Session Details

STC France Chapter Annual Conference 2007 - Raising our Profile

This page provides detailed information about the sessions and speakers at this year's STC France Chapter Annual Conference.

Day 1 [WORKSHOPS]: Friday 2 February 2007
Day 2 [CONFERENCE]: Saturday 3 February 2007

DAY 1: Friday 2 February 2007

HALF-DAY WORKSHOP (09:00-12:30): Working Smart: Master your Authoring Skills

Kim Schrantz-Berquist, Senior Contract Technical Author, Quay Documentation Services

Does your technical authoring skill-base need a wider scope? Do you know how to define your audience? Identify requirements? Write the ten procedures users need most in user guides? Write articles like a journalist?

In this workshop, you will learn to master a variety of technical authoring writing styles or brush up on ones that you might not have used in a while.

Kim Schrantz-Berquist

Kim Schrantz-Berquist is a senior freelance Technical Writer and Trainer who has worked for a diverse range of companies including IBM, ICL, Alcatel, Clearstream bank and Manpower. She has 20+ years experience as a technical communicator and is adept at all styles of writing - from sales/marketing literature to highly technical manuals to multi-media elearning. Kim holds a B Sc. in Technical Writing in Engineering from the University of Washington. She is a senior member of the STC and an active member of the Belgium chapter, and also a founding member and past officer of the STC UK chapter. Kim is also a Fellow of the ISTC, the UK's technical writing society. She has published technical books as well as many articles about technical communications, and has won many awards for her documentation work over the course of her career.

HALF-DAY WORKSHOP (09:00-12:30): Build a Strategy for Success

Samina Arnoult, Financial Advisor, Samina Arnoult Global Financial Services

Whether you are self employed or have a career, learn how to promote yourself using simple and highly effective techniques. Create marketing tools which will support you in your job or your business. This is a hands on workshop with lots of exercises. Come with your business card, brochures and promotional material.

In this workshop, you will learn:

That promoting yourself is a permanent process
How to develop tools to promote yourself: speeches, cards, brochures, website

Samina Arnoult

Samina Arnoult arrived in France in 1977 and started working in finance in 1984. She worked with Worms, Legal and General, and Natwest, serving the expatriate community. She set up her own financial consulting business in 1994 (conseil en gestion de patrimoine), covering all areas of finance: real estate, the stock market, assurance-vie, etc.
In her work, she has a global point of view, and works on all aspects of financial life: fiscal, inheritance, retirement, risk assessment, etc. The objective is that her client reaches his or her goals through careful financial planning.
In 1994, she also became a board member of Paris Entreprendre, a network supporting small businesses. She has been active in several networks, and has helped hundreds of businesses get started and prosper.

HALF DAY WORKSHOP (09:00-12:30): Managing and Mentoring: Mastering Difficult Conversations

Karen L. Baranich, IT Supervisor, SCANA

Take control and learn to manage and mentor more effectively by understanding the dynamics of conducting a difficult conversation. Go into meetings with an understanding of your own and the other person's agenda. Use tips, techniques, and role play to pre-plan ways to turn your conversation into a win-win situation.

Karen Baranich

Karen L. Baranich is the Manager for STC Competitions and Assistant to the Manager of the Instructional Design and Learning SIG (IDL). She also maintains membership in the Management SIG and the South Carolina Midlands chapter. In 2006, Karen served as a stem manager for the STC National Conference. Prior to that she managed the International Technical Art Competition (ITAC) and judged at the local level. She has been on her chapter's management board for six of the last seven years and in 2006 received the Distinguished Chapter Service Award. Karen's membership in Toastmasters has helped her to become a frequent presenter at local, national, and international conferences. Karen is an IT manager for SCANA, a Southeast based utility company. Her team is responsible for technical writing, training, communication, and web design. Before joining SCANA, she worked as education coordinator, researcher, commercial artist, fashion designer, and newspaper reporter. Karen holds degrees in fashion design, media art, instructional media, and educational psychology. She lives in a rural area of South Carolina and is an accomplished equestrian and avid reader.

