Keynotes

Designing for the Human Visual System
Dr. Colin Ware

Designing for the Human Mind
Dr. Deborah J. Mayhew

Technology Sessions

Web Page Interactivity: Java & JavaScript
James Currie

The Wireless Web
Neil Perlin

Web Page Interactivity: Server Components
James Currie

eBooks: Revolutionizing Digital Workflow
Donna Dunn (Adobe Systems, Inc.)

Web Tools & Technologies: Questions & Answers
Grant Communications

FrameMaker & XML: Generating Structured Information
Donna Dunn (Adobe Systems, Inc)

Design & Structure of Embedded Help Systems
Dr. David Locke

Designing Web Pages Using Cascading Style Sheets
Joel Sklar

Designing Graphics for the Web
Grant Communications

XML for Technical Communicators
Neil Perlin

Numbering documents in Adobe FrameMaker
Adobe Certified Trainer

Marker Management in FrameMaker
Adobe Certified Trainer

Process & Methodology Sessions

Simulation Strategies for Web-Based Training
Dr. Margaret Driscoll

Writing World-Ready Information
Hans Fenstermacher & Lynne Nadeau

Making Online Learning Adaptive
Pamela Kostur

Reader-Oriented Writing
Stephen Murphy

Bringing Your Documents to Life with Adobe Acrobat
Bernard Aschwanden

Developing Single-Source Information
Pamela Kostur

English Grammar: Picture It Easy
Norris Learnard

How to Index Online Information
Susan Holbert

Learning Portals: Harnessing the Power of Information
Debra Murphy

From Whence We Came: A Walk Through Publishing History & Technologies
Michael Doyle

Creating Effective Content for Multimedia & the Web
Timothy Garrand

Corporate Communications: Structure vs Chaos
Norris Learnard

 

MiniLabs


RoboHELP Tips & Tricks (double session)
Dr. David Locke

Word & FrameMaker: Fostering Peaceful Coexistence
Bernard Aschwanden

Adobe FrameMaker: New Features in 6.0
Bernard Aschwanden

The Wireless Web (follow on to Neil's talk)
Neil Perlin

Overview of WebWorks Publisher 6
Quadralay Certified Trainer

Introduction to Macromedia Dreamweaver
Grant Communications

Designing Templates in Macromedia Dreamweaver
Grant Communications

RoboHELP HTML for Beginners
eHelp Certified Trainer

Overview of XML
Neil Perlin

Understanding Cascading Style Sheets
Joel Sklar

Structuring Content for Interactive Media
Dr. Timothy Garrand

Overview of ForeHelp HTML
ForeHelp Authorized Trainer

Executive Coach

Getting the Best from your Project Team
Doris Kovic

Keynotes

Please keep in mind that there are only 280 seats available for each keynote session, and those seats are made available to the first 280 to register.

Designing for the Human Visual System
Dr. Colin Ware

The human visual system occupies more than 40% of the cortex of the brain. It is a pattern finding machine without equal and pattern finding can be regarded as a kind of visual problem solving. Dr Colin Ware is the leading expert in applying what we know about human perception to problems in information display. His recent book on information visualization has become an indispensable resource to both researchers and professionals interested in understanding the visual science of display design. The presentation will be an overview of key design lessons to be learned from vision science, progressing from the retina to the higher levels of the brain.

Key topics will be: Low-level vision, the spotlight of attention, pre-attentive processing and what jumps off the page; elementary pattern perception, and how it applies to organizing space; simple motion for displaying causality; space perception and the question of whether 3D is better; the natural grammar of objects and creating understandable 3D diagrams; dual coding theory and the problem of linking pictures and words.

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Designing for the Human Mind
Dr. Deborah J. Mayhew

The technical specialty areas of Technical Writing/Documentation, Technical Training, Electronic Performance Support and User Interface Design all have in common the goal of imparting information and procedures to people efficiently and effectively in order to promote performance and productivity. In the software industry, as hardware and software platforms get more and more sophisticated and capable and the Web becomes one of the primary platforms for delivering software products, the focus on ways to promote performance and productivity through software is shifting away from documentation and training, and away from embedded performance support and toward product user interface design.

