the room should be able to have a value-based conversation to help improve their results when asking for needed resources.


Need Information Architects? You Can Grow Your Own! Beth Thomerson, Innovatia

As content becomes more multi-dimensional, it’s no longer enough – for content consumers or creators – to organize it in a hierarchical manner and consider it “good to go.” With the proliferation of multiple, interconnected devices, technology is becoming more pervasive.

Because traditional information environments/content strategies can’t scale or properly reflect pervasive information environments, information architects play a critical role in helping devise the right content designs that will scale. Finding the right person to help your organization can take months to find, and many more months to

understand your business, customers, challenges, and strategic vision. What if you could spend less time and budget to find/ramp-up an external resource, and develop your in-house talent instead? In this presentation, we’ll share our approach to “growing your own” information architects.

Bite Sized Training: Onboarding for Generation Y and ZOded Ilan, Iridize

Generation Y are your junior employees, your entrepreneurs, your clients. They are the scaffolding of a business and the backbone of your customer base, and Generation Z is right


behind them. While these two generations are far from similar, in one sense they show a clear pattern:

• Shortening of their attention span (Generation Z has an attention span of eight seconds)

• Multi-source content consumption• Content exchange via short—even image

based—communicationYet we, as product owners, are tasked with training these employees and customers in how to use products that have become essential to the workplace and to day-to-day lives.

In this talk, Oded will discuss the differences between training and teaching, talk about bite-sized content in communication and describe how walkthroughs are a way to combine training and the MO of Generations Y and Z.

Wireframing, Mockups, and Prototyping Made EasyJohn Collins, Atlassian

Your career may revolve around words, but knowing a little about sketching can help you understand complicated concepts, communicate more efficiently, drive improvements to the products you work on—or move your career in a new direction!

Learn how technical writers, content strategists, and others can improve user experiences with sketching, making mockups, and even creating interactive prototypes—without touching Photoshop or software code.


• The difference between sketches, mockups, and prototypes

• Basic tools available to help create mockups and prototypes

• How to quickly make basic sketches

Translation Quality and the Global Review Cycle: People and TechnologyShannon Rose Farrell, Argos MultilingualShamus Dermody, XTM International

How in the world can you ensure true translation quality when there is such pressure to deliver amidst the looming deadlines, the tightened budgets, and the ever-pressing quality demands of our industries? While we are constantly spinning plates trying to keep content flowing through various human hands that are battling existing technology systems, is it even possible to still deliver to the demand? In this session, we will dive into how focusing on the global review cycle can achieve the translation quality that your industry demands. We will be showcasing lessons learned, industry best practices, and how to integrate new and innovative global technology solutions. We all know that translation quality is of the utmost importance in order to launch products and services globally. That is why we are here, to help you see the light at the end of the global translation quality tunnel.

In this session, you will learn about:

• Integrating global review into your translation management system (TMS)

• Best practices for linguistic quality assurance (LGA)

• Lessons learned from the global in-country review process

• How to obtain translation quality metrics

Social Me: Taking Control of Your Online ImageBrenda Huettner, P-N Designs, Inc.

Everyone has an online presence, even those who don’t use social media. Our online personas are becoming more important to our overall careers. We’ve all heard horror stories about embarrassing old online photos showing up years later at a bad time, but there are also stories about incredible good that’s come from online communities.


In this session:

• We’ll review some of the more popular social tools and the way they can be used effectively.

• We’ll share stories that highlight both great successes and miserable failures in online branding.

• You’ll learn about how to tap into the social networks that may already be talking about you.

• You’ll take home some concrete action items that help you build the reputation you want.

4:00–4:30 Closing SessionConnections that Count: Building Relationships for Business Success

Alyssa FoxDirector of Information Development and Program Management, NetIQ

“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” (Theodore Roosevelt)

It’s not who you know, it’s what you do once you know them. Nix superficial networking and focus on engaging with others in mutually beneficial relationships to move your career forward.

Whether you’re trying to move up in an organization or enhance your career by adopting additional responsibilities in different areas, real success is impossible without the collaboration and motivation these relationships give us.

Come learn the top five qualities you need to build relationships that contribute to successful career growth, and how to cultivate those qualities.

4:30–5:30 Closing Social Event: Prime Time Trivia!

8:00– Tweet-Up


Speakers

Robert D. AndersonRobert has spent over 15 years working on SGML/XML publishing tools at IBM; 13 of those years have been spent primarily with DITA or the DITA Open Toolkit. Robert is co-editor of the DITA 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 specifications, making him one of those rare developers who has to use the tools that he supports. If you're not careful, he will tell you (and show you!) how he uses DITA to publish his music collection and book library.

Steve AndersonAfter many years of writing technical documentation, Steve moved into software development, focused on information delivery. He currently leads a small team that creates all the tools and processes for developing and delivering documentation for Salesforce.