HALF-DAY WORKSHOP (14:00-18:30): Intuitive images: creating and evaluating usable graphics for international audiences

Patrick Hofmann, Visual Interaction Designer

In our end-user manuals, web pages, portable digital devices, and interface designs, our pictures always seem to play a subordinate role to our words. We find them too hard to illustrate; we encounter too many resolution and incompatibility issues, and we can never seem to make them attractive enough, meaningful enough, and usable enough.

In this tutorial, we will get very graphic (ha ha) with these challenges. We will spend a fun-filled session sharing common problems, evaluating your existing design challenges, visualising different types of information, and working on some innovative hands-on exercises. In the end, the tutorial's goal is to help both information developers and usability professionals evaluate and boost the visual appeal and usability of the information that they produce, and to empower them with simple tips and tricks to become visually and graphically savvy.

In the past, this presentation has attracted more managers and information specialists than illustrators and graphic designers, because it reveals that the former group is clearly vital to the development of usable visual information, and offers solutions that benefit both ‘textual' designers and ‘visual' designers alike.

Patrick Hofmann

Patrick Hofmann's design career began in Waterloo, Canada in 1993, specialising in wordless documentation and visual instruction. Now for clients all over the globe, Patrick builds visual strategies that build intuitive, instructive, and illustrative information -- for everything from digital products to web-based applications, from user instructions to technical documentation. Patrick also provides design analyses, usability services, and on-site training to help information developers and designers make their products visually fluent and more userfriendly.

As a trained technical writer and now a visual interaction designer, Patrick Hofmann has turned into 'a man of few words'. For over ten years, this vibrant Canadian has helped clients like Nokia, Motorola, Philips, FedEx, HP, BASF, and AGFA improve the usability of their products -- often by visualising their online, hardcopy, and interface information. His award-winning work and undying passion for visual language have sent him around the world, as he teaches workshops on using pictures to improve communication.

He recently developed the post-graduate Information Design curriculum at CPIT in Christchurch, New Zealand, and participates as an Adjunct Researcher at the Canadian Centre of Arts and Technology in Waterloo, Canada. Patrick is currently completing his first book on visual instruction and is splitting his time between London, England and Sydney, Australia, as the principal of his own visual information consultancy.

HALF-DAY WORKSHOP (14:00-18:30): Using Networks to Build Your Career

Silvia Cambié, Director, Chanda Communications & President of the Europe/Middle East region of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC)

Today's work environment is experiencing a shift from stability and jobs for life towards autonomy and innovation. The ability to navigate professional networks and develop networking skills is vital in order to be able survive in this "new world". What is your personal brand as a communicator? How do you use networks to raise your profile and enhance your career? This highly interactive workshop will help you to find answers for these questions and to develop strong networking and leadership skills.

In this workshop, you will learn how to:

use networks to advance your career and reach your professional/personal development goals
develop a vision for yourself as a communicator and know how to use networks to realize that vision
decide what leadership means to you personally and what you want from it

Sylvia Cambié

Silvia Cambié has 15 years of experience in external communication and journalism. In the 1990s, she reported from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union for a number of British and German business publications (Euromoney, The European Handelsblatt). She then moved to Brussels where she worked for seven years as head of communication for two international trade associations (AmCham, European Savings Banks Group/World Savings Banks Institute). She is currently based in London and works as Director of Chanda Communications, a consultancy specialised in media & stakeholder relations and public affairs.

Silvia is the President of the Europe/Middle East region of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). She has been a member of IABC for ten years and has held different leadership positions.

Silvia holds a degree in social sciences and business administration from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and speaks five languages. She is an accredited journalist and a certified coach.