More and more (as on the Web), users expect to be able to simply walk up and use software, without training, without documentation, without Help systems. This shift in industry focus has inspired many a documentation and training professional to consider a career shift into product user interface design. While professionals in these different disciplines tend to come from different academic and experiential backgrounds (Writing, Education, Psychology) and design different types of products (user manuals and Help systems, courseware, product user interfaces), the truth is that media-specific guidelines and techniques for designing good documentation, good training, good on-line help and good product user interfaces are all based on the same foundation: basic, general principles of human cognition.

Understanding the underlying principles of human cognition allows one to more readily perceive the commonalities across design disciplines, and thus more readily translate skills from one discipline to another. In this keynote speech, Dr. Mayhew will present an interactive and entertaining crash course in human cognition, aimed at introducing documentation and training professionals to the underlying, general, media-independent principles of human information processing. This introduction is aimed at helping them begin to leverage their current skill-set in order to more effectively and efficiently contribute to product user interface design, either as key collaborators or as aspiring product user interface designers themselves.

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Technology Sessions

Web Page Interactivity: Java & JavaScript
James Currie

In this session you will learn about the complementary components of Java and JavaScript for enhancing web interactivity. We will describe and discuss "slick" versus functional interactivity; JavaScript and object hierarchy embedded within HTML; object-oriented programming concepts; Java programming; embedding applets within HTML, and more.

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The Wireless Web
Neil Perlin

In less than eighteen months, the wireless web has gone from a technical curiosity to the cover of Parade. What is it, and how will it affect technical communicators? This session describes the market forces driving the wireless web; introduces its standards, technologies, and tools; and describes how it may change how we plan, design, and write content in the first decade of the 21st century.

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Web Page Interactivity: Server Components
James Currie

In this session you will learn about the components and concepts of Web servers and how to use readily available elements for a fully functional interactive Web presence. We will describe and discuss various types of web servers such as Apache and Microsoft IIS; cookies and their capabilities; browser security; interactive form processing, and more.

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eBooks: Revolutionizing Digital Workflow
Donna Dunn (Adobe Systems, Inc.)

The new word in the publishing industry isn't a word at all. It's a letter — "e" — as in eBooks. If you haven't noticed that eBooks are threatening to revolutionize the publishing industry, you haven't been doing much reading,. What are eBooks and how are they changing the publishing world? This session, presented by Adobe Systems, will discuss how to create eBooks with FrameMaker, and how to deliver and sell eBooks.

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Web Tools & Technologies: Questions & Answers
Grant Communications

This forum will be a completely open architecture environment; any question goes to our panel of web engineering experts. Available will be professionals answering server strategy questions, advantages and disadvantages of ASP vs. CGI, how to develop a comprehensive multi-stage deployment schedule, site mapping and graphics design elements. You bring the questions; we'll get you the answers!

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FrameMaker & XML: Generating Structured Information
Donna Dunn (Adobe Systems, Inc)

For seasoned FrameMaker users, working with structure may be confusing. This sessino will explain how to work with structure in FrameMaker+SGML and how to generate valid XML for reuse in a cross-media publishing environment.

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Design & Structure of Embedded Help Systems
Dr. David Locke

It has taken us years to get help off the desk and on the screen. Even now, we're just beginning to understand the relationship between the user interface and a well-designed help system that uses context sensitive help (CSH). Building good and functional CSH requires two things: a design that integrates CSH with the interface and with other help forms; and a structure and method to implement it that leaves software developers and help writers productive colleagues rather than sworn enemies.

In this session we examine both aspects of good CSH, design and structure. In design, we chronicle briefly the evolution of CSH including its early, under-developed forms and more recent embedded achievements. For structure, we examine the machinery of implementing CSH in several environments, and suggest productive ways writers and developers can work together to produce effective interface designs that really do help.

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Designing Web Pages Using Cascading Style Sheets
Joel Sklar

In this presentation you will see how Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) brings desktop publishing capabilities to the Web, allowing you to present your Web content in more visually exciting ways.

Using style sheets, you can control the display properties of markup elements in a single web page or across an entire web site. Powerful selection techniques let you apply style rules in a variety of ways to the elements of a web page. Enhanced support for CSS in the new generation of browsers means you can start working with this easy-to-use style language today.