Rhyne ArmstrongRhyne Armstrong is a frequent client visitor, spending about a week a month researching client issues, solving nagging problems, and working to improve product management, support, and communications processes. He has been in the Tech Comm, marketing, and product management field for the last 23 years and plans to eventually figure out exactly what he wants to do when he grows up. Rhyne is the Director of Communications and Product Evangelism for RouteMatch Software, lives in Atlanta, and works hard to juggle his day job with his other roles: father of four, stage manager, and soccer/ballet dad.

Deepa AswaniDeepa has spent nearly 13 years creating technical content in various formats, including commercial publications and e-learning. She led the Oxygen rollout and training for the Salesforce doc team. Currently, she writes documentation for Salesforce Communities.

Gavin AustinGavin Austin is a Lead Technical Writer at Salesforce, where he writes everything from UI text to API developer guides. Since 2008, he has delivered a number of highly-rated presentations at Writers UA, STC Summits, Agile2013, Intelligent Content Conference, Blue Shield of California, and San Francisco State University.


Patrick BakerPatrick heads up all new product development at Stilo and is actively engaged in the successful deployment of content processing solutions. Major ongoing product developments include OmniMark, the leading high-performance content processing platform, Migrate, the world's first cloud XML content conversion service and AuthorBridge, for web-based content creation. He has been associated with best practices for complex content processing for over a decade and has successfully delivered custom solutions to organizations in automotive, aerospace and defense and commercial publishing.

Patrick holds a B.Sc. In Mathematics and a M.Sc. In Computer Science from McGill University.

Paula BergerPaula has built and managed teams, groups, projects, and organizations all over the world. After 20 years as a Founding Principal at SOLUTIONS, she became the Executive Director of a global industry consortium, where she built a worldwide community of technology standards professionals. She is currently in technical publications at Schneider Electric, working on a global product team and leading a team of writers in India. Paula is a Fellow and past International President of STC.

Patrick BosekPatrick is a co-founder of Jorsek LLC, a company primarily focused on its flagship product easyDITA. Since beginning with Jorsek LLC in 2005 Patrick, has worked on a wide range of projects all focused on improving authoring, production, and distribution of content. Most recently, his primary focus has been perfecting easyDITA and generally advancing the product documentation industry.

Patrick is a software industry professional specializing in developing, productizing, and solving problems with product content software. He is a highly skilled developer, thoughtful manager, passionate customer advocate.

Chris BridgenChris Bridgen has been managing things for years. Managing to irritate his teenage son with corny puns, mostly. When not inducing groans at home, he is the strategist for the 200+, worldwide CDOC organization at telecommunications vendor and IP giant Alcatel-Lucent.


Les BurnhamLes Burnham has overseen the development and marketing of SGML/XML content processing technologies and solutions across industry sectors including publishing, aerospace and defense, high-tech, engineering and government. He initiated the development of Stilo’s AuthorBridge for web-based content creation and the Migrate cloud conversion service, to help address the requirements of organizations including IBM, Cisco, Oracle and EMC.

Les holds a BSc. Jnt. Hons in Mathematics/ Operational Research from Leeds University. Studied Computer Science and Statistics as an undergraduate, undertook an MBA program at Cranfield School of Management, and recently completed studies in Philosophy at Oxford University.

John CaldwellJohn Caldwell is a Content Design Strategist at Intuit. He is the UX content lead for all of Intuit's web and mobile TurboTax applications. Leveraging provocation from creative leaders outside of Intuit, including those from the video game industry, John has implemented an aspirational new content strategy that has increased the level of emotional engagement between TurboTax and its customers.

John is a writing and innovation coach with over 20 years' experience as a professional writer and editor. In addition to user experience and marketing, he has worked in magazine and broadcast journalism, and continues to write on a wide array of topics, from tech to travel.

Scott CarothersScott Carothers, Senior Globalization Executive at Kinetic, is a 30-year veteran of corporate marketing, with a specific focus on technical solutions, innovations and software. His start was on a genesis team introducing one of the first DOS PC-based graphics software; successfully placing the product into 300 Fortune 500 companies. He has since evolved into cutting-edge translation technology and digital asset management solutions. Scott is based in Louisville, KY, USA.

John CollinsJohn Collins works for Atlassian as a member of the design team. He's a senior technical writer on the HipChat team in Austin, TX. Prior to Atlassian, John was at Rosetta Stone, where he learned the importance of combining content and user experience, first as a technical writer and then as senior UX content strategist.

John loves being at the intersection of content, localization, and user experience. He's spoken at a number of conferences, and he's always happy talking shop. You can find him on Twitter @jrc_collins and occasionally blogging at www.intersectUX.com/blog.


Shamus DermodyShamus is the Client Solutions Director at XTM International and has 15 years’ experience in the translation/localization industry, primarily in translation technology. He has a Graduate Diploma in Translation and Localization from the University of Limerick. Shamus specializes in business advisory in the area of translation management systems.

Kristen EberleinKris is Chair of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee and owner of Eberlein Consulting LLC, a company that helps people develop or refine their DITA implementations. She also is co-editor of the DITA 1.2 and 1.3 specifications. Trained as a historian, she's worn almost all the content worker hats you can imagine: Information developer, team lead, information architect, toolsmith… When not herding cats, she cooks, quilts, and enjoys her Mini Cooper S.

