Technicalities - the online newsletter for STC RMC · needs as well as for its flash and pizzazz. With that in mind, if you, as technical communicators, are searching for that cool

December 2006/January 2007 Volume 47, Number 3

.pdf Version Masthead Archives

Technicalities Home

Columns:

Message from the Editor

President's Corner

Tips from the Trenches

Emerging Professionals

Chapter News

STC News

STC RMC Home

STC International Home

Features...

Free or Open-Source Tools for Technical Communicators, Part I: The Software A review of current tools

Scholarships Awarded: George Hoerter Scholarship Recipients 2007

Questions Technical Writers Need to Ask: November chapter meeting review

Run for Local Office: Get involved in our chapter

Creating and supporting a forum for communities of practice in the profession of technical communication.

Technicalities Home

© Copyright 2007 Rocky Mountain Chapter, Society for Technical Communication; all rights reserved.

Standard disclaimers apply.

http://www.stcrmc.org/newsletter/newsletter.htm

http://www.stcrmc.org/

http://www.stc.org/

http://www.stcrmc.org/disclaim.htm



Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

STC RMC Home


Features...

Free or Open-Source Tools for Technical Communicators, Part I: The Software A review of current tools

Scholarships Awarded: George Hoerter Scholarship Recipients 2007

Questions Technical Writers Need to Ask: November chapter meeting review

Run for Local Office: Get involved in our chapter

Creating and supporting a forum for communities of practice in the profession of technical communication.

Technicalities Home





http://www.stc.org/




Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:

Free or Open-Source Tools for Technical

Communicators

George Hoerter Scholarship Recipients 2007

November Chapter Meeting Review

Run for Local Office

STC RMC Home


Technicalities

This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer 5x or newer.

Editorial Staff

Newsletter Editors: Donna Brannan and Stephen Wertzbaugher HTML Editor: Dana Dutson Article Editors: Bridget Julian, Jay Mead, and Lynnette Reveling Newsletter Staff: Deb Lockwood Newsletter design by Steve Kavalec and Ron Arner

Technicalities is published bi-monthly by the Rocky Mountain Chapter (RMC) of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and is distributed to chapter members, editors of other STC newsletters, and officers of the Society. It is available on request to anyone interested in technical communication. Other STC chapters and publications may reprint material if credit is given.

This newsletter invites writers to submit articles on subjects of interest that they wish to be considered for publication to Society and chapter members. Please credit repeated material and send a copy of the original material to: [email protected]

Submission Guidelines

Submission deadlines and themes for 2007 are as follows:

February/March issue, “Training” and “Instructional Design & Learning," Due February 1

April/May issue, “Careers/Alternate Careers,” Due April 1

June/July issue, “Policies & Procedures,” Due June 1

The staff will also announce the upcoming issue and its theme via an e-mail to the membership and/or at chapter meetings.

The preferred word count for articles is 500-750 words. If your subject matter warrants it, articles longer than 1,000 words will be serialized between two or more issues.

Please e-mail all submissions to: [email protected] with the issue date, such as “October/November 2006,” in the subject line. The editor can be reached during the day at 303.956.1906, by e-mail at [email protected] and by postal mail at 6025 S. Quebec St., Suite 260, Englewood, CO 80111.

Submissions can be pasted into the body of the e-mail, or sent as an attachment. If you send your article as an attachment, it should be in either RTF or DOC format. Please include your contact information.

A “headshot” of yourself to be printed with your article would be appreciated.



http://www.stc.org/

mailto:[email protected]



Note: By submitting an article, you implicitly grant a license to this newsletter to run the article and for other STC publications to reprint it without permission. Copyright is held by the writer. In your cover letter, please let the editor know if this article has run elsewhere, and if it has been submitted for consideration to other publications.

The Technicalities staff reserves the right to edit articles for clarity and length; substantive editing of feature articles will be reviewed with the author prior to publication.

STC RMC 2005-2006 Officers

Administrative Council

President: Deb Lockwood Vice President: Ron Arner Secretary: Al Kemp Treasurer: Jessica Betterly Past President: Marella Colyvas

Region 7 Director-Sponsor:

John Hedtke

STC RMC Committee Managers

Assistant to President: Frank Tagader Associate Fellow Nominations: Martha Sippel Database: Karen Kraft-Miller Hospitality: Julie Bettis Jobs: Anne Halsey Listserv: Karen Kraft-Miller Hospitality: Julie Bettis Membership: Tammy VanBoening Mentoring: Deb Lockwood Nominating Committee: Mary Jo Stark, Martha Sippel Programs: Kristy Astry Scholarships: Marc Lee and Don Zimmerman (Mentor) Seminars: Bette Frick Strategic Planning: Martha Sippel Volunteers: Ron Arner Web site: Anne Halsey

STC RMC SIG Managers

Consulting and Independent Contracting Special Interest Group (CIC SIG): Whitney Broach and Linda Gallagher Northern Colorado: Carmen Carmack Western Slope: Victoria Thomas

Society for Technical Communication, Rocky Mountain Chapter

General Chapter Business Rocky Mountain Chapter Society for Technical Communication 6025 S. Quebec St., Suite 260 Englewood, CO 80111 [email protected]

Job Postings Send job postings to [email protected] Jobs are posted on the chapter Web site (http://www.stcrmc.org/jobs_freelance.jobs.htm), and are e-mailed to the techcomm-discuss mailing list.










http://www.stcrmc.org/jobs_freelance.jobs.htm

Chapter Web site http://www.stcrmc.org

STC International Office

901 N. Stuart Street, Suite 904 Arlington, VA 22203-1822 703.522.4114 [email protected] http://www.stc.org

Technicalities Home





http://www.stc.org/




Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


What Did you Want for Christmas?

by Stephen Wertzbaugher

As I write this column I can’t help but marvel at the love affair our society has for technology. That same love affair seems to include the Technical Communications profession as well. After all, where would we be as technical communicators without our technological toys? Some of us, me included, might answer, “still sane.” But humor aside, like it or not, our technology drives both our private and our professional lives.

And how could it be otherwise? Who among us can say with a straight face that we prefer to write with a manual typewriter than with a computer? I don’t mean that as a slight against manual typewriters; it was a fine tool in its day, but its day is past. Time as well as technology moves on and so too must we, like it or not. And if we do not keep up with technology in our own profession we, like the dinosaurs, may find ourselves extinct, which begs the question, “what tools and technologies should I embrace as a technical communicator?”

The answer is simple: select the right tool for the job. Implementing that answer, however, is never as easy as it may seem. That’s because writing environments are as individual as writers and despite marketing claims to the contrary, no writing tool currently exists that “does it all.” So how do you choose the right tool for the job? With great consideration and care.

Don’t rush your decision and don’t let others make you rush your decision, because the tool you choose today will be with you for a long time, maybe years; unless your company doesn’t mind making capricious and expensive decisions. Maybe your company has money to burn and they don’t mind lighting bonfires with their cash. If you work in a company like that, how do I get a job there?

Trust me on this, though. Most companies hate spending money for things that, in their mind, have no direct relation to their profitability. And if management perceives that you have wasted their hard earned profits they will squish you like a bug, which brings me to my most wished for Christmas gift this year, a 30GB video iPod.

The iPod topped my Christmas wish list this year and like a giddy five-year-old I couldn’t wait to wake up Christmas morning and open my presents to see if I had gotten one. But I didn’t wake up one day and say, “I want an iPod.” I knew that I wanted a portable music player, but I also knew that I wanted the right one for me. I researched the market, read specifications and reviews, spoke with friends who owned portable music players, went to the stores and played with the different players that were available, including the new one from Microsoft. And in the end, I chose the iPod as the best fit for my current and future needs as well as for its flash and pizzazz.

With that in mind, if you, as technical communicators, are searching for that cool new tool to make your job a little easier I ask you to use the same care and plodding consideration that I used to select my iPod. You won’t regret it. Now go forth and communicate complicated technical information in a form that the common people can understand; I want to play with my new iPod.



http://www.stc.org/


Technicalities Home






Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


President's Corner

by Deb Lockwood

It’s a new year, which always gives me a feeling of renewal and rebirth. I look forward to the many challenges the new year brings, and at this point the year is full of opportunity and hope; a clean slate. Plus, I really enjoy opening my new Franklin Planner calendar, placing the sheets in my binder, and writing on those blank pages.

Like most of you, I have recently gone through another type of renewal: renewal of my STC chapter and special interest group (SIG) membership. (Membership renewal fees were due January 1, 2007.) With my membership I reap many benefits, including:

● Professional development● Access to publications (Intercom and Technical Communication)● Participation in discussion lists● Camaraderie● Mentoring● Job leads and referrals● Continuing education● Up-to-date industry information● Opportunities to serve, to lead, and to build skills

And what do those benefits cost me? Less than $15 a month. That’s quite the bargain!

What else does it cost me? As an active volunteer I spend some time and a little gasoline money here and there. But in exchange I establish working relationships with some of the brightest minds in the Colorado technical communications field. And I enhance my skills as a leader, mentor, negotiator, diplomat, and writer.

You may have paid your dues for this new year, but how about an actual renewal—will you experience one this year? Specifically, consider renewing your commitment to the STC RMC and becoming more involved in our community. The chapter and your peers could benefit from your expertise and your opinions. And perhaps you could benefit from the experience.

If you would like to discuss how to take on a more active role in our chapter, contact Ron Arner ([email protected]) or me ([email protected]).

