Chapter Meeting Information

Past Meetings

September 8, 2011 "Listen!" with Rich Maggiani
Rich Maggiani, STC Fellow and Board member, reminded us (with his usual style and humor) of one of our most important core skills, what it really means, and how to be successful at it. You can access his slides from his site (http://www.solari.net) under About Us > News > 2011 news releases.

October 6, 2011 "Let's Talk DITA" with Liz Fraley
With the 5.4 release in 2010, Arbortext added support for DITA 1.2, which introduced the "keyref" feature. Keyref provides a powerful indirect addressing mechanism as well as the possibility for sophisticated conditional profiling/ processing of content. For example, with the keyref feature, if reference needs to be updated, for example if the topic is relocated, the path only needs to be updated once rather than every time it occurs.

November 3, 2011 "Behind the Scenes at the Science Fair" with Nadine Horner and T.R. Girill

The Tri-Valley Science and Engineering Fair (TVSEF) completed its fifteenth year this spring. At a time when (according to a recent New York Times article) many regional science fairs shrunk or failed, TVSEF featured more projects from more students on behalf of more local teachers than ever before. TVSEF director Nadine R. Horner will reveal how she applied her MBA skills to run this local science fair like a business, managing funds, sponsors, venue upgrades, volunteers, and safety issues behind the scenes while reaching out to promote more student and teacher participation on the public side.

Because effective communication with all fair stakeholders dovetails with the goals of the EBSTC technical literacy project, the evening will end with a look at the customized risk-management and poster-design aids that EBSTC's T. R. Girill prepared for the TVSEF website.

December 1 , 2011 "Don't Quit Your Day Job—But..."
Features current or past technical communicators who have morphed into fiction writers:

Camille Minichino writes the Periodic Table mysteries (The Hydrogen Murder, The Helium Murder, The Oxygen Murder, etc.) under her own name as well as the Miniature Mysteries series writing as Margaret Grace. She has just launched a new mystery series featuring a college professor.

Ann Parker writes the Silver Rush mysteries (Silver Lies, Iron Ties, Leaden Skies, and a new book in the series just out, Mercury's Rise).

Bruce Robinson just published Legends of the Strait, set in Benicia during Prohibition. Bruce is a former member of EB STC. In the mid-90’s he resurrected the chapter newsletter and continued as Managing Editor for a number of years.

Upcoming Meetings

Attending meetings is a great way to learn new things and connect with technical writers around the East Bay.

East Bay programs are usually held at Crow Canyon Country Club in San Ramon. For details on meeting location and reservations, see the
meetings page on the chapter Web site.

January 5, 2012

"Development Techniques for User Interface Text and Web-based Content in SmartPhone Applications" with Joe Welinske

You can help your mobile team improve your apps by understanding the basics of mobile application creation. This session will cover iPhone/iPad and Android but can be generalized to other mobile platforms. This session is technical in nature but does not require any experience with programming.

Planned in 2012