Jim EdmundsJim Edmunds is the founder and CEO of Ingeniux, a leading web experience management software company that delivers connected content, community, and collaboration solutions. Jim has over 20 years' experience designing software products and digital content, and prior to starting Ingeniux held leadership positions at Electronic Arts, MSNBC and Asymetrix. As a speaker, Jim focuses on the intersection between content management and user experience, with an emphasis on structuring content as a way to make content more relevant and accessible.

Melissa EgglestonAs a content strategist and UX specialist, Melissa Eggleston helps people and organizations create user-friendly digital experiences with memorable content. In 1997, she wrote her first online stories about soccer and broke all the rules we now know about writing for the web.

She has developed content for all types of organizations - from businesses in San Francisco to non-profits in New York City. She also provides UX research and strategy for the UX-Shop in Durham, NC. Melissa previously worked for Duke University and Bloomberg News.

Jocelyn EmoryJocelyn Emory is Senior Manager of Multimedia Technical Documentation in the telecommunications industry at GENBAND. With over 25 years in technical documentation, Jocelyn oversees content development for 13 programs; 7 are developed using Agile methodologies. She is a graduate of the Art Institute of Dallas with a degree in Visual Communications.


Shannon Rose FarrellShannon Rose Farrell got her start at a small software company, where she developed an appetite for international business and processes. From there, she entered into the localization realm where she found a true passion for helping multinational companies realize their global potential through innovative quality processes and cutting-edge technology solutions. Shannon is now the managing director of North America for Argos Multilingual, helping to further their US presence by building dynamic teams to support their exponential growth throughout the industry.

Liz FraleyLiz Fraley, founder of Single-Sourcing Solutions, has worked in both high-tech and government sectors, developing and delivering technical design and strategy of authoring and publishing solutions as a Single-Source/XML Architect/Programmer. Specializing in practical development and deployment, she advocates designing architectures that directly improve organizational efficiency, productivity, and interoperability. She's the founder of TC Camp, the unconference for content creators, consumers, and the people who support them. If you ask her, she'll say she's a gardener who's happiest when those around her are flourishing.

Kirsten GantenbeinKirsten is a microbiologist turned technical writer, content strategist, and UX advocate. She loves solving complex problems, and has a passion for translating technical information into consumable content. Follow her @kirstengant.

Joe GelbJoe Gelb, the President and Head of Business Development at Suite Solutions, has over 20 years of experience helping enterprises implement, maintain and capitalize on structured content. At Suite Solutions, he has spearheaded the development of advanced technology solutions for product content delivery. Joe believes that a key to success in any business is empowering customers with the knowledge they need to succeed in their goals.


Megan GilhoolyAs Director of Information Experience, Megan Gilhooly oversees the technical documentation and training teams at Ping Identity, a Denver-based company that develops identity and authentication platforms for enterprises. Prior to Ping, Megan was Director of Technical Communications at INVIDI Technologies. Throughout her career, Megan has served as employee and consultant to various software companies, building technical communications products and processes. As a former online retail business owner and Certified Scrum Master, Megan brings a unique perspective to managing information development and communication teams. She has a BA in Speech Communication, an MS in Journalism, an MS in Strategic Management, and a Masters Certificate in Technical Communication.

Connie GiordanoConnie Giordano performs a dual role as Executive Editor of TechWhirl and content strategy consultant/content services partner through INKtopia Limited, the parent company of TechWhirl.

With more than 25 years performing a balancing act between technical and marketing communications, Connie offers a unique blend of cross-functional experience in knowledge management, process design, and business analysis to clients and readers alike. Her work crosses industries as well, including software development, financial services, telecom, retail, healthcare, and government. Connie received her Master of Arts in Organizational Communication from Queens University, and only recently discovered that she enjoys editing content nearly as much as creating it.

Lila GiuiliLila Giuili is a Staff Technical Writer at Salesforce. For almost a decade, Lila has been developing user assistance and training programs that empower customers to achieve their goals. Lila has presented at the Intelligent Content Conference and CIDM Content Management Strategies/DITA North America.

Doug GormanDoug has spent the last few decades working at the intersection between structured writing and structured mark-up. As the former CEO of Information Mapping and the current CEO of Simply XML, he has helped large and small global organizations to adopt content standards and get control of their published content to improve the reader experience and to save money.


Jang F.M. GraatJang F.M. Graat, Chief Technologist at The Content Era, studied physics, psychology, and philosophy before embarking on a fast-track career in the high-tech computer business. He has almost 30 years' experience in all aspects of technical information as an author, trainer, consultant, and information architect. Known for his excellent presentation skills and revolutionary ideas, Jang’s nickname is “the Geek Philosopher.” He lives in Amsterdam with his princess, two cats, and a bunch of musical instruments.