By the way, even though the STC membership renewal deadline was January 1, it’s not too late. For those of us already in the profession or joining the profession, the benefits really do outweigh the costs. Go to https://www.stc.org/duesrenewal/ to renew today.



http://www.stc.org/




https://www.stc.org/duesrenewal/

Technicalities Home






Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


The Corporate University, Online Training, and You

by Donna Brannan

What’s a corporate university, you ask? As defined in The Corporate University Handbook: Designing, Managing, and Growing a Successful Program (Mark Allen):

A corporate university is an educational entity that is a strategic tool designed to assist its parent organization in achieving its mission by conducting activities that cultivate individual and organizational learning, knowledge, and wisdom.

The company I work for decided to establish a corporate university to train its employees to deliver consistent and excellent service to its clients, in accordance with “the company way,” and I was asked to develop some e-learning modules for this university. An all-inclusive definition of e-learning would be “a structured, purposeful use of electronic systems in support of the learning process,” and modules refers to one complete e-learning lesson covering one subject.

Once I began working on this project, I realized that there was quite a bit I didn’t know about writing e-learning course material. I began a search for a consultant who had experience and a degree in instructional design and adult/corporate training. The consultant I located through the STC RMC provided me with some great suggestions based on the one module reviewed, including the following:

● Use the first screen of an e-learning module to draw learners in. Why would learners want to take this course? Make it meaningful and relevant to their work, and show that it will bring them some type of satisfaction.

● Include a case study so learners can identify with this experience throughout the course.

● Create characters for certain modules.● Include appropriate graphics.

The modules were to precede a two-day employee workshop. The e-learning training portion was to be completed by the learners to teach them the location of tools on the company’s Intranet and the order of steps to be taken while working with the client. Everything learned while completing the training modules would be reviewed the first day of the workshop.

Suggestion: It would be best to create workshop training materials concurrently with e-learning training if your workshop is to be based on material from the online training sessions.

Some e-learning professionals recommend that e-learning be blended with classroom or workshop learning. According to Michael Allen’s Guide to E-Learning, by Michael W. Allen (2002), a well-nurtured learner will do better than a learner who is isolated or ignored. Blended solutions can be great—when done well, they can accomplish what no single form of instructional delivery can achieve. I think this is true in some situations where technical classes can be taught online, but some subjects, such as communications, would be best taught in a workshop (unless you are teaching online communications).

Here are some suggestions if you are establishing a corporate university. First, try to find



http://www.stc.org/


out what has already been taught within your company. There may be written material already available that you can use as a starting point. If the corporate university is to teach employees how to do things the “company way,” you must research what that “way” is, usually within company goals and mission statements.

For creating your courses, consider using e-learning software such as Mindflash, so your IT department will not be taking on additional workload. From the Mindflash website: “Mindflash combines tools to create content (authoring tools), build and manage courses (learning content management system), and manage course enrollment and reports (learner management system) at a fraction of the cost of older systems.” You can locate them at www.mindflash.com and can begin using this software right away by creating your documents in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or other application.

What are some tips from the experts for creating your online courses? In addition to using suggestions made by our e-learning consultant, I scanned the pages of Michael Allen’s Guide to e-Learning and e-Learning and the Science of Instruction (Ruth Colvin Clark). Michael W. Allen lists three priorities for training success:

● Ensure learners are highly motivated to learn. Make this your first priority. “Highly motivated learners will find a way to learn.”

● Guide learners to appropriate content. “Highly motivated learners are eager to get their hands on anything that will help them learn.”

● Provide a meaningful and memorable learning experience “If a learner can’t understand the learning experience, or the experience seems irrelevant, it is obviously a waste of time for that individual. If a learner can’t remember what was learned, the experience is similarly unproductive.”

E-learning can provide all three!

e-Learning and the Science of Instruction gives these recommendations for creating e-learning material:

● Make graphics relevant, not decorative. ● Use animation to illustrate processes, procedures, and principles.● Use organizational graphics to show relationships among ideas or lesson topics.● Place corresponding words and graphics near each other.● Present words as speech rather than onscreen text.● Avoid lessons with extraneous sounds, pictures, and words.

I suggest that you not try to achieve a “perfect” module the first time. Do your best, get it online, have it tested, and go for it! Minor tweaks can be made at a later time. The modules for our university, for example, will be updated on a continuing basis as the company changes and technology develops.

Another book our consultant recommended is Designing Web-Based Training, by Bill Horton. If you would like the contact information for the consultant our company retained, please email me at [email protected].

Resources

Michael Allen’s Guide to e-Learning, Michael W. Allen. Wiley, 2002.

e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer. Pfeiffer, 2002.

The Corporate University Handbook: Designing, Managing, and Growing a Successful Program, Mark Allen, editor. American Management Association, 2002.

Designing Web-Based Training, William Horton. Wiley, 2000.

Mindflash e-learning software: www.mindflash.com

http://www.mindflash.com/



Technicalities Home






Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home



Emerging Professionals is a new column that students of technical communications and professionals transitioning into the field won’t want to miss. This column will inform you of what’s happening in the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Society for Technical Communication, explain how to network and get involved in the local chapter, and highlight the professional benefits of being part of this organization.

If you’re a student, you will want to check out the Rocky Mountain Chapter’s college scholarships for 2007-2008 (http://stcrmc.org/chapter/scholarships/scholar.htm). These scholarships provide a wonderful way for working students who do not qualify for standard financial aid to get some support while pursuing coursework in Technical Communications. Or looking for a job in the field? Then, you will definitely want to check out the local job line (http://stcrmc.org/jobs_freelance/jobline.htm). It is by far the best resource available to technical communication professionals in the Denver metropolitan area, regardless of your level of experience.

Stay tuned for our first article in the February/March issue of Technicalities.

Technicalities Home





http://www.stc.org/

http://stcrmc.org/chapter/scholarships/scholar.htm

http://http//stcrmc.org/jobs_freelance/jobline.htm




Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


Chapter News

Welcome to Our New Members

New, transferred, or returning members for the months of September and October 2006:

● Jonathan P. Mankin● Kathy Recchiuti● David J. Sweetser● Garret E. Truax● Lauren S. Walters

Chapter Meetings

January 18, 2007 – Take the Right Risks with Intelligent Disobedience (Bob McGannon)

February 15, 2007 – Yoga for Stress Relief Eases Bodies and Minds (Ron Arner)

March 15, 2007 – Senior Member Dinner (With a Special Guest)

April 19, 2007 – Communicating Clearly with Colleagues and Clients (Ginny Redish)

May 24, 2007 – How to Build a Business Case (Jack Molisani) and chapter business meeting

Upcoming Seminars

January 17, 2007 – The Xfactor-From HTML to XHTML

Presenter(s): Neil Perlin

Level: Beginner/Intermediate

January 31, 2007 – ANSI Z535.6- A New Standard for Safety Information in Product-Accompanying Literature

Presenter(s): Steven Hall and Elaine Wisniewski

Level: Intermediate/Advanced

See the STC Web site at http://stc.org/edu/seminarsList01.asp for more information.

Open Volunteer Positions

Ron Arner is currently serving as our chapter's Volunteer Coordinator, and as such, is soliciting people to serve in the following positions:



http://www.stc.org/

http://stc.org/edu/seminarsList01.asp

● Publicity Manager who generates interest in the community by submitting press releases, etc., in advance of chapter events.

● Volunteer Coordinator promotes volunteerism within the chapter and assists people in finding positions that match members' skills and meet their professional goals.

● Project Manager and Website Manager, who manages the chapter website, ensuring timely and accurate content, participates in and manages the resources for the restructuring and rework of our chapter website.

If you have the interest in these areas and the skills to perform these tasks, please contact Ron at [email protected].

Networking Opportunities

Get connected ... If you're an STC RMC member, consider joining techcomm-discuss, the chapter's email list. Not only will you be a part of the chapter's online community, you'll also automatically receive notification of all job postings sent to the chapter's jobline. For information about the list, including how to join, view the list FAQ page and the posting rules.

Employment News, Trends, and Opportunities

If you would like to receive job alerts, sign up for the job announcement list by emailing [email protected].

You can also view job announcements on the STC RMC Web site at http://www.stcrmc.org/jobs_freelance/jobline.htm.

Education News, Trends, and Opportunities

Event: WritersUA Conference Registration Now Open All the information is now available for The 15th Annual WritersUA Conference for Software User Assistance, March 25-28, at the Hyatt Regency in Long Beach, CA. .

Technicalities Home




http://www.stcrmc.org/chapter/mailing_list.htm

http://stcrmc.org/chapter/mailing_list_rules.htm



http://www.stcrmc.org/jobs_freelance/jobline.htm


http://www.writersua.com/ohc07/index.html




Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


STC News

Report or Announcement of Society-level Activities

From Lloyd Tucker, Director of Education, STC: Online registration now available for the Technical Communication Summit - STC's 54th Annual Conference and EXPO, May 12-16, 2007 in Minneapolis, MN (USA). Register online NOW (http://www.stc.org/54thConf/register/index.asp), get the Early Bird special ($645) and make the Technical Communication Summit your primary source for learning and networking. Early Bird Registration ends February 28, 2007.

Additional Report or Announcement of Society-level Activities

Dear STC members,

I'm writing to let you know that Sherry Michaels has resigned her position as STC Director. As I am sure you are aware, Sherry has been an active member of the STC Board of Directors. The Board thanks her for her years of service to STC, particularly her strong sponsorship of Region 5 and her work with STC’s Communities.

Brenda Huettner has been unanimously approved by the Board of Directors to fill Sherry’s seat as STC Director, and she will be taking over the sponsorship duties for Region 5. Brenda is a longtime STC member and an STC Fellow. She is past president of Region 5’s Southern Arizona chapter and also a longtime leader in the Management SIG. Brenda has accepted the position and she welcomes the opportunity to serve the Society on the Board of Directors. You can reach Brenda at [email protected].

