The February 10, 2010 Chapter Meeting
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Beyond the Practitioners' Lore: Reading the Research
You don’t need to be an academic to read a research article. Even if you don’t read every word, you can find support--and new directions--for your thinking. As technical communicators at work (aka practitioners), we make countless decisions about document design, sentence structure, vocabulary, typology. Many of these choices we base on our education, training, corporate guides, or department policies. But many we just make up based on what feels right to us--on our “practitioners’ lore.” Basing our work on research has always been vital to technical communication. It can ground our decisions in reality, introduce new possibilities, and enliven our style committee meetings. This presentation explores how we can improve our work by reading research articles. Susan Becker uses as examples several guidelines from the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Style Guide for Voting System Documentation and shows how they were developed through a process of reading the research, reviewing the current accepted guidelines, and critiquing sample documents. You will learn to:
Speaker:
Susan Becker is a technical communicator and online user assistance developer with extensive experience in writing, editing, document design, and information architecture. She is currently an Information Developer at IBM, providing user assistance for IBM Informix Dynamic Server. Prior to her work at IBM, Susan co-authored the Style Guide for Voting System Documentation for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with Dana Chisnell. Susan has taught at San Francisco State University in the Technical & Professional Writing program and the English department. She is an STC Associate Fellow, past president of the San Francisco chapter, and a member of the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA). Her online and print documentation have received local STC awards
Date:
Times:
Location:
Susan Becker
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
6:00 to 7:00 pm: Networking, conversation & dinner
7:00 to 7:15 pm: Announcements
7:15 to 8:30 pm: Presentation
8:30 to 9:00 pm: Conversation,
follow up on job announcements
9:00 to 9:15 pm: Clear the room; move conversations to the sidewalk
Highlands Country Club,110 Hiller Drive, Oakland, California