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Designing Graphics for the Web
Grant Communications

We've all seen (and waited for) the 2mb downloaded image that turns out to be a simple animated GIF file; what was done wrong? How to do it right? Learn how to identify proper file characteristics, color palettes, animated GIF's vs. JPG's on a looping timeline, PNG and SVG file format support timetables.

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XML for Technical Communicators
Neil Perlin

XML, Extensible Markup Language, lets developers create custom tags and consistently coded web applications, including documentation. More powerful than HTML but less complex than SGML, XML has been taking the web world by storm since the late 90s and is affecting the documentation world as well. This session discusses XML's background, basic concepts, and related standards, and is aimed at technical communicators who do not plan to work in XML at the code level but who need to understand how XML works.

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Numbering documents in Adobe FrameMaker
Adobe Certified Trainer

Numbering in FrameMaker is very robust and, on occasions, very involved. Learn to set up your numbering in such a way that volumes, chapters, sections, subsections, tables, figures, procedures and more work together. See the power of FrameMaker numbering in a whole new light.

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Marker Management in FrameMaker
Adobe Certified Trainer

Work with files in FrameMaker 6.0 and create output to Portable HTML, Dynamic HTML and more using Quadralay WebWorks Publisher Standard Edition. This lab gives you the opportunity to create output from FrameMaker using WebWorks Publisher and predefined templates which are included with FrameMaker 6.0. You also have the opportunity to customize some output formatting using Cascading Style Sheets.

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Process & Methodology Sessions

Simulation Strategies for Web-Based Training
Dr. Margaret Driscoll

Web-based training programs using simulation strategies offer dramatic alternatives to page-turners. Simulations are a means of motivating students by putting them in a setting and requiring them to apply new knowledge or skill. Outstanding examples of these kind of program can be found in continuing professional education, commercial courses, and higher education.

After sampling some of these award-winning programs, the benefits of simulations are easy to understand. These programs force learners to select, organize, and integrate knowledge, and this results in greater motivation and enhanced transfer of learning. This session provides in-depth exploration of four kinds of simulations.

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Writing World-Ready Information
Hans Fenstermacher & Lynne Nadeau

In the documentation field, technology has taken center stage like never before. At the same time there is a growing need to produce materials for all world markets - and to reduce spiraling translation costs. Much attention is focused on translation methodologies and tools like "translation memories" (TM), but the single biggest factor in determining the quality and cost of translation is - and always has been - the source text itself.

This session provides technical writers, editors, course developers, and documentation managers with tips and techniques they can implement immediately to improve and reduce their output by as much as 65%, so they can cut translation costs significantly. The session covers specific problems and solutions, and presents a business case for the dramatic effects of improving writing and reducing the volume of words. Session content comes from real, published documentation and includes hands-on examples for discussion.

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Making Online Learning Adaptive
Pamela Kostur

Online learning is much more than an alternate method for delivering training. It's about giving learners access - anytime, anyplace - to an abundance of information and knowledge, and about adapting it to their particular needs. Ultimately, learners should be able to direct their own online learning experience. When people learn in a way that's adapted perfectly to their needs, they retain more knowledge and become more productive in the long run. In an adaptive online learning environment, learners choose their personal learning style, or their particular learning objective, and the appropriate learning materials are delivered to them in the way they require.

Real interaction happens when the learning environment can be changed, or driven, by learners. This is difficult to incorporate into an online learning environment and is, therefore, missing from most web-based learning sites. This presentation will outline how to create adaptive learning materials, using single sourcing methodology. (Single sourcing means writing information once and using it wherever it is required, adapting it to accommodate its various uses, e.g., novice training, advanced training, reference guide.) The presentation will describe:

  • The benefits of online learning
  • How to make online learning adaptive to suit learners' unique needs, knowledge levels, and learning styles
  • How we are applying adaptive learning and single sourcing methodology to a current project to create an "online university" for a financial organization that educates financial advisors

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Reader-Oriented Writing
Stephen Murphy

The goal of a technical communicator is to focus solely on what the reader needs to know and what they need to do. All other information is unnecessary and can be eliminated. By incorporating the findings of cognitive research, a writer will have a better idea of what information the reader expects to see.

Cognitive research theory on how humans learn, store and retrieve information is important to the writer because by understanding and leveraging how people learn, the writer can then design information in a way that is compatible with how people think. If writers could analyze information and then structure it according to the three principles described in this session, then readers will learn information faster, understand it better, and remember it longer.