Our Bylaws specify that Brenda will serve as a Director through the Board of Directors meeting in May, 2007. At that time, an elected replacement will be announced for the final year of Sherry’s term.

Sincerely,

Paula Berger STC President, 2006-07 [email protected]

STC Scholarship Program 2007-2008

Scholarship applications for the 2007-2008 academic year are due by February 15, 2007. Please help spread the word to potential scholarship candidates. Information about the scholarships, and application forms can be found online at:

http://www.stc.org/edu/scholarshipInfo01_maryNorby.asp

http://www.stc.org/edu/scholarshipInfo01_national.asp

Please note that this year we are pleased that a new scholarship, the Mary Norby Scholarship will be offered for the first time. Mary Norby Scholarship applicants must be



http://www.stc.org/

http://www.stc.org/54thConf/register/index.asp






women working in the federal government, full or part-time as a secretary or administrative assistant.

Should you have any questions, please direct them to Mr. Scott DeLoach, [email protected] or 404-522-0003.

Technicalities Home








Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


Free or Open-Source Tools for Technical Communicators, Part I: The Software

by Charles Curley, Member

Free/open-source software (FOSS), like proprietary software, can be either terrible or excellent. Because authors of free software usually don’t advertise their wares, this article looks at some of the better offerings. Part two of this article, to be published in the January issue, will cover interoperability between open-source products and the products your clients are likely to use.

Most open-source programs begin as a way to scratch an itch. The programmer then makes the software available to other people, who adapt it to solve their problems, fix its bugs, or otherwise improve it. If you are new to open-source software, the Go Open Source campaign Web page (www.go-opensource.org) is a good place to start your research.

The poster child for open-source software is Linux. If you use Linux, you probably know of most of these programs. If not, fear not: Most of the programs described in this article are available for the Macintosh, and all are available for Microsoft Windows.

If you are contemplating moving to Linux, using cross-platform applications on Windows or the Mac will give you a good idea of how well the switch will work without the learning curve for Linux itself. You can get into the shallow end of the pool first.

Licensing

Most open-source software is released under the general public license (GPL, www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html) or similar licenses. (See the Open Source Initiative’s Web page, www.opensource.org for more information.) Before you use any program, be sure you understand the terms of the license. Generally, you can use—and give away—open-source software for free. You have the right to get the source code for the program. If you give away the program, you must tell the recipient where the source is available. You may modify the source and use the resulting program, and you may give away your modifications as well.

One advantage of FOSS for a typical company or sole proprietorship is that it makes your licensing issues go away. You don’t have to buy a new license every few years. You don’t have to pay to upgrade, and you can upgrade at will. You don’t have to audit computers for license compliance of open-source software.

Because you can give the software away for free (or for a reasonable media charge), you can provide it to your colleagues, friends, neighbors, nonprofit organizations, churches, and schools. You can help your neighbors—something you can’t do with proprietary software.

Because you are legally entitled to the source code and you may modify it, another advantage of FOSS is that you can customize a program to suit your own shop. If you aren’t a software engineer, you can probably find someone to do this for you.



http://www.stc.org/


http://www.go-opensource.org/

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html


http://www.opensource.org/


Evaluation Version

The evaluation version of an opensource program is the program itself. Install it, use it, and compare it to competing software as you would any other program. The software you are evaluating is the real thing, not some crippleware that comes with a bunch of promises.

Malware

I hear someone muttering, “Yeah, I’m going to haul this stuff in from someone I’ve never heard of, install it, and it will attack my computer.” A reasonable suspicion. But because the software is open-source, anyone can audit the source code for malware and compile it locally. If those experts find malware, you can bet it will get headlines in the appropriate places.

FOSS is often audited for security problems by external experts, which is impossible with closed software. And when the inevitable bugs are found, FOSS programs tend to be repaired faster than closed-source programs. Most FOSS is digitally signed and comes with a checksum so that you can check the integrity of your transfers.

I’ve been working with Linux for more than twelve years, with other FOSS even longer, and have hauled in tens of gigabytes of FOSS. I have yet to see malware in any of it.

Support

The support model for open-source software is different from what you are used to. Support comes via e-mail lists, wikis, bulletin board systems (BBSs), or other Internet tools. It is peer-to-peer, rather than top-down. As a FOSS user, you are one of a community. You may ask questions, and your peers may (or may not) answer them. Similarly, you may answer some of your peers’ questions, which may be a great way for you to give something back to the community that gave you this software.

You can hire experts to support some of the more popular FOSS programs. For example, the OpenOffice.org Web site (www.openoffice.org) has a page that lists consultants who offer support for it. Companies like IBM, Sun, and Novell offer similar services, as do I.

Some open-source software has documentation that is mediocre or worse. If you want to return something to the community, please pitch in and help.

Office Tools

The Open Document Format

The Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument, www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office) is a standard approved by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the governing body for XML documents, and the International Organization for Standards (ISO). OpenDocument provides a standard for interchange between office applications; I’ll cover this standard in more detail in the January issue. OpenDocument will become more important as governments and companies standardize it. If you are shopping for new office software, add the OpenDocument format (ODF) to your checklist. Both the office programs covered below, OpenOffice.org and AbiWord, already support ODF, and some proprietary programs (e.g., IBM’s Lotus Notes) do or will support it.

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org (OOo, www.openoffice.org) is a full-featured office suite consisting of Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation), Math (equations), and Base (database connector). Heavily backed by Sun Microsystems, OOo is probably the best known open-source office suite. Sun also offers Star Office, a supported version of OOo, for sale.

If you are accustomed to Microsoft Office, you will find OOo similar. Usually, where there is

http://www.openoffice.org/

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office



a difference, the OOo version is better. To give one example, OOo allows regular expressions in its search-and-replace function. I’ve been using OOo for seven years and now find Microsoft Office awkward, slow, and cranky.

OOo has excellent interchange with Microsoft Office, to the point where some of my clients don’t even know I’m not using Word. OOo’s “native” file format is OpenDocument, so you can readily move files to any application that supports OpenDocument. If you work with clients who use Office, you can save your documents in Office format.

Support for OOo includes several books. I use an earlier edition of the OpenOffice.org 2.x Resource Kit by Solveig Haugland and Floyd Jones, just released by Prentice Hall.

OpenOffice.org is multilingual. Because users can get the source, they can customize it by adding their language. As a result, OOo supports almost twice as many languages as does Microsoft Office, with more to come.

AbiWord

Because of its very light footprint—5.1 MB for the core Windows installer—AbiWord (www.abisource.com) can run on older hardware where Microsoft Office or even OpenOffice.org would bog down. This is probably not a consideration in your business, but it could be important in a nonprofit organization or a business in a poorer country.

AbiWord looks a lot like Microsoft Word, and has many of the same features. Some features of interest to translators are an easy connection to Babelfish and the free translation service at www.freetranslation.com. Another useful feature is support for a wide variety of file formats, including DocBook XML, MIF, LaTeX, and OpenDocument.

Like Word and OOo, AbiWord uses styles. Like OpenOffice.org, AbiWord supports many languages, including right-to-left languages such as Arabic.

Page Layout

Scribus

Among the many useful features of Scribus (www.scribus.net), a page layout program, are full support for PDF (including the ISO standard PDF/X-3, interactive PDF, and importing from PDF) and EPS. Scribus was designed to use Unicode, and supports right-to-left text. In addition to the usual FOSS support, several of the developers offer commercial support. Support is available for some twenty-five languages, with more to come.

Communication Tools

Firefox

The Mozilla Foundation’s awardwinning Web browser is a distant, opensource descendant of the Netscape browser. Tabbed browsing means you don’t get your desktop cluttered with a slew of open windows. Incremental searching makes searching a Web page for a term very easy. Also, Firefox (www.mozilla.com) has search engine access built into it.

If you develop for the Web, get the Firefox extension “Web Developer,” which adds a powerful toolbar that makes development go much faster. Because of Firefox’s increasing popularity, Web developers should be testing their Web pages on Firefox as well as other browsers.

The most important reason to use Firefox is that it is more secure than Internet Explorer. Firefox stops a number of Web browser attacks, and also has controls to help you manage obnoxious aspects of the Web like popup windows.

Gaim

http://www.abisource.com/


http://www.freetranslation.com/

http://www.scribus.net/

http://www.mozilla.com/

Gaim (gaim.sourceforge.net) is an instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM, ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus Sametime, and Zephyr networks. Because Gaim is multiprotocol, you can consolidate your IM accounts into one client and use it for many of your IM needs.

If your department or company wants to run its own IM server, it can use Gaim with the open-protocol Jabber (www.jabber.org) server.

Mantis

A small, lightweight bug-tracking system, Mantis (www.mantisbt.org) is similar to Bugzilla, but much simpler and easier to use. Just because it is called a bug-tracking system doesn’t mean you can only use it for bugs. Use it to track anything, including personal or family issues.

One of the nice things about a good bug tracker is that you can open it up to your customers selectively, allowing them to enter issues directly into your system and communicate directly with your writers.

Based on PHP and MySQL, Mantis should install on almost any Web server.

MoinMoin

Project coordination requires a simple way to preserve and communicate project members’ thoughts. An excellent way to do this is with a wiki. (Probably the best known example of a wiki is Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki.)

MoinMoin (moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de), one of a number of good wiki programs, is available in a desktop version that you can use as a personal tool without having a Web server installed. Alternatively, you can run MoinMoin for the entire department (or company) using Apache, Microsoft IIS, or the company’s own Web server.

Nvu

According to its Web page, Nvu (www.nvu.com/index.php) is “a complete Web Authoring System for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (which stands for ‘new view’) makes managing a Web site a snap. Now anyone can create Web pages and manage a Web site with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.”