Anne GrosvenorAnne Grosvenor is a content strategy professional with experience in content strategy and management, information architecture and taxonomy, and DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture). As Director of Technical Communications at INVIDI, Anne has overseen content strategy, architecture, and delivery methods to ensure best-in-class user experience. Prior to INVIDI, Anne worked as a consultant helping clients design, develop, and implement DITA solutions. Anne has a Bachelor of Science from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. She is also a Certified Scrum Master.

Eeshita GroverEeshita Grover is an experienced professional of 18+ years with a career equally divided across writing, teaching, and leading content creation and delivery teams. Eeshita has been with Cisco for the past 10 years building and driving innovative content strategies with an emphasis on delivery for the web, mobile web, and video. Eeshita has led content design using DITA for the various content types and their presentation for ease of consumption. Leading a change in mindset of writing teams has been one of the key contributors to her success.

Aaron GuigarAaron Guigar is the Business Development Manager at Design Science. Aaron's primary focus is to build awareness of MathML and Design Science's MathFlow software. He gets fired up about math, and is excited to work with content strategists to learn their processes and challenges. Aaron graduated from Lawrence University of Appleton Wisconsin with a BA, majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. You can read more about Aaron on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/aaronguigar/).

Ria HaganRia Hagan is a UX Content Designer with Intuit, specializing in content creation for high impact design. Over the past 12 years, Ria has worked to bring the importance of relationship building through the written word to the forefront of the design process, demonstrating how well crafted content can be a powerful revenue generating tool.

Ria has a passion for video games that began in the early days of console gaming with Spy Hunter on her Commodore 64.


Cheri HagerCheri Hager has over 18 years’ experience in helping organizations achieve better control over their business-critical information. In mid-2001, she joined Information Mapping, Inc., a company founded by structured authoring pioneer Robert E. Horn, to bring his research-based Information Mapping® Method for structured authoring to the marketplace. The Method is now a content standard within large enterprises and government entities around the world, and more than 600,000 people have been trained to use Information Mapping techniques.

Over the years, Cheri has worked with Information Mapping's clients to analyze and streamline processes, manage projects, coach and develop associates, and design and develop documentation, curriculum, training presentations, and web content. She has worked with organizations within the government, health care, insurance, technology, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, retail, and other service-oriented industries.

Nitza HauserNitza Hauser is Senior Director of Technical Communication Services at Medidata Solutions. She has been a Technical Communicator for over a decade, and a freelance translator and system programmer prior to that, and brings her extensive experience in the software industry together with a global perspective to technical communication.

Nitza is the immediate past president of the STC NY Metro chapter. She currently serves on the NJIT Board of Visitors, as an adviser for the Master of Science in Professional and Technical Communications (MSPTC) program.

Ari HoffmanAs the Customer Success Onboarding Manager for MindTouch, Ari Hoffman prioritizes customer success at the heart of all of his business endeavors. He focuses on value-based support to turn customers into product experts. MindTouch hired Ari for his collaborative approach to business and his influence in the startup community.

Ari is a member of the board of advisors for the Vet Tech Venture Group and a lead organizer for 1 Million Cups, San Diego. He is also an owner/creator of several companies in the U.S., including BLOCK Risers, MatGames, DarnGoodWorld, and GOBIE h2o.


Brenda HuettnerBrenda Huettner is an independent technical communication consultant who has worked for the past 25 years as a writer, editor, trainer, and manager, for both software and hardware companies. She’s a principal of Microwaves101.com, an online encyclopedia of microwave engineering knowledge. Brenda is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication, and a Senior Member of IEEE, active in the Professional Communication Society, the Engineering Management council, and the Tucson section. She’s also a member of the Usability Professionals Association. In addition to supporting the documentation needs of her clients, Brenda has published several books and articles, and presented half-day, full-day, and multi-day courses on writing, project management, usability, and career management. She also participates in NASA’s volunteer Solar System Ambassador and OSIRIS-ReX Ambassador programs.

Karin IkavalkoPeople and their stories inspire me. Karin is passionate about creating empowering and empathetic experiences—for real people, real lives—and the strategic thinking that helps us get there. For the past 14 years, she has been writing, editing, crafting style guides, evangelizing terminology, collaborating with design teams, and solving problems. Most recently at PayPal, Karin has been leading the consumer content design team, where she champions PayPal’s voice, advocates for customer empathy, and writes some of the engaging content you'll see when you log in to your PayPal account.

Oded IlanEven before graduating from the university in 1999, Oded spent four years as a high school teacher. Following graduation, he worked in various high-tech industries as a business developer. Oded still believe that his hardest sell to date was convincing children to purchase education. Getting the message across, creating appealing, yet meaningful, content, and delivering the correct story to the customers has always been a passion of Oded’s. As Iridize’s Chief Marketing Officer, Oded sees, first-hand, how technology helps the training and documentation landscape with a new approach.