HALF-DAY WORKSHOP (14:00-18:30): Sharing Your Expertise: Putting Together a Presentation or Workshop

Linda Urban, President and Principal Consultant, Linda Urban Communications, LLC

One of the best ways to gain visibility for yourself and contribute to your profession is by giving a presentation or workshop. And at work, presenting to your colleagues and management can be a great way to showcase what you are working on, and raise your profile within your company.

Presenting is a "win-win" situation: Your audience gets the benefit of your knowledge and experience, and you get exposure and appreciation for your work. In addition, because you must clearly articulate your ideas in order to present them, you are forced to clarify your own thinking and refine your skills.

Yet some people are hesitant to propose a session, or dread the prospect of presenting at work. The idea of presenting can be intimidating if you do not have much experience.

This workshop is for people who have plenty to share, but have not presented before, or feel hesitant in organizing a session. If that sounds like you, come to this interactive workshop, learn how to put your ideas together, and plan a session.

Through presentation, discussion, and practice, we will look first at what makes for a good session and then how to:

Select a topic and clarify what you want to cover
Consider your audience
Define objectives and outline content that supports them
Integrate activities to make the session interactive and help insure that the participants get the most from it

Bring your ideas for presentations and workshops. Activities throughout the day will allow you to select and work on developing a specific idea.

Linda Urban has been a technical communicator for over 20 years. In 1995, a friend convinced her to collaborate in teaching a class in Technical Communications, and she discovered she loved it! She's been teaching and presenting ever since, and finds that it provides a good balance with day-to-day project work.

Linda Urban

Linda Urban has over 20 years experience in technical communication. As a consultant, Linda works on product usability, user interface design, Help systems, software and hardware documentation, and web-based information. She focuses on developing solutions that meet user needs and company goals, and her work has received local and international STC awards.

Linda is also an Instructor at the UC Berkeley Extension and UC Santa Cruz Extension, where she teaches classes in technical writing, developing online help, usability, and information architecture.

Linda has a BA from the University of California at Berkeley. She is a Senior Member of the STC, a member of UPA, SIGCHI, and the Information Architecture Institute. Her company is Linda Urban Communications, LLC.

DAY 2: Saturday 3 February, 2007

OPENING KEYNOTE: Raising Our Profile

Silvia Cambié, Director, Chanda Communications & President of the Europe/Middle East region of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC)

The environment in which communicators are working is undergoing unprecedented changes. The emergence of truly multicultural companies, the democratisation of communication through social software and the need for openness and transparency are among the biggest challenges corporations will have to face in the years to come.

Never before have we communicators had so many arguments to build the business case for our profession. So why are we still experiencing perception problems? Why do we have to explain over and over again the impact of our function on the bottom line?

This presentation will provide answers to these questions and give participants ideas they can use to raise their profiles within their organizations.

Sylvia Cambié

Silvia holds a degree in social sciences and business administration from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and speaks five languages. She is an accredited journalist and a certified coach.

PRESENTATION 1: Away with words: designing wordless instructions for international audiences

Patrick Hofmann, Visual Interaction Designer

The rapid evolution of digital products and information has given birth to a revolution in the way we communicate. As the audiences for our information products expand, international borders seem to dissolve, and it becomes necessary for us to communicate more globally. Over ten years ago, we addressed this challenge by creating and testing our first word-free computer installation manual, published for a worldwide audience. Since then, our visual strategies have evolved to address different products and audiences.

In this presentation, participants will learn how to:

visualise information with the same concern for usability as we have with writing
use visuals to downsize or eliminate the words in your user instructions
use visuals to complement the words in your legal, process, or standards documentation
address and accommodate distinctions of international audiences and age groups
visualise complex objects and ideas through simple shapes and applications - even if you are not an illustrator

Although not all types of documentation can be 100% word-free, this presentation can help participants get there.