The claim of rivaling FrontPage may be a bit of an exaggeration, but Nvu is an impressive development tool. You can specify a DTD, character set, and language, so that your pages comply with W3C standards from the start. Everything is point-and-click, but if you want to get your hands dirty editing the HTML, you can. Nvu is not a full content management system, but it works for one-off or light Web sites.

Thunderbird

There are any number of good reasons to switch from Outlook to Thunderbird (www.mozilla.com), a descendant of Netscape’s e-mail client. Not least is security: Outlook is the preferred target of e-mail Trojan horses, phishing, and other e-mail attacks. Thunderbird is easier to use, and will import your e-mail, address book, and some settings from Outlook and other e-mail programs. Its intelligent spam filtering won’t eliminate spam, alas, but does an excellent job.

Wink

Wink (www.debugmode.com/wink/) is a presentation and tutorial writing tool for developing presentations in Macromedia Flash, standalone Windows executable, PDF, Postscript, HTML, BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, or GIF formats.

http://www.www.jabber.org/

http://www.mantisbt.org/

http://www.nvu.com/index.php



http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

Graphics

Dia

According to the Dia Web page (www.gnome.org/projects/dia/), “Dia is inspired by the commercial Windows program Visio, though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use.” Dia provides fewer shapes than Visio, but this disadvantage is slowly melting away as users, in the open-source tradition, contribute shapes. You can also find out how to create your own shapes on the Dia wiki. Python scripting is available, although not well documented.

GIMP

GIMP (www.gimp.org), short for GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring. It works on many operating systems and in many languages. Often compared favorably with Adobe Photoshop, GIMP is fully scriptable in its own scripting language, Script-Fu, Perl, and Python. GIMP also has support for movies.

Several books on GIMP are available in English, French, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Persistence of Vision Raytracer

POV Raytracer (www.povray.org) is probably the best known image creation program available for free. To get an idea of what users can do with it, visit the Web page’s Hall of Fame. POV Raytracer uses a full programming language for its scripts, which makes it far more powerful than many image programs.

PDF

PDFCreator

Windows does not come with the ability to produce PDFs from the output of any program. Repair this deficiency with PDFCreator (sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator), which, unlike some of its competitors, is completely free. Because it is a faux printer driver, it sees only the output from your program. To get all the features of PDFCreator that a program’s file format supports, you need a plug-in for that program.

However, you may not need PDFCreator, as both AbiWord and OpenOffice.org export directly to PDF.

Getting the Programs

To acquire FOSS programs, you can either go to the individual program’s Web site or pull in a CD image. CDs with open-source software include the Open CD (www.theopencd.org) and Software for Starving Students (www.softwarefor.org). The former has Windows versions of the programs; the latter, in spite of its name, is useful for professionals as well as students, and includes Macintosh versions.

You can, of course, burn the CD image. If you have a Linux file server, you (or your resident Linux guru) can mount the image as a loopback device, and make it available as a share to Windows and Macintosh computers. One disadvantage of the CDs is that they may be a revision or two behind the current software releases. If you must have the latest version, you can always haul it in separately.

For More Information

You should consider FOSS products the next time you’re shopping for new software. FOSS is as good as or better than proprietary products, and doesn’t cost nearly as much.

If you’re interested in further research on FOSS, take a look at Source-Forge (sourceforge.

http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/

http://www.gimp.org/

http://www.povray.org/

http://www.theopencd.org/

http://www.softwarefor.org/

http://www.sourceforge.net/

net) and freshmeat (freshmeat.net). Also, the OSSwin project, Open Source for Windows! (osswin.sourceforge.net) is recommended for those still using Windows. A more general resource is the Free Software Directory (directory.fsf.org).

Charles Curley (http://charlescurley.com) lives in Thermopolis,Wyoming, where he cavorts with the buffalo and in the hot springs, usually not simultaneously.

Source: Intercom, December 2006. Reprinted with permission from Charles Curley.

Technicalities Home




http://www.freshmeat.net/

http://www.osswin.sourceforge.net/

http://www.directory.fsf.org/

http://charlescurley.com/




Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home



by Ron Arner

The George Hoerter Scholarship recipients for 2007 have been chosen. The winners are:

● Mr. Michael Kibler, Metropolitan State College (undergraduate)● Ms. Jefferie K. Mitchell, CSU (graduate)

Michael Kibler

Michael Kibler is a Senior at Metropolitan State College in Denver and plans to graduate in the Fall of 2007. His goal is to then get his M.S. in Technical Communications and eventually pursue a career in the field of Website Usability.

Michael was recommended by one member of the Metro faculty for his strong desire to learn, his willingness to work hard, and an unending enthusiasm for any form of writing or communication. Another professor said that if she were asked to characterize Michael with simple descriptors, she would have to say, “Diligent Excellence!”

Jefferie K. Mitchell

Jefferie K. Mitchell is a first-year graduate student at CSU and plans to graduate in May of 2008, after which she would like to get a job related to health campaigns and/or research. She would eventually like to pursue her doctorate degree.

Jefferie is also a GTA (Graduate Teaching Assistant) at CSU, and was recommended by Don Zimmerman because she is a quick learner and shows strong potential to become an outstanding technical communicator.

Congratulations Michael and Jefferie!

About the George Hoerter Scholarships

The Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication annually grants two undergraduate or graduate scholarships in recognition of George E. Hoerter's contribution to our chapter and his service to STC. Each award is $1000. The funds may be used for:

● Tuition and fees● Books and class materials● STC regional and annual conferences● Technical communication seminars



http://www.stc.org/


Technicalities Home






Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


Elizabeth Frick Presents "That's a Good Question!" at November Chapter Meeting

by Al Kemp

Following a well-attended Consulting and Independent Contracting (CIC) Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting led by co-managers Linda Gallagher and Whitney Broach, president Deb Lockwood welcomed current members, new members, and guests to the November chapter meeting and new member drive. Lockwood congratulated membership committee manager Tammy Van Boening on the terrific set of gifts she assembled for the raffle including the grand prize: a license for the complete Webworks ePublisher Platform. After the announcements, program committee manager Kristy Astry introduced the speaker, Dr. Elizabeth (Bette) Frick.

November's speaker, Dr. Elizabeth (Bette) Frick

Dr. Frick, the Text Doctor(R), is a writer and editor who teaches writing in Denver Metro and Twin Cities companies and organizations. Her interactive classes and practical workshops help attendees improve communication skills. A former president of the STC Twin Cities Chapter, she won the 2002 Excellence in Training award from the Association of



http://www.stc.org/


Professional Communications Consultants (APCC).

Frick's program, "That's a good question! How writers can learn to be better questioners," explored how writers can generate perceptive questions, listen and probe for more information, and develop a thorough and tactful questioning strategy to elicit the information they need.

Frick stressed the importance of discovery skills by illustrating the kinds of questions successful inventors and entrepreneurs ask. For example, Blake Ross started the Mozilla Firefox project by asking, "What's bad about today's software?" All of us need discovery skills. Frick shared several quotes, including one by Albert Einstein: "The most important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

STC RMC members engaged in the presentation

Failure to ask the right questions can have disastrous consequences. The loss of the Mars Polar Lander was attributed to the project not asking, "What units of measure should we use?" One team used English units; another team used metric units.

The presentation analyzed nine types of questions:

● Permission ● Open-ended ● Closed ● Catchall ● Checking ● Probing ● Encouraging ● Restating or paraphrasing ● Reflecting

Frick encouraged the audience to think of open-ended questions by asking people to give a one-word hint for something about themselves that the audience did not know. For example, Frick gave "bars" as a one-word hint for her experience teaching English in a prison. The audience tried to guess the meaning of the hint with as few questions as possible. The best results were obtained by asking open-ended questions.

Relating to the interviewee is always a good strategy. Let the person know you care. Part of good questioning is good listening.

Avoid making assumptions, editorializing, and making statements that masquerade as questions. For example: "You have been accused of doing such-and-such very bad thing. Could you respond to that criticism?"

Frick warned the audience to avoid grilling questions, leading questions, and double-barreled questions. She noted that in some cultures, people do not like being questioned and avoid eye contact. In these situations, try writing questions rather than asking them in

person. Sitting next to an interviewee allows you to ask them questions without eye contact.

Above all, she concluded, remember this quote by Mark Victor Hansen: "The size of your question determines the size of your answer."

Raffle winners

Deb Lockwood and Tammy Van Boening drawing tickets for the raffle items

Technicalities Home






Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home



It's almost that time of year again! The Rocky Mountain Chapter will soon be seeking new officers for 2007-2008. Volunteering for office provides an excellent opportunity to network with peers, grow professionally and personally, and serve your profession. And, given today's dynamic environment, it's an exciting time to get involved in our chapter.

The following describes the elected chapter offices:

President

Note: The vice president automatically moves to the position of president for the year following the election.

The president's responsibilities include the following:

● Conduct meetings of the chapter administrative council ● Assign duties to officers and appoint assistants or committees as needed ● Help form chapter policy, goals, and objectives ● Supply guidelines for budgets, expenditures, and other fiscal activities ● Speak at chapter meetings and write articles for Technicalities ● Share ideas with other chapter leaders and submit reports to the Region 7 director-

sponsor

Typical commitment: 6 hours/week

Vice President

Because this position leads to the chapter presidency, the vice president needs all the qualities of the president: enthusiasm, energy, responsibility, and good problem-solving skills.