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Bringing Your Documents to Life with Adobe Acrobat
Bernard Aschwanden

Under the impression that Adobe Acrobat is just for static documents? This session shows you how to breathe life and interactivity into your documents. This session demonstrates how to use Acrobat to include video, sound, hypertext links, interactive forms, rollover effects, and much more within your PDF documents.

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Developing Single-Source Information
Pamela Kostur

Writers often have to create documents for different audiences, for different media (e.g., web, Help, training), and for different platforms. Single sourcing information can help writers to accommodate all possible uses and audiences. Single sourcing involves identifying all information requirements up front, then developing them from a single source. All information types required by a particular project (e.g., brochures, user guides, training materials, online Help, external web site) are created from the single file, hence the name--single sourcing.

This presentation describes:

What single sourcing is and when it is appropriate

How to implement single sourcing, focusing on how to build information models (information models outline all the possible uses and users of the information and indicate how information will be reused across different information products)

The benefits of single sourcing

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English Grammar: Picture It Easy
Norris Learnard

Correct English grammar should be both fun to learn and easy to use. The traditional way of teaching grammar confuses many individuals. We shun tradition by teaching grammatical structures as puzzles and pieces of puzzles made up of pictures representing the eight parts of speech. Build a puzzle, plug in the words represented by the pictures, and write correct grammar structures from the simplest to the most complex. Not your old grammar teacher's method. If grammar is not one of your strengths, we can make it one.

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How to Index Online Information
Susan Holbert

A good index plays an important role in increasing user satisfaction with both printed manuals and online help systems. This workshop focuses on how to apply and adapt indexing principles to online help. Learn how to write help files with indexing in mind, as well as how to choose keywords so users can find what they're looking for.

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Learning Portals: Harnessing the Power of Information
Debra Murphy

Learning portals continue to blur the lines between information and training. The enabling technology behind an online learning portal provides the backbone for a self-sustaining learning community; writers and course developers provide the building blocks that allow learners to access the right information at the right time.

Key to the development of a successful learning portal:

Understanding the key business challenges and directions of the target organization

Defining the people skills, knowledge and behaviors required to drive the business

Determining the most effective learning interventions in order to meet the audience needs (how to best build organizational competencies via training or information)

Understanding how, when and why to use distance-learning technologies vs. instructor-led training

Knowing how to design information and learning products that can be most easily accessed and used via a learning portal

Knowing how and why to build a business case for offering a learning portal as an information and training solution

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From Whence We Came: A Walk Through Publishing History & Technologies
Michael Doyle

From primitive cave paintings to web pages, the progression of communicating information -- particularly technical information -- is a path that has many lessons for technical communicators today. Although Mike Doyle's specialty is web tools and technologies, this walk through publishing history will really focus on understanding the technologies that have led to the approach of technical publishing today. Come appreciate the technological advances and the people who made them; from movable type to Albrecht Durer to Mergenthaler machines to web publishing!

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Creating Effective Content for Multimedia & the Web
Timothy Garrand

Drawing from his experience as a Web interactive architect and from the research for the recently published 2nd edition of his book, Writing for Multimedia and the Web, Garrand explains how to master the many techniques required to create effective Web and multimedia content. In a review of Garrand's book, Andrew Nelson of Britannica.com wrote, "Garrand remains the "go-to" guy for anyone wanting to know how to make sure Web site and multimedia content has an impact on their desired audience."

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Corporate Communications: Structure vs Chaos
Norris Learnard

This presentation points out the chaotic state of communication in the corporate world. In an era where standards govern almost every facet of our lives and the products we live with, one area severely lacking such standards is that of written communications.

The design of written products is completely left to the whim of the individual writer, producing as many translations of subjects as there are authors. Interpreting these messages is a frustrating and painful reader experience. This talk identifies the problems that produce chaos and presents resolutions to them. The result is a paradigm that eliminates problems readers experience and creates a clear, concise, and consistent standard for the world of corporate communications.

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MiniLabs

RoboHELP Tips & Tricks (double session)
Dr. David Locke

RoboHELP Office version 9, eHelp Corporation's latest spin on its online authoring tool, offers major improvements and a host of new features. In this session, we'll push the limits of RoboHELP and its products. With a sample project, we'll illustrate ways to be more productive, expand creativity, and shorten development time. Bring your own challenging projects for a master class-style presentation and collaborative review.

