Category Archives: social

Guide to Navigating STC 2014 Annual Summit

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For the third year in a row, I am sharing my guide for attending STC Summit. Here’s my guide from last year and quick guide from 2012. I’ve updated it for the STC 2014 Summit in dry and hot Phoenix, AZ. After attending six STC Conferences, several regional conferences (Phoenix, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Rochester), and LavaCon, I provide here some hints to maximize your conference experience. Enjoy and share!

Technology

Tweeting at the Summit

Tweeting at the Summit

 

Sessions

STC Summit Keynote

STC 2012 Summit Keynote

  • Spend 20-30 minutes planning which sessions you will attend. Read the Conference Program provided to you in your conference bag. Also, use the Lanyrd Conference Website to help you decide!
  • Select primary and secondary sessions for each hour, some session material may be available for preview on SlideShare.
  • Determine within the first 5-10 minutes if a session excites you; if not, go to your secondary session.
  • Ask questions at the end of the session.
    • Be persistent! As a presenter, I love when people ask me questions. So, do it!
  • Complete post-session speaker evaluation(s). Visit the STC 2014 Survey Monkey Survey site.
  • Look for presentation slides after the sessions from presenters on SlideShare.

Networking

STC Summit Networking

STC Summit Networking

  • Spend about $30 for business cards from VistaPrint if you have none. Remember to pack them.
  • Hand out business cards to anyone you meet.
  • Write a note on the back of each person’s business card to remind you how you met them.
  • Bring paper and electronic copies of your résumé. This may result in a job opportunity after the conference. Google representatives will be attending the STC Summit and are looking to hire technical writers.

Break Times

After the Conference

  • Continue networking via Twitter, LinkedIn, and e-mail.
  • Look for an e-mail during the summer announcing when Conference@Click is available.
  • Read the conference proceedings.
  • Plan for next year, and convince your company to pay for it!
  • Look for a for Call for Speakers via e-mail; maybe you can present next year.
  • Keep up with current trends—check STC Notebook, Intercom, TechWhirl, and TechComm.

It’s your conference experience; make the most of it! If you want to hang out during the conference, find me by sending me a message via Twitter: @RogerRenteria. I will be attending and helping out at Leadership Day, and presenting during the Lightning Talks 2 session. Watch me stumble for five minutes. 🙂

STC Spectrum 2014 – Leadership Day

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I have traveled so much this spring that everything between March and April are a huge blur in memory, photos, Facebook posts, and Tweets. This year is going to be the year that I go on my conference presentation run and, quoting Todd DeLuca, “get my presentation legs.”

Spectrum 2014

Spectrum 2014 – STC Rochester

Many thanks go to the organizers and volunteers of the STC Rochester – Spectrum 2014 Conference. Their planning and dedication made this event a nice full-stop mini conference. Both John Lukes and Bobbi Werner, conference co-chairs, did a great job organizing everything. From Leadership Day, Keynote Speech, and Lightning Talks, I had a great time attending sessions and networking with as many professionals as possible. I will talk about the rest of the conference in a later post.

I was happy to present three times during Spectrum. The venue for Spectrum is on the wonderful Rochester Institute of Technology campus. Next time I return, I will take time to venture the campus when it’s not raining or snowing. 🙂

For Leadership Day, I presented on “Leveraging Social Media to Advance Your Organization,” which is a slight off-shoot from my co-presented webinar and progression from last year with Viqui Dill. I move away from my original presentation from 2009 which introduced people to social media, now I’m  introducing people to social media as an extension of an organization’s website. In addition, I show how to use social media effectively and nearly automatically to promote an organization’s website. I explain the similarities to the Hub and Spoke distribution method, where the website is the hub and all the social channels are the spokes.

STC Spectrum 2014 - Leadership Day Photo

Roger presenting the hub and spoke analogy for websites and social media. Photo: David Caruso

During the first day of Spectrum, there was an inside joke (and here) about the Niagara Escarpment–which was supposedly started by Ben Woelk and then continued by Bernard Aschwanden, and myself. According to a few colleagues, they like the word “escarpment.” In my view, it’s a geology term which I know from my undergraduate days (note: I was only one semester away from a minor in Earth Science, but instead I minored in Spanish Studies and History). A few other presenters mentioned it in their sessions too, even created a QR code for it.

Lastly, I want to thank Ben Woelk for inviting me to present during this year’s Leadership Day. I really enjoyed the variety of talks during the first day, ranging from discussing ideas, planning for an organization, volunteering challenges, and conflict resolution. I also felt quite comfortable presenting because I’ve been around many of these colleagues before.

I’ll write more about my insight about attending STC Spectrum 2014 in a later post.

Below is my presentation and handout from Leadership Day.

STC PMC – “Seeking Sunshine in Cloud Tech”

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As technical communicators upgrade technologies, one thing we should consider is moving to the cloud. Before soaring into the clouds, we should take a moment and find out more about the history of cloud technology, the tools we currently use, and what cloud tools are available to increase our productivity and maximize our return on investment (time and money). In this presentation I gave to the 2014 Mid-Atlantic Technical Communication Conference, I went into the details about cloud technology, the pitfalls, and provide insight from fellow technical communicators on their usage of cloud technology.

I also want to give many thanks to the STC Philadelphia Metropolitan Chapter for putting together such an amazing event this year. They were kind and gracious to accommodate me in Pennsylvania to present. Many thanks goes to the conference chairs, board members, and volunteers who set this conference up.

If you have never been to a professional conference, I highly recommend starting out with regional conferences and this one is very accessible to many technical communicators within the Washington DC, Philadelphia, and New York metropolitan areas. We had such a great time at the conference, Danielle Villegas felt the conference was better than the previous year. As an added bonus and I am quoting Barrie Byron on an earlier conversation, these weekend conferences offer “high value and are low cost.” The return on investment is extremely great. Why not attend one?

Now, the presentation. If you want to check out more presentations from this year’s Mid-Atlantic Technical Communication Conference, almost all of the slide decks are uploaded on SlideShare and tagged as STCPMC14.

Warning #1: Spoiler Alert

If you plan to attend the STC 2014 Spectrum Conference, attend my session and skip these slides. If you are unable to see my talk, feel free to check my slide deck below.

Warning #2: Spoiler Alert