The vice president's responsibilities include the following:

● Help form chapter policy, goals, and objectives ● Assume the duties of chapter president when needed ● Act as liaison with local universities and student chapters ● Attend the chapter leaders workshop at the Region 7 conference ● Identify possible overall committee managers and develop overall plans for the next

term

Typical commitment: 2-4 hours/week

Treasurer

The treasurer's responsibilities include the following:

● Establish and monitor a chapter budget for the fiscal year ● Establish and maintain a checking account, savings account, CD account, and



http://www.stc.org/

scholarship fund ● Deposit chapter funds and pay invoices ● Prepare monthly reports of chapter income and expenditures and a detailed year-

end report ● Maintain all chapter contracts


Secretary

The secretary's responsibilities include the following:

● Take minutes at administrative council and other chapter meetings (or arrange for a substitute)

● Prepare and distribute copies of the minutes ● Write brief descriptions of chapter meetings for Technicalities ● Prepare correspondence related to chapter business


Nominating Committee

The nominating committee performs the following duties:

● Invite members to run for office ● Evaluate qualifications of possible candidates and announce the slate of candidates ● Prepare the ballot, hold the election, and report the results


Remember that Committee Chairs are not elected, they are appointed by the Council.

To become a candidate or to recommend someone else for office, please contact Martha Sippel or Mary Jo Stark.

Technicalities Home









Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


Technicalities

This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer 5x or newer.

Editorial Staff

Newsletter Editors: Donna Brannan and Stephen Wertzbaugher HTML Editor: Dana Dutson Article Editors: Bridget Julian, Jay Mead, and Lynnette Reveling Newsletter Staff: Deb Lockwood Newsletter design by Steve Kavalec and Ron Arner

Technicalities is published bi-monthly by the Rocky Mountain Chapter (RMC) of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and is distributed to chapter members, editors of other STC newsletters, and officers of the Society. It is available on request to anyone interested in technical communication. Other STC chapters and publications may reprint material if credit is given.

This newsletter invites writers to submit articles on subjects of interest that they wish to be considered for publication to Society and chapter members. Please credit repeated material and send a copy of the original material to: [email protected]

Submission Guidelines

Submission deadlines and themes for 2007 are as follows:

February/March issue, “Training” and “Instructional Design & Learning," Due February 1

April/May issue, “Careers/Alternate Careers,” Due April 1

June/July issue, “Policies & Procedures,” Due June 1

The staff will also announce the upcoming issue and its theme via an e-mail to the membership and/or at chapter meetings.

The preferred word count for articles is 500-750 words. If your subject matter warrants it, articles longer than 1,000 words will be serialized between two or more issues.

Please e-mail all submissions to: [email protected] with the issue date, such as “October/November 2006,” in the subject line. The editor can be reached during the day at 303.956.1906, by e-mail at [email protected] and by postal mail at 6025 S. Quebec St., Suite 260, Englewood, CO 80111.

Submissions can be pasted into the body of the e-mail, or sent as an attachment. If you send your article as an attachment, it should be in either RTF or DOC format. Please include your contact information.

A “headshot” of yourself to be printed with your article would be appreciated.



http://www.stc.org/




Note: By submitting an article, you implicitly grant a license to this newsletter to run the article and for other STC publications to reprint it without permission. Copyright is held by the writer. In your cover letter, please let the editor know if this article has run elsewhere, and if it has been submitted for consideration to other publications.

The Technicalities staff reserves the right to edit articles for clarity and length; substantive editing of feature articles will be reviewed with the author prior to publication.

STC RMC 2005-2006 Officers

Administrative Council

President: Deb Lockwood Vice President: Ron Arner Secretary: Al Kemp Treasurer: Jessica Betterly Past President: Marella Colyvas

Region 7 Director-Sponsor:

John Hedtke

STC RMC Committee Managers

Assistant to President: Frank Tagader Associate Fellow Nominations: Martha Sippel Database: Karen Kraft-Miller Hospitality: Julie Bettis Jobs: Anne Halsey Listserv: Karen Kraft-Miller Hospitality: Julie Bettis Membership: Tammy VanBoening Mentoring: Deb Lockwood Nominating Committee: Mary Jo Stark, Martha Sippel Programs: Kristy Astry Scholarships: Marc Lee and Don Zimmerman (Mentor) Seminars: Bette Frick Strategic Planning: Martha Sippel Volunteers: Ron Arner Web site: Anne Halsey

STC RMC SIG Managers

Consulting and Independent Contracting Special Interest Group (CIC SIG): Whitney Broach and Linda Gallagher Northern Colorado: Carmen Carmack Western Slope: Victoria Thomas

Society for Technical Communication, Rocky Mountain Chapter

General Chapter Business Rocky Mountain Chapter Society for Technical Communication 6025 S. Quebec St., Suite 260 Englewood, CO 80111 [email protected]

Job Postings Send job postings to [email protected] Jobs are posted on the chapter Web site (http://www.stcrmc.org/jobs_freelance.jobs.htm), and are e-mailed to the techcomm-discuss mailing list.










http://www.stcrmc.org/jobs_freelance.jobs.htm

Chapter Web site http://www.stcrmc.org

STC International Office

901 N. Stuart Street, Suite 904 Arlington, VA 22203-1822 703.522.4114 [email protected] http://www.stc.org

Technicalities Home





http://www.stc.org/




Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


What Did you Want for Christmas?

by Stephen Wertzbaugher

As I write this column I can’t help but marvel at the love affair our society has for technology. That same love affair seems to include the Technical Communications profession as well. After all, where would we be as technical communicators without our technological toys? Some of us, me included, might answer, “still sane.” But humor aside, like it or not, our technology drives both our private and our professional lives.

And how could it be otherwise? Who among us can say with a straight face that we prefer to write with a manual typewriter than with a computer? I don’t mean that as a slight against manual typewriters; it was a fine tool in its day, but its day is past. Time as well as technology moves on and so too must we, like it or not. And if we do not keep up with technology in our own profession we, like the dinosaurs, may find ourselves extinct, which begs the question, “what tools and technologies should I embrace as a technical communicator?”

The answer is simple: select the right tool for the job. Implementing that answer, however, is never as easy as it may seem. That’s because writing environments are as individual as writers and despite marketing claims to the contrary, no writing tool currently exists that “does it all.” So how do you choose the right tool for the job? With great consideration and care.

Don’t rush your decision and don’t let others make you rush your decision, because the tool you choose today will be with you for a long time, maybe years; unless your company doesn’t mind making capricious and expensive decisions. Maybe your company has money to burn and they don’t mind lighting bonfires with their cash. If you work in a company like that, how do I get a job there?

Trust me on this, though. Most companies hate spending money for things that, in their mind, have no direct relation to their profitability. And if management perceives that you have wasted their hard earned profits they will squish you like a bug, which brings me to my most wished for Christmas gift this year, a 30GB video iPod.

The iPod topped my Christmas wish list this year and like a giddy five-year-old I couldn’t wait to wake up Christmas morning and open my presents to see if I had gotten one. But I didn’t wake up one day and say, “I want an iPod.” I knew that I wanted a portable music player, but I also knew that I wanted the right one for me. I researched the market, read specifications and reviews, spoke with friends who owned portable music players, went to the stores and played with the different players that were available, including the new one from Microsoft. And in the end, I chose the iPod as the best fit for my current and future needs as well as for its flash and pizzazz.

With that in mind, if you, as technical communicators, are searching for that cool new tool to make your job a little easier I ask you to use the same care and plodding consideration that I used to select my iPod. You won’t regret it. Now go forth and communicate complicated technical information in a form that the common people can understand; I want to play with my new iPod.



http://www.stc.org/


Technicalities Home






Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


President's Corner

by Deb Lockwood

It’s a new year, which always gives me a feeling of renewal and rebirth. I look forward to the many challenges the new year brings, and at this point the year is full of opportunity and hope; a clean slate. Plus, I really enjoy opening my new Franklin Planner calendar, placing the sheets in my binder, and writing on those blank pages.

Like most of you, I have recently gone through another type of renewal: renewal of my STC chapter and special interest group (SIG) membership. (Membership renewal fees were due January 1, 2007.) With my membership I reap many benefits, including:

● Professional development● Access to publications (Intercom and Technical Communication)● Participation in discussion lists● Camaraderie● Mentoring● Job leads and referrals● Continuing education● Up-to-date industry information● Opportunities to serve, to lead, and to build skills

And what do those benefits cost me? Less than $15 a month. That’s quite the bargain!

What else does it cost me? As an active volunteer I spend some time and a little gasoline money here and there. But in exchange I establish working relationships with some of the brightest minds in the Colorado technical communications field. And I enhance my skills as a leader, mentor, negotiator, diplomat, and writer.

You may have paid your dues for this new year, but how about an actual renewal—will you experience one this year? Specifically, consider renewing your commitment to the STC RMC and becoming more involved in our community. The chapter and your peers could benefit from your expertise and your opinions. And perhaps you could benefit from the experience.

If you would like to discuss how to take on a more active role in our chapter, contact Ron Arner ([email protected]) or me ([email protected]).

By the way, even though the STC membership renewal deadline was January 1, it’s not too late. For those of us already in the profession or joining the profession, the benefits really do outweigh the costs. Go to https://www.stc.org/duesrenewal/ to renew today.



http://www.stc.org/




https://www.stc.org/duesrenewal/

Technicalities Home






Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


The Corporate University, Online Training, and You

by Donna Brannan

What’s a corporate university, you ask? As defined in The Corporate University Handbook: Designing, Managing, and Growing a Successful Program (Mark Allen):

A corporate university is an educational entity that is a strategic tool designed to assist its parent organization in achieving its mission by conducting activities that cultivate individual and organizational learning, knowledge, and wisdom.

The company I work for decided to establish a corporate university to train its employees to deliver consistent and excellent service to its clients, in accordance with “the company way,” and I was asked to develop some e-learning modules for this university. An all-inclusive definition of e-learning would be “a structured, purposeful use of electronic systems in support of the learning process,” and modules refers to one complete e-learning lesson covering one subject.