Char James-TannyCurrently working in Technical Publications at Schneider Electric, Char has over 35 years of experience as a technical communicator. She has spoken around the world on topics including accessibility, Help authoring concepts and tools, social media, web standards, collaboration, and technology. She is a member of the Boston Accessibility Group and the Primary Coordinator of the Boston Accessibility Event.


Jason KaufmanFor over 17 years, Jason has helped global enterprises implement knowledge programs, systems, and best practices to reduce support costs, improve overall customer experience, and drive online support success. He's KCS certified and a judge for the ASP's “The Year's Ten Best Web Support Sites.

Nolwenn KerzrehoNolwenn Kerzreho has been immersed in the business of communication for over 10 years and has, as both a trainer and an information architect, led a number of DITA adoption efforts. Leveraging this practical experience, she acts as the Technical Account Manager (Europe) for Ixiasoft, where she helps customers to realize the benefits of structured content, cross-silo collaboration, and DITA content management. For several years, she has also been a lead instructor in technical communication for the Université Rennes 2 in Brittany (France), where she introduced DITA in 2009. As an international speaker and active researcher, she continues to explore the latest trends and techniques in structured authoring and how these changes will impact the next generation of technical writers.

Tara KnappTara Knapp is a supervisor of User Experience at ACI Worldwide and has 20 years' experience in training, communications, and technical writing. Her interests include technical communication, user experience, process improvement, agile development practices, and swing dancing. Tara is a member of Scrum Alliance and ATD. She has a MA in English from Creighton University and a MPA in Public Policy Administration from the University of Nebraska.

Meredith KramerMeredith Kramer, an Information Development Manager at NetIQ, has worked in the technical communication industry for 16 years and has held several positions on global teams for more than 10 years.

She has spearheaded efforts to promote Information Development teams while transitioning to an agile development methodology and has helped bridge the communication gap on global teams.


Fabrice LaCroixFabrice’ career is intimately linked to the development of the Internet and of the Web. He began as a system developer in the telecom industry, and in 1994 he takes part in the creation of the first French ISP as CTO, developing many breakthrough technologies. Convinced that the future is in the data more than in the infrastructure, keen on innovation and entrepreneurship, Fabrice creates Antidot in 1999.

Fabrice is also a board member of different companies, investors and organizations where he shares his views on innovation and the evolution of the software industry. Fabrice graduated from ENSIMAG and holds a Master in Computing from the Imperial College London.

Johanne LavalléeJohanne Lavallée is a senior technical writer for Signalisation Ver-Mac, in Quebec, Canada. She started writing in 1997 officially; really started at 10 with the Commodore 64, noting functions on a paper pad for the whole family. In 18 years, she has used all the possible technical writing tools, in English and French, mostly as a lone writer. One of the beta testers for MadCap Flare, she has worked in developer teams most of her life. Her specialization in Word prompted a blog in French on AGILE writing in Word at http://wordagile.blogspot.ca now available in English.

Bryan LynnBefore founding 36Software and developing SmartDocs, Bryan spent nearly 10 years working in corporate environments designing, developing, and implementing content management solutions. Bryan has extensive experience helping writing teams work more efficiently, providing authoring environments that are user-focused, developing tools that guarantee companies will put out more consistent and higher quality content, and minimizing the costs associated with creating and managing documentation.

Chantielle MacFarlaneChantielle is the Lead Content Strategist at Hyperwallet Systems Inc., a payments technology company headquartered in San Francisco. The former Head Honcho of Inklyo, an online content development platform designed to connect marketing consultants, agencies, and brands with professional writers, Chantielle has spent the better part of a decade ghosting on behalf of individuals and corporate entities. A huge fan of coffee, dinosaurs, and sarcasm, you can creep Chantielle on Twitter at @chantiellemac.


Al MartineAl Martine is co-owner and Director of Business Development and Operations for TechWhirl. TechWhirl is an online company helping the world explore the world of content management and technical communications. Al has over 15 years' experience in Management Consulting and industry experience ranging from non-profit management to managing global teams for Fortune 500 transformation projects.

He has an MBA from London Business School and is passionate about helping company leaders, their teams and the world in general leverage people, processes and technologies to create outstanding customer experiences. At TechWhirl, Al leverages his strategy; change management and operations background to help the company create outstanding content for its readers and remarkable promotional opportunities for its business partners.

When Al isn't planning, writing or developing for TechWhirl, he can be found cheering on the WVU Mountaineers, enjoying a fine (or not so fine) wine or going for a nice run.

Chris McNultyChris McNulty is a Sr. Product Manager for SharePoint and Office 365 at Microsoft. Chris’ experience as CTO includes companies as diverse as Dell Software/Quest, and Cryptzone/HiSoftware, helping to shape solutions for collaboration, migration, administration, security, compliance, governance and accessibility. Previously, he was recognized in 2013-2015 as a Microsoft SharePoint MVP, MCTS, MCSE, MSA and an MVTSP; and led the SharePoint consulting practice at KMA, a Boston based Microsoft Gold Partner. A frequent speaker at events around the globe, Chris is the author of the SharePoint 2013 Consultant's Handbook, among other books. He also blogs at http://www.chrismcnulty.net/blog Recently, he was recognized by Harmon.ie at the Ignite Conference as one of the Top 25 Office 365 Influencers in the community today. Chris holds an MBA from Boston College in Investment Management and has over twenty years' experience in financial services technology with John Hancock, State Street, GMO and Santander.