Patrick Hofmann

PRESENTATION 2: Beyond Technical Communications: Moving from Technical Communicator to Author

Stuart Mudie, Writer and Editor, smc33

Technical communicator and author Stuart Mudie discusses how becoming an author has changed his career, as well as increasing his visibility as a technical communicator. He will discuss why getting into authoring may be of interest to you, how to break into the business, and the process of actually writing a book.

Stuart Mudie

Stuart Mudie is a freelance technical and marketing writer based in Paris. Stuart has been a professional communicator since 1995, and he has worked with a number of companies in the IT and Telecommunications sectors in such fields as mobility, web content management, and business intelligence. His current interests include social software and user-generated content, and he also regularly translates articles relating to the Spanish wine industry. Stuart is co-author of “The Unofficial Guide to Windows Vista” and is a contributor to Microsoft’s Windows Vista Expert Zone.

PRESENTATION 3: Paths to Success: Networking and Contributing (It's all about relationships)

Linda Urban, President and Principal Consultant, Linda Urban Communications, LLC

What does it take to be successful as a technical communicator?

Often we focus on skills and abilities. There is always so much more to learn! But there is another set of factors that are equally important. This talk will focus on the relationships, attitudes, and actions that can make all the difference. You will have an opportunity to think about your own experiences and discover ideas to help you move in the direction you want.

Linda Urban has been a technical communicator for over 20 years. When she thinks about what has mattered most when it comes to finding and keeping work, it boils down to these principles:

First: Do good work. Write well. Understand your audiences, and write for them. Know your company's goals and priorities, and keep them in mind. Care about quality and pay attention to detail.

Second: Build your network. Not the calculated "get out there, meet other people, and exchange information" kind of network, but the day-to-day kind that comes as you work with people and build relationships. Your base for networking is created whenever you work with people. People will remember when you were reliable, when they enjoyed working with you, when you helped them out of a tight spot, when you shared your expertise. And they will definitely remember when you didn't. Strive to have the kind of interactions you want them to remember.

Third: Keep learning. Build your skills, learn new and better methods, pursue what interests you.

Fourth: Make a contribution. How you choose to contribute will depend on your interests, skills, personality, and time. Be guided by what you enjoy and what gives you satisfaction. Your niche may be at a professional organization like STC, it may be a special project at work, or it may be mentoring friends who show an interest in what you do. You may be in front of the room, presenting, or behind the scenes. Don't worry if you don't like to be in the spotlight. You do not have to be out front to be a valued resource.

Linda Urban

PRESENTATION 4: Communicating Europe in many languages: European Commission communication strategy and the challenge of multilingualism

Ian Andersen, Head of Communication and Information Unit, DG SCIC, European Commission

The European Commission is moving from stakeholder-oriented communication to direct interactive communication with European citizens at a moment when the traditional forms of media are being supplanted or modified by or merged with electronic media. This underscores the challenge of going local and communicating in a language the citizens can understand. The political decision-making in meetings now takes place in 23 languages without any particular difficulties - thanks to 15 years of preparatory work by DG Interpretation and the other interpreting services of the EU Institutions.

Ian Andersen

Ian Andersen is head of the Communication and Information Unit at the European Commission's Directorate General for Interpretation, which has some 500 staff interpreters and calls on 2700 freelances world-wide. He is active in a number of inter-service working groups on the Commission's internal and external communication strategy and runs pilot-programs encouraging staff to be ambassadors for the organisation. Among his activities is editing 4 external and two internal websites, including the website for the new Commissioner for multilingualism, publishing a staff magazine (eZine), speechwriting, and communication strategy planning.

Prior to his current focus on communication, Ian Andersen worked for 15 years as a conference interpreter between Danish, English, French, Italian, Swedish and Norwegian, and as a trainer of Chinese interpreters. He holds an MA in Chinese studies and a BA in political science from the University of Copenhagen and has worked for Danish National Television and as a business consultant before joining the European Commission in 1986. He is a member of the Brussels chapter of the IABC and of the National Press Club of Denmark.