Once I began working on this project, I realized that there was quite a bit I didn’t know about writing e-learning course material. I began a search for a consultant who had experience and a degree in instructional design and adult/corporate training. The consultant I located through the STC RMC provided me with some great suggestions based on the one module reviewed, including the following:

● Use the first screen of an e-learning module to draw learners in. Why would learners want to take this course? Make it meaningful and relevant to their work, and show that it will bring them some type of satisfaction.

● Include a case study so learners can identify with this experience throughout the course.

● Create characters for certain modules.● Include appropriate graphics.

The modules were to precede a two-day employee workshop. The e-learning training portion was to be completed by the learners to teach them the location of tools on the company’s Intranet and the order of steps to be taken while working with the client. Everything learned while completing the training modules would be reviewed the first day of the workshop.

Suggestion: It would be best to create workshop training materials concurrently with e-learning training if your workshop is to be based on material from the online training sessions.

Some e-learning professionals recommend that e-learning be blended with classroom or workshop learning. According to Michael Allen’s Guide to E-Learning, by Michael W. Allen (2002), a well-nurtured learner will do better than a learner who is isolated or ignored. Blended solutions can be great—when done well, they can accomplish what no single form of instructional delivery can achieve. I think this is true in some situations where technical classes can be taught online, but some subjects, such as communications, would be best taught in a workshop (unless you are teaching online communications).

Here are some suggestions if you are establishing a corporate university. First, try to find



http://www.stc.org/


out what has already been taught within your company. There may be written material already available that you can use as a starting point. If the corporate university is to teach employees how to do things the “company way,” you must research what that “way” is, usually within company goals and mission statements.

For creating your courses, consider using e-learning software such as Mindflash, so your IT department will not be taking on additional workload. From the Mindflash website: “Mindflash combines tools to create content (authoring tools), build and manage courses (learning content management system), and manage course enrollment and reports (learner management system) at a fraction of the cost of older systems.” You can locate them at www.mindflash.com and can begin using this software right away by creating your documents in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or other application.

What are some tips from the experts for creating your online courses? In addition to using suggestions made by our e-learning consultant, I scanned the pages of Michael Allen’s Guide to e-Learning and e-Learning and the Science of Instruction (Ruth Colvin Clark). Michael W. Allen lists three priorities for training success:

● Ensure learners are highly motivated to learn. Make this your first priority. “Highly motivated learners will find a way to learn.”

● Guide learners to appropriate content. “Highly motivated learners are eager to get their hands on anything that will help them learn.”

● Provide a meaningful and memorable learning experience “If a learner can’t understand the learning experience, or the experience seems irrelevant, it is obviously a waste of time for that individual. If a learner can’t remember what was learned, the experience is similarly unproductive.”

E-learning can provide all three!

e-Learning and the Science of Instruction gives these recommendations for creating e-learning material:

● Make graphics relevant, not decorative. ● Use animation to illustrate processes, procedures, and principles.● Use organizational graphics to show relationships among ideas or lesson topics.● Place corresponding words and graphics near each other.● Present words as speech rather than onscreen text.● Avoid lessons with extraneous sounds, pictures, and words.

I suggest that you not try to achieve a “perfect” module the first time. Do your best, get it online, have it tested, and go for it! Minor tweaks can be made at a later time. The modules for our university, for example, will be updated on a continuing basis as the company changes and technology develops.

Another book our consultant recommended is Designing Web-Based Training, by Bill Horton. If you would like the contact information for the consultant our company retained, please email me at [email protected].

Resources

Michael Allen’s Guide to e-Learning, Michael W. Allen. Wiley, 2002.

e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer. Pfeiffer, 2002.

The Corporate University Handbook: Designing, Managing, and Growing a Successful Program, Mark Allen, editor. American Management Association, 2002.

Designing Web-Based Training, William Horton. Wiley, 2000.

Mindflash e-learning software: www.mindflash.com




Technicalities Home






Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home



Emerging Professionals is a new column that students of technical communications and professionals transitioning into the field won’t want to miss. This column will inform you of what’s happening in the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Society for Technical Communication, explain how to network and get involved in the local chapter, and highlight the professional benefits of being part of this organization.

If you’re a student, you will want to check out the Rocky Mountain Chapter’s college scholarships for 2007-2008 (http://stcrmc.org/chapter/scholarships/scholar.htm). These scholarships provide a wonderful way for working students who do not qualify for standard financial aid to get some support while pursuing coursework in Technical Communications. Or looking for a job in the field? Then, you will definitely want to check out the local job line (http://stcrmc.org/jobs_freelance/jobline.htm). It is by far the best resource available to technical communication professionals in the Denver metropolitan area, regardless of your level of experience.

Stay tuned for our first article in the February/March issue of Technicalities.

Technicalities Home





http://www.stc.org/

http://stcrmc.org/chapter/scholarships/scholar.htm

http://http//stcrmc.org/jobs_freelance/jobline.htm




Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


Chapter News

Welcome to Our New Members

New, transferred, or returning members for the months of September and October 2006:

● Jonathan P. Mankin● Kathy Recchiuti● David J. Sweetser● Garret E. Truax● Lauren S. Walters

Chapter Meetings

January 18, 2007 – Take the Right Risks with Intelligent Disobedience (Bob McGannon)

February 15, 2007 – Yoga for Stress Relief Eases Bodies and Minds (Ron Arner)

March 15, 2007 – Senior Member Dinner (With a Special Guest)

April 19, 2007 – Communicating Clearly with Colleagues and Clients (Ginny Redish)

May 24, 2007 – How to Build a Business Case (Jack Molisani) and chapter business meeting

Upcoming Seminars

January 17, 2007 – The Xfactor-From HTML to XHTML

Presenter(s): Neil Perlin

Level: Beginner/Intermediate

January 31, 2007 – ANSI Z535.6- A New Standard for Safety Information in Product-Accompanying Literature

Presenter(s): Steven Hall and Elaine Wisniewski

Level: Intermediate/Advanced

See the STC Web site at http://stc.org/edu/seminarsList01.asp for more information.

Open Volunteer Positions

Ron Arner is currently serving as our chapter's Volunteer Coordinator, and as such, is soliciting people to serve in the following positions:



http://www.stc.org/

http://stc.org/edu/seminarsList01.asp

● Publicity Manager who generates interest in the community by submitting press releases, etc., in advance of chapter events.

● Volunteer Coordinator promotes volunteerism within the chapter and assists people in finding positions that match members' skills and meet their professional goals.

● Project Manager and Website Manager, who manages the chapter website, ensuring timely and accurate content, participates in and manages the resources for the restructuring and rework of our chapter website.

If you have the interest in these areas and the skills to perform these tasks, please contact Ron at [email protected].

Networking Opportunities

Get connected ... If you're an STC RMC member, consider joining techcomm-discuss, the chapter's email list. Not only will you be a part of the chapter's online community, you'll also automatically receive notification of all job postings sent to the chapter's jobline. For information about the list, including how to join, view the list FAQ page and the posting rules.

Employment News, Trends, and Opportunities

If you would like to receive job alerts, sign up for the job announcement list by emailing [email protected].

You can also view job announcements on the STC RMC Web site at http://www.stcrmc.org/jobs_freelance/jobline.htm.

Education News, Trends, and Opportunities

Event: WritersUA Conference Registration Now Open All the information is now available for The 15th Annual WritersUA Conference for Software User Assistance, March 25-28, at the Hyatt Regency in Long Beach, CA. .

Technicalities Home




http://www.stcrmc.org/chapter/mailing_list.htm






http://www.writersua.com/ohc07/index.html




Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


STC News

Report or Announcement of Society-level Activities

From Lloyd Tucker, Director of Education, STC: Online registration now available for the Technical Communication Summit - STC's 54th Annual Conference and EXPO, May 12-16, 2007 in Minneapolis, MN (USA). Register online NOW (http://www.stc.org/54thConf/register/index.asp), get the Early Bird special ($645) and make the Technical Communication Summit your primary source for learning and networking. Early Bird Registration ends February 28, 2007.

Additional Report or Announcement of Society-level Activities

Dear STC members,

I'm writing to let you know that Sherry Michaels has resigned her position as STC Director. As I am sure you are aware, Sherry has been an active member of the STC Board of Directors. The Board thanks her for her years of service to STC, particularly her strong sponsorship of Region 5 and her work with STC’s Communities.

Brenda Huettner has been unanimously approved by the Board of Directors to fill Sherry’s seat as STC Director, and she will be taking over the sponsorship duties for Region 5. Brenda is a longtime STC member and an STC Fellow. She is past president of Region 5’s Southern Arizona chapter and also a longtime leader in the Management SIG. Brenda has accepted the position and she welcomes the opportunity to serve the Society on the Board of Directors. You can reach Brenda at [email protected].

Our Bylaws specify that Brenda will serve as a Director through the Board of Directors meeting in May, 2007. At that time, an elected replacement will be announced for the final year of Sherry’s term.

Sincerely,

Paula Berger STC President, 2006-07 [email protected]

STC Scholarship Program 2007-2008

Scholarship applications for the 2007-2008 academic year are due by February 15, 2007. Please help spread the word to potential scholarship candidates. Information about the scholarships, and application forms can be found online at:



Please note that this year we are pleased that a new scholarship, the Mary Norby Scholarship will be offered for the first time. Mary Norby Scholarship applicants must be



http://www.stc.org/







women working in the federal government, full or part-time as a secretary or administrative assistant.

Should you have any questions, please direct them to Mr. Scott DeLoach, [email protected] or 404-522-0003.

