| Mar
6 | A
panel consisting of Gwaltney and Carl Mountford, Viki Maki, and Jim Bisso, moderated
by Ann Adams |
Trends
in Technical Communication:
Couples Who Work Together
The
March meeting features our annual panel discussion on Trends in Technical Communication.
This year, we have something a little different for you. We will be hearing from
two couples who have chosen to work together in the field of technical communication.
Who better to share their insights than these hardy souls who have developed their
special skills and knowledge into the family business? We will hear how they developed
those skills and how they work as a team. Our panelists have deep roots as consultants
in the Bay Area and have graciously agreed to tell us how they see their —
and by extension our — future shaking out.
For
the past 20 years, Carl and Gwaltney Mountford
have provided consulting services to a number of companies in a variety of industries
through their company, Mountford
Group, Inc. Predominantly a software development company, the Mountford Group
specializes in designing and implementing data warehousing, Web applications,
and business systems. Between them, Carl and Gwaltney have all the skills needed
for the full system development life cycle---Carl specializes in analysis, design,
and implementation; Gwaltney in project management, business analysis, communication,
and user interface design.
They have worked together on a number of projects,
including an activity-based costing prototype for Pacific Bell, a hospital reporting
system for the State of California, a prescription database for Syntex, and a
reservation and scheduling system for airport shuttles. Currently, they are about
halfway through a multi-year project with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
to build a data warehouse that houses all data about their electric energy generation
and load (from forecasting and scheduling of generation and load, to settlements
and billing) and structures it for analysis and reporting.
They have
also had a number of contracts where they have worked separately. Do they find
the benefits of working together outweigh the draw backs of spending 24 hours
a day together? Come to the meeting and find out.
Victoria
(Viki) Maki, M.B.A., is president of Bitzone
LLC, a technical publishing and training company. She has almost 20 years of experience
as a trainer and technical writer. She has written and designed software manuals
of all kinds, marketing materials, online help systems, websites, white papers,
and training materials. Her clients include Chevron, Visa, Oracle, Pacific Bell,
and other enterprises, both large and small.
Viki and her husband, Jim
Bisso, co-manage the Silicon Valley STC Chapter Technical/API Docs SIG and are
co-authors of "Documenting APIs: Writing Developer Documentation for Java
APIs and SDKs," which is available at http://www.bitzone.com.
James Bisso, M.A., has 20 years
of experience writing API documentation for such companies as Oracle, Sun Microsystems,
Inprise, and Taligent. He has taught computer science and documenting APIs at
UC Berkeley Extension, Golden Gate University, Mills College, and the University
of San Francisco. James has also been a corporate trainer for Oracle University
and Bitzone LLC. He is currently CTO of Bitzone LLC.
Ann
Adams has been an active volunteer with the chapter from the first
meeting she attended last June, where she volunteered to become Hospitality Manager.
Before coming to the Bay Area, Ann was active in the Los Angeles chapter,
serving as Membership Manager. Ann plans to include more technical topics at our
meetings, along with the tried-and-true soft skills and trends topics. The technical
programs she attends in the Silicon Valley have given her fresh ideas for Ann
is a Senior Technical Communication Specialist with Kyocera Technology Development
in Concord. The group supplies software for Kyocera's global printer business.
She is working on improving translation processes and implementing topic-based
authoring within a content management system. Ann found her current position through
a posting at the Career Center on stc.org. Her employer is very supportive of
her STC activities and underwrites her annual dues. |
| Apr
3 | Robyn
Brode Orsini, a.k.a. the Comma Queen
|
What's
the Point of Punctuation? Robyn will speak
about the art and skill of punctuation. She will discuss how punctuation got started
and then codified, and how trends in punctuation reflect culture. She will also
cover some ways to know when you must punctuate and when you can take liberties.
Robyn
Brode Orsini comes to her title of Comma Queen honestly, having
labored most of her adult life as a freelance copyeditor, proofreader, indexer,
and writer. She teaches punctuation, among other classes, through Editcetera,
an association of Bay Area freelancers.
She also teaches professional
editing in the Technical and Professional Writing program at San Francisco State
University.
 |