Suzanne MescanSuzanne Mescan is Vasont Systems' Director of Marketing, with responsibility for the Company's marketing and public relations efforts. For more than 25 years, she worked in all aspects of the information management and publishing industry, from content management to editorial and production. Suzanne has authored numerous articles about content management for industry publications and has delivered presentations for the CM Strategies/DITA North America, Intelligent Content, AIIM, and LavaCon conferences, as well as in industry-related group meetings and webinars. She was also a contributing author for the book, Virtual Collaborative Writing in the Workplace: Computer-Mediated Communication Technologies and Processes by Beth L. Hewett and Charlotte Robidoux (Eds.).


Marli MesibovMarli Mesibov is the Director of Content Strategy at the design and UX agency Mad*Pow. Her work spans strategy and experiences across websites, web applications, and mobile for enterprise companies and startups. She is the managing editor at UX Booth, and a frequent conference speaker. Marli can also be found on Twitter, where she shares thoughts on UX Design, content strategy, and Muppets. You can learn more about her and her work at http://marli.us.

Joe MeyersMeg Miranda and Joe Meyers have a combined 50+ years of technical writing experience in and around Silicon Valley. We like our work and our jobs, and we enjoy helping others. We've worked at many companies large and small, including Apple, Reuters, Visa, Oracle, Informix, HP, Ampex, IBM. We are now both in the Data Virtualization Business Unit at Cisco.

Meg MirandaMeg Miranda and Joe Meyers have a combined 50+ years of technical writing experience in and around Silicon Valley. We like our work and our jobs, and we enjoy helping others. We've worked at many companies large and small, including Apple, Reuters, Visa, Oracle, Informix, HP, Ampex, IBM. We are now both in the Data Virtualization Business Unit at Cisco.

Julian MurfittJulian is CEO and co-founder of Mekon Ltd., a systems integration and content strategy consultancy. Originally trained as a mechanical engineer, he worked as a solutions architect during the 1980s. In 1990, Julian formed Mekon to capitalize on the growing demand for technical document solutions. He led the development of the first structured (XML) standard for aeronautical information publications (AIPs) used in civil aviation authorities, along with several large civil aviation documentation projects. Julian is active in the S1000D and DITA communities and is a former council member of the Institute for Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC). He was the keynote presenter at DITA Europe 2007 and the 2010 ISTC conference.

Pam NoreaultPam is a Sr. Manager of Information Development at ACI Worldwide. Pam has 20+ years' experience in communications, content management, and technical writing. She specializes in content reuse, topic-based content, DITA conversions, using social media in business, and trends in user assistance. When she's not researching and implementing new ways to involve customers in user assistance, she can be found presenting at conferences or hiking with her dogs. Pam has a BS in English/Spanish Ed from The Ohio State University and a MA in English/Professional Writing from Wright State University.


Gal OronGal has proven success in leading and scaling global enterprise software companies. Prior to serving as CEO at Suite Solutions, Gal was a partner in Trigger Partners, an investment company specializing in technology companies in Israel and in Brazil. Before his work at Trigger, Gal led M&A transactions at VERINT (NASDAQ: VRNT), a leader in customer engagement optimization. Previously Gal served for nine years in various executive management positions at Orsus, a pioneer and market leader in the field of Situation Management. Gal served as President of Orsus for four of those years, leading its acquisition by NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE).

Lisa PietrangeliLisa Pietrangeli is a managing partner and executive director at 36Software. At 36, Lisa specializes in working with clients to develop customized content development strategies. Lisa brings over 14 years of experience to 36Software, having worked extensively with companies around the world, helping them to streamline their content development and localization processes.

Before joining 36Software, Lisa was director of global client solutions at Language Intelligence, where she worked with clients to develop internationalization strategies for all stages of the content development process, from authoring through to translation. Her extensive experience has included everything from project management, resource selection and management, to business development, localization consulting and managing client relationships. Her experience, combined with her analytical skills, make Lisa an ideal partner with whom to evaluate content development and localization processes, develop proof of concept, and tailor solutions for organizations of all types and sizes.

Mark PostonMark is a senior technical consultant for Mekon with over 19 years experience in content and publishing. He has a broad knowledge and understanding of the publishing requirements of clients. As publishing technologies have changed, the innovative solutions he has worked on have reflected these changes. He is now heavily involved in the presales, analysis, design, and implementation of XML publishing solutions, many of which are based around DITA. Mark is technical lead for Mekon's DITA-based dynamic delivery framework DITAweb, and an InDesign XML plugin for the DITA Open Toolkit. He has also recently worked on several solutions delivering content to mobile devices.