Technicalities Home








Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


Free or Open-Source Tools for Technical Communicators, Part I: The Software

by Charles Curley, Member

Free/open-source software (FOSS), like proprietary software, can be either terrible or excellent. Because authors of free software usually don’t advertise their wares, this article looks at some of the better offerings. Part two of this article, to be published in the January issue, will cover interoperability between open-source products and the products your clients are likely to use.

Most open-source programs begin as a way to scratch an itch. The programmer then makes the software available to other people, who adapt it to solve their problems, fix its bugs, or otherwise improve it. If you are new to open-source software, the Go Open Source campaign Web page (www.go-opensource.org) is a good place to start your research.

The poster child for open-source software is Linux. If you use Linux, you probably know of most of these programs. If not, fear not: Most of the programs described in this article are available for the Macintosh, and all are available for Microsoft Windows.

If you are contemplating moving to Linux, using cross-platform applications on Windows or the Mac will give you a good idea of how well the switch will work without the learning curve for Linux itself. You can get into the shallow end of the pool first.

Licensing

Most open-source software is released under the general public license (GPL, www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html) or similar licenses. (See the Open Source Initiative’s Web page, www.opensource.org for more information.) Before you use any program, be sure you understand the terms of the license. Generally, you can use—and give away—open-source software for free. You have the right to get the source code for the program. If you give away the program, you must tell the recipient where the source is available. You may modify the source and use the resulting program, and you may give away your modifications as well.

One advantage of FOSS for a typical company or sole proprietorship is that it makes your licensing issues go away. You don’t have to buy a new license every few years. You don’t have to pay to upgrade, and you can upgrade at will. You don’t have to audit computers for license compliance of open-source software.

Because you can give the software away for free (or for a reasonable media charge), you can provide it to your colleagues, friends, neighbors, nonprofit organizations, churches, and schools. You can help your neighbors—something you can’t do with proprietary software.

Because you are legally entitled to the source code and you may modify it, another advantage of FOSS is that you can customize a program to suit your own shop. If you aren’t a software engineer, you can probably find someone to do this for you.



http://www.stc.org/


http://www.go-opensource.org/





Evaluation Version

The evaluation version of an opensource program is the program itself. Install it, use it, and compare it to competing software as you would any other program. The software you are evaluating is the real thing, not some crippleware that comes with a bunch of promises.

Malware

I hear someone muttering, “Yeah, I’m going to haul this stuff in from someone I’ve never heard of, install it, and it will attack my computer.” A reasonable suspicion. But because the software is open-source, anyone can audit the source code for malware and compile it locally. If those experts find malware, you can bet it will get headlines in the appropriate places.

FOSS is often audited for security problems by external experts, which is impossible with closed software. And when the inevitable bugs are found, FOSS programs tend to be repaired faster than closed-source programs. Most FOSS is digitally signed and comes with a checksum so that you can check the integrity of your transfers.

I’ve been working with Linux for more than twelve years, with other FOSS even longer, and have hauled in tens of gigabytes of FOSS. I have yet to see malware in any of it.

Support

The support model for open-source software is different from what you are used to. Support comes via e-mail lists, wikis, bulletin board systems (BBSs), or other Internet tools. It is peer-to-peer, rather than top-down. As a FOSS user, you are one of a community. You may ask questions, and your peers may (or may not) answer them. Similarly, you may answer some of your peers’ questions, which may be a great way for you to give something back to the community that gave you this software.

You can hire experts to support some of the more popular FOSS programs. For example, the OpenOffice.org Web site (www.openoffice.org) has a page that lists consultants who offer support for it. Companies like IBM, Sun, and Novell offer similar services, as do I.

Some open-source software has documentation that is mediocre or worse. If you want to return something to the community, please pitch in and help.

Office Tools

The Open Document Format

The Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument, www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office) is a standard approved by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the governing body for XML documents, and the International Organization for Standards (ISO). OpenDocument provides a standard for interchange between office applications; I’ll cover this standard in more detail in the January issue. OpenDocument will become more important as governments and companies standardize it. If you are shopping for new office software, add the OpenDocument format (ODF) to your checklist. Both the office programs covered below, OpenOffice.org and AbiWord, already support ODF, and some proprietary programs (e.g., IBM’s Lotus Notes) do or will support it.

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org (OOo, www.openoffice.org) is a full-featured office suite consisting of Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation), Math (equations), and Base (database connector). Heavily backed by Sun Microsystems, OOo is probably the best known open-source office suite. Sun also offers Star Office, a supported version of OOo, for sale.

If you are accustomed to Microsoft Office, you will find OOo similar. Usually, where there is





a difference, the OOo version is better. To give one example, OOo allows regular expressions in its search-and-replace function. I’ve been using OOo for seven years and now find Microsoft Office awkward, slow, and cranky.

OOo has excellent interchange with Microsoft Office, to the point where some of my clients don’t even know I’m not using Word. OOo’s “native” file format is OpenDocument, so you can readily move files to any application that supports OpenDocument. If you work with clients who use Office, you can save your documents in Office format.

Support for OOo includes several books. I use an earlier edition of the OpenOffice.org 2.x Resource Kit by Solveig Haugland and Floyd Jones, just released by Prentice Hall.

OpenOffice.org is multilingual. Because users can get the source, they can customize it by adding their language. As a result, OOo supports almost twice as many languages as does Microsoft Office, with more to come.

AbiWord

Because of its very light footprint—5.1 MB for the core Windows installer—AbiWord (www.abisource.com) can run on older hardware where Microsoft Office or even OpenOffice.org would bog down. This is probably not a consideration in your business, but it could be important in a nonprofit organization or a business in a poorer country.

AbiWord looks a lot like Microsoft Word, and has many of the same features. Some features of interest to translators are an easy connection to Babelfish and the free translation service at www.freetranslation.com. Another useful feature is support for a wide variety of file formats, including DocBook XML, MIF, LaTeX, and OpenDocument.

Like Word and OOo, AbiWord uses styles. Like OpenOffice.org, AbiWord supports many languages, including right-to-left languages such as Arabic.

Page Layout

Scribus

Among the many useful features of Scribus (www.scribus.net), a page layout program, are full support for PDF (including the ISO standard PDF/X-3, interactive PDF, and importing from PDF) and EPS. Scribus was designed to use Unicode, and supports right-to-left text. In addition to the usual FOSS support, several of the developers offer commercial support. Support is available for some twenty-five languages, with more to come.

Communication Tools

Firefox

The Mozilla Foundation’s awardwinning Web browser is a distant, opensource descendant of the Netscape browser. Tabbed browsing means you don’t get your desktop cluttered with a slew of open windows. Incremental searching makes searching a Web page for a term very easy. Also, Firefox (www.mozilla.com) has search engine access built into it.

If you develop for the Web, get the Firefox extension “Web Developer,” which adds a powerful toolbar that makes development go much faster. Because of Firefox’s increasing popularity, Web developers should be testing their Web pages on Firefox as well as other browsers.

The most important reason to use Firefox is that it is more secure than Internet Explorer. Firefox stops a number of Web browser attacks, and also has controls to help you manage obnoxious aspects of the Web like popup windows.

Gaim



http://www.freetranslation.com/

http://www.scribus.net/


Gaim (gaim.sourceforge.net) is an instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM, ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus Sametime, and Zephyr networks. Because Gaim is multiprotocol, you can consolidate your IM accounts into one client and use it for many of your IM needs.

If your department or company wants to run its own IM server, it can use Gaim with the open-protocol Jabber (www.jabber.org) server.

Mantis

A small, lightweight bug-tracking system, Mantis (www.mantisbt.org) is similar to Bugzilla, but much simpler and easier to use. Just because it is called a bug-tracking system doesn’t mean you can only use it for bugs. Use it to track anything, including personal or family issues.

One of the nice things about a good bug tracker is that you can open it up to your customers selectively, allowing them to enter issues directly into your system and communicate directly with your writers.

Based on PHP and MySQL, Mantis should install on almost any Web server.

MoinMoin

Project coordination requires a simple way to preserve and communicate project members’ thoughts. An excellent way to do this is with a wiki. (Probably the best known example of a wiki is Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki.)

MoinMoin (moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de), one of a number of good wiki programs, is available in a desktop version that you can use as a personal tool without having a Web server installed. Alternatively, you can run MoinMoin for the entire department (or company) using Apache, Microsoft IIS, or the company’s own Web server.

Nvu

According to its Web page, Nvu (www.nvu.com/index.php) is “a complete Web Authoring System for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (which stands for ‘new view’) makes managing a Web site a snap. Now anyone can create Web pages and manage a Web site with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.”

The claim of rivaling FrontPage may be a bit of an exaggeration, but Nvu is an impressive development tool. You can specify a DTD, character set, and language, so that your pages comply with W3C standards from the start. Everything is point-and-click, but if you want to get your hands dirty editing the HTML, you can. Nvu is not a full content management system, but it works for one-off or light Web sites.

Thunderbird

There are any number of good reasons to switch from Outlook to Thunderbird (www.mozilla.com), a descendant of Netscape’s e-mail client. Not least is security: Outlook is the preferred target of e-mail Trojan horses, phishing, and other e-mail attacks. Thunderbird is easier to use, and will import your e-mail, address book, and some settings from Outlook and other e-mail programs. Its intelligent spam filtering won’t eliminate spam, alas, but does an excellent job.

Wink

Wink (www.debugmode.com/wink/) is a presentation and tutorial writing tool for developing presentations in Macromedia Flash, standalone Windows executable, PDF, Postscript, HTML, BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, or GIF formats.

http://www.jabber.org/

http://www.mantisbt.org/

http://www.nvu.com/index.php



http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

Graphics

Dia

According to the Dia Web page (www.gnome.org/projects/dia/), “Dia is inspired by the commercial Windows program Visio, though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use.” Dia provides fewer shapes than Visio, but this disadvantage is slowly melting away as users, in the open-source tradition, contribute shapes. You can also find out how to create your own shapes on the Dia wiki. Python scripting is available, although not well documented.

