Off to the STC 2012 Summit

Tomorrow, I leave at 0-dark-hundred for Chicago. I’m going to the Society of Technical Communication Summit. This conference is held every year in different locations around the country.

This year, I am speaking on global readiness. I think that global readiness is finally starting to attract the attention that it needs in technical documentation departments. I’m excited that the STC sees the value of having a session on the topic.

Now, I’ll be honest, the past few years have been…well…disappointing. I found that it was poorly attended, the presentations were not earth shattering, and the vendor hall was scarcely populated. But, this year, I am hoping to see a turn-around. I’ve noticed that a number of my customers are sending documentation managers to the show. That bodes well for the attendance. Perhaps companies are loosening up their purse strings a bit. The STC has done a great job with their conference infrastructure. Their conference website is easy to use and has a lot of information. They also decided to use Zerista as their event intelligence platform. I’ve never used Zerista before and I think it is helping keep things very organized. With a conference this large, there are so many things to juggle.

Best of all, there is a really good speaker line-up. I’m looking forward to seeing so many people: Rahel Bailie, Ann Rockley, Scott Abel, Tom Aldous, Kyle Weins, Joe Gollner, Larry Kunz, Marta Rauch, Bill Swallow, Janet Swisher (my cyber twin), Kirsty Taylor…gosh the list goes on and on. And I’m looking forward to meeting new people, too. If you are at the show and see me, please say, “Hello!”

If you want to follow the tweets, the hashtag is #stc12.

I’ll report back with my observations and notes from the conference later in the week.

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Val Swisher

Val Swisher is the Founder and CEO of Content Rules, Inc. Val enjoys helping companies solve complex content problems. She is a well-known expert in content strategy, structured authoring, global content, content development, and terminology management. Val believes content should be easy to read, cost-effective to create and translate, and efficient to manage. Her customers include industry giants such as Google, Cisco, Visa, Facebook, Roche, and IBM. Her fourth book, “The Personalization Paradox: Why Companies Fail (and How to Succeed) at Creating Personalized Experiences at Scale,” was published in 2021 by XML Press.

Val is on the Advisory Board for the Technical Communications Program at the University of North Texas. When not working with customers or students, Val can be found sitting behind her sewing machine working on her latest quilt. She also makes a mean hummus.

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