Allie ProffAllie has been communicating technical knowledge for over fifteen years, whether it be in the U.S. Navy, as a high school math teacher, or a writer/editor at The Boeing Company.

At Boeing, she helps engineers and analysts write and produce their process instructions and user help in a variety of formats, including video demonstration as well as SharePoint sites and conventional Word documents. However, she's also passionate about organizing and sharing information in general no matter what form it takes.

Don RaskyDon Rasky is a Senior Technical Writer at Mitchell International, Inc. in San Diego, California. His most recent adventures have seen him take the lead in a content conversion from RoboHelp X5, InDesign, and FrameMaker to MadCap Flare. He also coordinated the implementation of MadCap Lingo and multi-lingual help at Mitchell.

Marta RauchMarta Rauch is a Senior Principal Information Developer at Oracle, where she develops content for mobile and cloud products, including API docs. She enjoys sharing content strategy best practices with worldwide audiences, and contributed to The Language of Content Strategy, by Rahel Bailie and Scott Abel. Marta has received 15 STC awards at the regional and international level, and is an STC Associate Fellow and Vice President of the Silicon Valley Chapter. With over 111,000 social media connections, she is ranked by CircleCount in the top 170 U.S. women and top 450 worldwide on Google+.

Nabayan RoyNabayan Roy is a Senior Learning Content Developer and a lead API Writer at Autodesk, Singapore. He has been involved in technical communication for nearly 14 years in various roles, such as Information Architect, Content Strategist, and Programmer Writer. His interests include agile and lean content, user and developer experience (UX/DX), 3D printing and AR, social content, and project management. He is also a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM).

Nabayan has previously presented at Autodesk Technical Summit, Shanghai and Content Strategy Applied (CSA), London.

Charles RygulaCharles has over 20 years of experience in the areas of technical content development and management (people, project, and product). During this time, he's worked for both small and large companies predominantly in the Telecommunications industry. While his “do what it takes” attitude has afforded him a number of opportunities, he is currently a Sr. Documentation Manager at Cisco Systems, Inc.


Barry SaiffAfter leading technical writing teams for some of the largest US companies, Barry Saiff moved to the Philippines to start Saiff Solutions, a technical writing outsourcing firm based in Tagaytay City, Philippines. Barry has experienced technical writing outsourcing from both sides—as a technical communications leader in the USA, and as a manager of offshore technical writers and customer liaison in the Philippines.

Barry has written articles about technical writing outsourcing and led webinars on the topic. He has consulted for a variety of companies to help them improve their content and content development processes. For more information, see http://www.saiffsolutions.com.

Helen St. DenisHelen originally joined Stilo as a technical editor in the documentation team and now works closely with our Migrate customers, helping to analyze their legacy content, configure dedicated conversion portals, and provide training and support on an ongoing basis. Over a period of several years, she has helped to convert many thousands of pages from FrameMaker, Word, RoboHelp, and InDesign files to DITA and other XML formats.

Helen holds a BA in English from St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and has pursued graduate studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

Peggy SanchezPeggy Sanchez is the senior manager of the Technical Publications department of Cray Inc. She has been a tech writer for over ten years and a manager for five. She has been involved in three different companies moving to DITA (each at varying stages) and successfully led her team to adopt DITA. With the adoption of DITA and the CCMS, the team has been able to increase their production by 40%. She is the project manager of the implementation of the CCMS and documentation portal and for the overhaul of the customer portal for Cray.

Peggy has a bachelor's in Scientific and Technical Communication and a Masters in Management of Technology. She lives in St. Paul Minnesota and has three backyard chickens, Lily, Chloe, and Pearl.

Keith Schengili-RobertsKeith is a DITA Information Architect at IXIASOFT, DITA evangelist and technical writing nerd. Keith is also an award-winning lecturer on Information Architecture at the University of Toronto's iSchool, and Durham College. He is also an active member of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee, and can often be found presenting at conferences, working with customers, and researching how DITA is being used and sharing those results with the DITA community. Keith's popular industry blog DITAWriter.com has become a focal point on DITA resources and best practices. Connect with Keith on Twitter @KeithIXIASOFT.


Emily ShieldsEmily Shields is a content strategist at Facebook with experience on ads payments, payments growth and friend sharing. She knows very fancy data phrases like “stat sig” and “haircut,” which she sometimes uses in meetings when she wants people to know how important and popular she is.

Eric ShipmanEric is a Senior Technical Support Engineer at MadCap Software in La Jolla, California. As a senior support engineer, Eric is proficient with the MadCap Software suite of products and helps provide technical support to hundreds of customers each month. Prior to joining MadCap Software, Eric was a technical support representative for Apple with certifications in Mac OS X and iOS. Eric also has a bachelor’s of science in Mass Communication from State University of New York at Oneonta.

Matt SullivanThrough his company, Tech Comm Tools, Matt has been helping teams with video and interactive media for over ten years.

Matt regularly lectures to tech comm groups and conferences across the country on mobile, web, and interactive topics. He also regularly trains groups on Adobe tech comm software.