GIMP

GIMP (www.gimp.org), short for GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring. It works on many operating systems and in many languages. Often compared favorably with Adobe Photoshop, GIMP is fully scriptable in its own scripting language, Script-Fu, Perl, and Python. GIMP also has support for movies.

Several books on GIMP are available in English, French, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Persistence of Vision Raytracer

POV Raytracer (www.povray.org) is probably the best known image creation program available for free. To get an idea of what users can do with it, visit the Web page’s Hall of Fame. POV Raytracer uses a full programming language for its scripts, which makes it far more powerful than many image programs.

PDF

PDFCreator

Windows does not come with the ability to produce PDFs from the output of any program. Repair this deficiency with PDFCreator (sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator), which, unlike some of its competitors, is completely free. Because it is a faux printer driver, it sees only the output from your program. To get all the features of PDFCreator that a program’s file format supports, you need a plug-in for that program.

However, you may not need PDFCreator, as both AbiWord and OpenOffice.org export directly to PDF.

Getting the Programs

To acquire FOSS programs, you can either go to the individual program’s Web site or pull in a CD image. CDs with open-source software include the Open CD (www.theopencd.org) and Software for Starving Students (www.softwarefor.org). The former has Windows versions of the programs; the latter, in spite of its name, is useful for professionals as well as students, and includes Macintosh versions.

You can, of course, burn the CD image. If you have a Linux file server, you (or your resident Linux guru) can mount the image as a loopback device, and make it available as a share to Windows and Macintosh computers. One disadvantage of the CDs is that they may be a revision or two behind the current software releases. If you must have the latest version, you can always haul it in separately.

For More Information

You should consider FOSS products the next time you’re shopping for new software. FOSS is as good as or better than proprietary products, and doesn’t cost nearly as much.

If you’re interested in further research on FOSS, take a look at Source-Forge (sourceforge.

http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/

http://www.gimp.org/

http://www.povray.org/

http://www.theopencd.org/

http://www.softwarefor.org/


net) and freshmeat (freshmeat.net). Also, the OSSwin project, Open Source for Windows! (osswin.sourceforge.net) is recommended for those still using Windows. A more general resource is the Free Software Directory (directory.fsf.org).

Charles Curley (http://charlescurley.com) lives in Thermopolis,Wyoming, where he cavorts with the buffalo and in the hot springs, usually not simultaneously.

Source: Intercom, December 2006. Reprinted with permission from Charles Curley.

Technicalities Home




http://www.freshmeat.net/

http://www.osswin.sourceforge.net/

http://www.directory.fsf.org/

http://charlescurley.com/




Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home



by Ron Arner

The George Hoerter Scholarship recipients for 2007 have been chosen. The winners are:

● Mr. Michael Kibler, Metropolitan State College (undergraduate)● Ms. Jefferie K. Mitchell, CSU (graduate)

Michael Kibler

Michael Kibler is a Senior at Metropolitan State College in Denver and plans to graduate in the Fall of 2007. His goal is to then get his M.S. in Technical Communications and eventually pursue a career in the field of Website Usability.

Michael was recommended by one member of the Metro faculty for his strong desire to learn, his willingness to work hard, and an unending enthusiasm for any form of writing or communication. Another professor said that if she were asked to characterize Michael with simple descriptors, she would have to say, “Diligent Excellence!”

Jefferie K. Mitchell

Jefferie K. Mitchell is a first-year graduate student at CSU and plans to graduate in May of 2008, after which she would like to get a job related to health campaigns and/or research. She would eventually like to pursue her doctorate degree.

Jefferie is also a GTA (Graduate Teaching Assistant) at CSU, and was recommended by Don Zimmerman because she is a quick learner and shows strong potential to become an outstanding technical communicator.

Congratulations Michael and Jefferie!

About the George Hoerter Scholarships

The Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication annually grants two undergraduate or graduate scholarships in recognition of George E. Hoerter's contribution to our chapter and his service to STC. Each award is $1000. The funds may be used for:

● Tuition and fees● Books and class materials● STC regional and annual conferences● Technical communication seminars



http://www.stc.org/


Technicalities Home






Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home


Elizabeth Frick Presents "That's a Good Question!" at November Chapter Meeting

by Al Kemp

Following a well-attended Consulting and Independent Contracting (CIC) Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting led by co-managers Linda Gallagher and Whitney Broach, president Deb Lockwood welcomed current members, new members, and guests to the November chapter meeting and new member drive. Lockwood congratulated membership committee manager Tammy Van Boening on the terrific set of gifts she assembled for the raffle including the grand prize: a license for the complete Webworks ePublisher Platform. After the announcements, program committee manager Kristy Astry introduced the speaker, Dr. Elizabeth (Bette) Frick.

November's speaker, Dr. Elizabeth (Bette) Frick

Dr. Frick, the Text Doctor(R), is a writer and editor who teaches writing in Denver Metro and Twin Cities companies and organizations. Her interactive classes and practical workshops help attendees improve communication skills. A former president of the STC Twin Cities Chapter, she won the 2002 Excellence in Training award from the Association of



http://www.stc.org/


Professional Communications Consultants (APCC).

Frick's program, "That's a good question! How writers can learn to be better questioners," explored how writers can generate perceptive questions, listen and probe for more information, and develop a thorough and tactful questioning strategy to elicit the information they need.

Frick stressed the importance of discovery skills by illustrating the kinds of questions successful inventors and entrepreneurs ask. For example, Blake Ross started the Mozilla Firefox project by asking, "What's bad about today's software?" All of us need discovery skills. Frick shared several quotes, including one by Albert Einstein: "The most important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

STC RMC members engaged in the presentation

Failure to ask the right questions can have disastrous consequences. The loss of the Mars Polar Lander was attributed to the project not asking, "What units of measure should we use?" One team used English units; another team used metric units.

The presentation analyzed nine types of questions:

● Permission ● Open-ended ● Closed ● Catchall ● Checking ● Probing ● Encouraging ● Restating or paraphrasing ● Reflecting

Frick encouraged the audience to think of open-ended questions by asking people to give a one-word hint for something about themselves that the audience did not know. For example, Frick gave "bars" as a one-word hint for her experience teaching English in a prison. The audience tried to guess the meaning of the hint with as few questions as possible. The best results were obtained by asking open-ended questions.

Relating to the interviewee is always a good strategy. Let the person know you care. Part of good questioning is good listening.

Avoid making assumptions, editorializing, and making statements that masquerade as questions. For example: "You have been accused of doing such-and-such very bad thing. Could you respond to that criticism?"

Frick warned the audience to avoid grilling questions, leading questions, and double-barreled questions. She noted that in some cultures, people do not like being questioned and avoid eye contact. In these situations, try writing questions rather than asking them in

person. Sitting next to an interviewee allows you to ask them questions without eye contact.

Above all, she concluded, remember this quote by Mark Victor Hansen: "The size of your question determines the size of your answer."

Raffle winners

Deb Lockwood and Tammy Van Boening drawing tickets for the raffle items

Technicalities Home






Technicalities Home

Columns:


President's Corner



Chapter News

STC News

Features:


Communicators




STC RMC Home



It's almost that time of year again! The Rocky Mountain Chapter will soon be seeking new officers for 2007-2008. Volunteering for office provides an excellent opportunity to network with peers, grow professionally and personally, and serve your profession. And, given today's dynamic environment, it's an exciting time to get involved in our chapter.

The following describes the elected chapter offices:

President

Note: The vice president automatically moves to the position of president for the year following the election.

The president's responsibilities include the following:

● Conduct meetings of the chapter administrative council ● Assign duties to officers and appoint assistants or committees as needed ● Help form chapter policy, goals, and objectives ● Supply guidelines for budgets, expenditures, and other fiscal activities ● Speak at chapter meetings and write articles for Technicalities ● Share ideas with other chapter leaders and submit reports to the Region 7 director-

sponsor


Vice President

Because this position leads to the chapter presidency, the vice president needs all the qualities of the president: enthusiasm, energy, responsibility, and good problem-solving skills.

The vice president's responsibilities include the following:

● Help form chapter policy, goals, and objectives ● Assume the duties of chapter president when needed ● Act as liaison with local universities and student chapters ● Attend the chapter leaders workshop at the Region 7 conference ● Identify possible overall committee managers and develop overall plans for the next

term


Treasurer

The treasurer's responsibilities include the following:

● Establish and monitor a chapter budget for the fiscal year ● Establish and maintain a checking account, savings account, CD account, and



http://www.stc.org/

scholarship fund ● Deposit chapter funds and pay invoices ● Prepare monthly reports of chapter income and expenditures and a detailed year-

end report ● Maintain all chapter contracts


Secretary

The secretary's responsibilities include the following:

● Take minutes at administrative council and other chapter meetings (or arrange for a substitute)

● Prepare and distribute copies of the minutes ● Write brief descriptions of chapter meetings for Technicalities ● Prepare correspondence related to chapter business


Nominating Committee

The nominating committee performs the following duties:

● Invite members to run for office ● Evaluate qualifications of possible candidates and announce the slate of candidates ● Prepare the ballot, hold the election, and report the results


Remember that Committee Chairs are not elected, they are appointed by the Council.

To become a candidate or to recommend someone else for office, please contact Martha Sippel or Mary Jo Stark.

Technicalities Home







Documents

Technicalities - the online newsletter for STC RMC · needs as well as for its flash and pizzazz. With that in mind, if you, as technical communicators, are searching for that cool