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Word & FrameMaker: Fostering Peaceful Coexistence
Bernard Aschwanden

Why can't companies just decide on one? If you are in a multi-tool environment using both Word and FrameMaker, how can you get the best results from Word files as they convert to FrameMaker? This lab session gives you the opportunity to create content in Word and import it to a Frame template. See the problems that arise and ways to work around them.

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Adobe FrameMaker: New Features in 6.0
Bernard Aschwanden

Many technical publication groups have selected FrameMaker as the strategic tool of choice for their organization. What's new with FrameMaker 6.0? How does it improve on previous releases? This session is your opportunity to see the new version and decide how to move ahead.

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The Wireless Web (follow on to Neil's talk)
Neil Perlin

This minilab builds on the wireless web session. You'll build an online reference manual using WordPad in order to see the underlying tags (and develop an appreciation for GUI authoring tools), and display the resulting site via a wireless web emulator. No experience is required. ForeHelp HTML Minilab - In this minilab, you'll create an HTML Help file complete with topics, links, and navigation tabs, and convert it to a platform-independent and browser-independent format. Familiarity with HTML Help concepts is helpful but not necessary.

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Overview of WebWorks Publisher 6
Quadralay Certified Trainer

Work with files in FrameMaker 6.0 and create output to Portable HTML, Dynamic HTML and more using Quadralay WebWorks Publisher Standard Edition. This lab gives you the opportunity to create output from FrameMaker using WebWorks Publisher and predefined templates which are included with FrameMaker 6.0. You also have the opportunity to customize some output formatting using Cascading Style Sheets.

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Introduction to Macromedia Dreamweaver
Grant Communications

Learn what all the hype is; templates, libraries, javascripted behaviors, extensions. Dreamweaver is, simply stated, the web professional's tool of choice. Come see how it all works...

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Designing Templates in Macromedia Dreamweaver
Grant Communications

Ever want to make a simple change to your site's navigation, then realize your main level navigation extends across 300 pages? Welcome to templates in Dreamweaver, where seperate call out areas can be protected or unprotected for general site updates, and navigation is changed site-wide with one simple change...

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RoboHELP HTML for Beginners
eHelp Certified Trainer

An overview of the process of creating and editing Help systems using RoboHELP HTML Edition -- the industry standard in Help authoring. This session will introduce many of the key Help-specific features included RoboHELP Office, and provide tips on how to speed and improve the authoring process using RoboHELP's many powerful companion utilities and tools.

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Overview of XML
Neil Perlin

This minilab builds on the XML session. You'll use a GUI development tool to convert an HTML file to XHTML and XML, examine the differences in the three formats, add format controls to the resulting files, and view the results in a browser. Familiarity with HTML and CSS is helpful but not required.

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Understanding Cascading Style Sheets
Joel Sklar

In this hands-on lab you will get a chance to experiment with CSS style language and test the results in different browsers. Through a series of exercise you will learn how easy it is to add CSS style to transform basic HTML to richly styled, more visually interesting web pages. Prerequisite - working knowledge of HTML.

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Structuring Content for Interactive Media
Dr. Timothy Garrand

This session provides an overview of the basic tools & processes used to create the information architecture (structure & navigation) for Web and multimedia content. Topics covered include:

site maps

  • wireframes
  • outlines
  • process flows

Hands-on exercises with Inspiration Software (a visual design tool) and an HTML WYSIWYG editor. Additional tools will also be demonstrated.

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Overview of ForeHelp HTML
ForeHelp Authorized Trainer

In this minilab, you'll create an HTML Help file complete with topics, links, and navigation tabs, and convert it to a platform-independent and browser-independent format. Familiarity with HTML Help concepts is helpful but not necessary.

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Executive Coach

Getting the Best from your Project Team
Doris Kovic

A High Performance Team can out execute the competition. It is creative and works energetically to achieve high quality, planned results. These teams assume responsibility for the teams output and provide support for each other in clearing away obstacles to the teams success.

Turning work groups into teams is essential to an organization's survival. The organization really thrives when the team becomes a high performance team.

Led by executive coach Doris Kovic, this session will focus on methods and approaches to developing your own high performance team.

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