Matt also gives webinars on behalf of Adobe. The webinar recordings are available at http://bit.ly/tcs-webinars. His video work is also featured on the adobe.com website.

In 2015, Matt changed his focus from classroom training to online courseware. This creates value for students with a deeper, project-based curricula, delivered over a longer period of time. Courseware also allows for a lower price point than traditional classroom models.

Matt offers a full Tech Comm Video course, which explores ways to deliver interactive and video documentation.

See http://training.techcommtools.com for a list of free and paid online courses.


Beth ThomersonBeth Thomerson is a senior leader in Innovatia's technical documentation practice. A certified Scrum Master, she has managed writing teams since 2000; the past 10 years focused on supporting writers in Agile development environments. Beth and her teams work with clients to plan and implement content strategies that result in quality deliverables that exceed expectations. She supports innovation through personal and team research on emerging technologies, information architecture, design, single-sourcing, and just-in-time content.

Beth attended North Carolina State University and earned a Bachelor's degree in Communication from Mississippi State University. Beth and her husband reside in beautiful southern New Hampshire.

Jim TivyJim has been working in IT for 30 years, holding mostly technical positions, often focused on database system internals. Jim encountered XML in 1999 and designed the first commercial XML database, XStreamDb. As part of this initiative, Jim was a member of the W3C XQuery working group and wrote a chapter in the book, XQuery From the Experts. In 2005, Jim became involved with DITA as Bluestream added support for DITA to the XDocs XML CMS. Since then, Jim has taken a lead role on further features of the XDocs XML CMS. Jim is currently a member of the OASIS DITA TC.

Dustin VaughnDustin Vaughn is a Solutions Consulting Manager for Adobe who manages a team of experts in Adobe’s Technical Communication, eLearning, and Creative products. Dustin has served as a panelist, speaker, and Adobe representative at various industry conferences. He designs, develops, and hosts technical, solution-oriented pre-sales demonstrations for strategic global customers. Dustin also worked as a solution designer and presenter for a cross-organizational and multi-product project designed for a key US Government client.

Nikoletta VecseiNiki is a Social and Community Engagement Manager at EMC with a wealth of digital and content marketing experience for start-ups and Fortune 500 companies alike. Originally from Europe, her experience spans across two continents. Follow @nikschen.

Catherine WalkerI love creating compelling customer experiences and empowering others to think differently. After cutting my teeth at a digital agency, I joined PayPal as a Content Strategist, bringing design thinking and customer advocacy to every challenge. Now, I lead a cross-functional team of designers focused on helping customers through critical moments in our Resolution Center.


Andy WatsonAndy Watson has over 15 years experience in Technical Communication in the telecommunications industry. He project manages the documentation for seven programs implemented with Agile. He has a BS in Computer Science from Texas A&M University and MS in Information Design and Communication from Southern Polytechnic State University.

Demarcus WellsDemarcus Wells has focused on Customer Success at Avalara for over 10 years. With deep prior technical experience and a BS in Information Technology, he has spent the last several years managing programs and technical projects specific to the customer experience. He has worked extensively with various knowledge and documentation systems for internal and external use. Current duties also include targeting operational efficiencies with automation in our CRM and other critical systems for the Customer Success Teams. His goal-driven approach allows him the ability to strategize at a high level and nose dive into the weeds when necessary for organizational solutions.

Scott YoungblomScott Youngblom is a co-founder of Oberon Technologies, a leading provider of provides expert services and software to help organizations create and deliver structured content that is optimized for the web, mobile devices, and consumer needs. Scott has over 18 of experience with automated publishing solutions and deep knowledge of various “best-of-breed” software publishing technologies. Scott has been a trusted partner for many Fortune 2000 organizations with initiatives to increase company revenue, decrease expenses, improve operational efficiency, and meet regulatory compliance and quality standards, Scott has been a trusted partner. Scott has worked across varied industries with companies including John Deere, Pearson Publishing, Abbott Laboratories, Eli Lilly, Johnson Controls, Department of Defense, Northwestern Life, Social Security Administration, General Motors, and many others.


Exhibit Hall Map

1 appsoft Technologies

2 Saiff Solutions

3 Antenna House

4 Vasont

5-7 Adobe Systems

8 Design Science

9 TechWhirl

10 Information Mapping

11 Scriptorium

12 Single Sourcing

13 WebWorks

15 IXIASOFT

16 Dakota Systems

17 euroscript Inc.

18 Oberon Technologies

19 Antidot

21 FontoXML

22 Kinetic

23 Mekon

25 Simply XML

26 EasyDITA

27 Astoria Software

28 MadCap Software

29 JustSystems

30 STC

31 Argos Multilingual

32 SDL

33 Suite Solutions

34 Zoupio by Lexum

35 Bluestream

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39 Stilo International

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ON CONTENT STRATEGY AND TECHCOMM MANAGEMENT...Welcome to the 2015 LavaCon Conference on Content Strategy and Tech Comm Management LavaCon® is a gathering place for content strategists,