Just Enough Java cancelled

Sunday, October 12, Full day [9:00-4:30]

Manuel Gordon
manuel@gordonandgordon.com
Vanier College and Gordon & Gordon

• A First Look at APIs
• Just Enough Background
• Just Enough Java Syntax
• A Little Bit of C# 

The tutorial does not attempt to teach participants how to program. Nor does it replace Javadoc. Instead, it teaches them, with and without Javadoc, how to recognize class declarations, method declarations, and other key Java statements, and convert them into useful documentation. It gives them, in other words, "Just Enough Java" to do their jobs.

To support their work as technical writers, the workshop gives the participants appropriate background information and APIs, SDKs, programming languages, etc. The workshop ends with a brief comparison of documenting C# vs. documenting Java. 

This tutorial is aimed at technical writers who need to document APIs and SDKs written in the Java Language, and who do not have any knowledge of programming.

Lecture and exercises

Indexing Principles for New Media cancelled

Sunday, October 12, Full day [9:00-4:30]

Fred Brown
fred.brown@allegrotechindexing.com
Allegro Technical Indexing

1. Introduction
2. Usability test
3. Review indexing principles (70 min.)
4. "Show and Tell" -- examples of indexes in electronic media
5. Create an indexing system for an emerging media

Participants will learn how to apply indexing principles to emerging new media. Participants will

• understand basic indexing principles
• be able to evaluate an index
• understand the issues involved in indexing emerging media

The audience encompasses

• writers and web developers who are tasked with creating indexes
• editors responsible for index quality
• publications managers

The workshop format takes a practical, hands-on approach. Presentations and discussions build on the participants' knowledge and experience. Participants are encouraged to learn through discovery and employ their creativity.

Usability Evaluation for Documentation cancelled

Sunday, October 12, Full day [9:00-4:30]

Andrew F Swartz
aswartz@usability.serco.com
Principal Consultant
Serco Usability Services

1. Introduction and theory, 9.30-10.30
2. Morning coffee, 10.30-10.45
3. Usability evaluation overview, 10.45-11.30
4. Planning a usability evaluation 11.30-12.00
5. Lunch, 12.00-1.00
6. Planning a usability evaluation cont'd, 12.00-2.30
7. Afternoon coffee, 2.30-2.45
8. Running a usability evaluation, 2.45-4.00
9. Analysis and reporting, 4.00-4.45
10. Wrap-up, 4.45-5.00

This tutorial teaches how to plan and run a usability evaluation for printed or online documentation. The class focuses on illustrating underlying theory through practical exercises, tips, and anecdotes collected over a decade by a technical writer turned usability specialist. The very structure of the course recognizes the reality experienced by most documenters attempting their first usability test - that the political context requires as much attention as the test itself.

Documentors who are interested in usability evaluation.

Lecture with hands-on examples

Designing Online Communities cancelled

Sunday, October 12, Half day Morning [9:00-12:00]

Mike DelPrete
delpra@rpi.edu
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

1. Study your user group
2. Clearly define your community
3. Minimize the barriers of entry to your community
4. Establish clear interaction guidelines
5. Support virtual personas for your members
6. Offer multiple channels of interaction
7. Highlight your quality content
8. Support your subgroups
9. Support differing virtual visions
10. Sustain the community's interest
11. Keep pace with changing member needs

The goal of the tutorial is to discuss practical principles for the design of online communities. The tutorial will cover both the communicative principles and technical issues involved in designing, developing, and maintaining a vibrant online gathering space. This tutorial sets forth a series of best practices in the form of online community design guidelines. These guidelines can be used to enhance the overall effectiveness and usefulness of the interactive community space.

This tutorial is especially relevant to anyone involved in distance education, collaborative work environments, and virtual or real-life communities.

Taxonomies: A Practical, 'How To' Tutorial
on Providing Organization of Content cancelled

Sunday, October 12, Half day Morning [9:00-12:00]

Claude Vogel
cvogel@convera.com
Chief Science Officer of Convera Corp.

This tutorial will provide an introduction to taxonomy building. After a brief explanation of the key concepts, the tutorial will detail the building steps of a taxonomy, provide a thorough framework for quality assurance and help dealing with planning and cost evaluation issues. Practical examples will then illustrate the critical phases of the process.

Coherent and meaningful organization of content  is critical for efficient access to information on the corporate intranet. The need for organization is heightened as the sources of data and the volume of information increases and it becomes more difficult for users to find what they need. Taxonomies are an essential building block in the process of corporate information management and access.

Documentors who are interested in building new skills for coherently and meaningfully organizing content, particularly for corporate intranets.

Lecture with practical examples.

Localization and Documentation Development cancelled

Sunday, October 12, Full day [9:00-4:30]

Channing Hughes
channinghughes@earthlink.net
Unorthodocs

• Overview (15 minutes)
• How localization works (45 minutes)
• Challenges for localization (45 minutes)
• Break (15 minutes)
• What documentation developers can do to support localization (45 minutes)
• Partnering with localization (30 minutes)
• Resources (15 minutes)
• Q & A Session (30 minutes)

The demands of localization often have a significant influence on the way we develop and deliver documentation, yet most technical communicators have at best a shadowy understanding of what localization is and how it happens.  This tutorial provides an in-depth understanding of the philosophy, goals, challenges, processes, and tools of the localization industry. 

Technical writers and editors, documentation managers, and other technical communications professionals who need to interact with localization groups or vendors, or anyone in the field who wants a better understanding of localization and its interrelationship with the development of software, documentation, Web sites, or marketing communication materials.

This tutorial will alternate lecture, discussion, and exercises.  A workbook will be provided, including the content of all slides as well as checklists, worksheets, and copious examples. 

Designing mission critical hypermedia cancelled

Sunday, October 12, Half day Afternoon [1:00-4:30]

Robert M. Newman
r.m.newman@coventry.ac.uk
School of Mathematical and Information Sciences
Coventry University

Session 1: Failure modes of hypermedia systems

Session 2: Current and emerging standards and practice

Session 3: Formal storyboards, CCS and analysis

Session 4: Practical exercise in specification and analysis

There is an increasing interest in the use of hypermedia for technical documentation systems. Where these systems are used in safety critical industries and 'mission critical' applications, the design quality of the hypermedia product is of primary importance, since failures in the hypermedia systems can cause major losses, equipment failure, and injury.

For this reason it is necessary to develop rigorous design methods which can offer some level of guarantee of resistance to the most critical types of failure. Study and research into 'industrial strength hypermedia' has tended to concentrate of data formats, retrieval systems or data transmission issues, as opposed to design. Design centered research has concentrated on the issue of usability, which, while vitally important, is only a part of the problem. By contrast, this tutorial concentrates on the issue of the avoidance of design failure of such systems and investigates how the levels of design integrity required for applications such as these can be supported.

Those who design and document safety critical and mission critical applications.

Lecture with discussions and exercises

Systems Documentation: An Agile Approach cancelled

Sunday, October 12, Half day Afternoon [1:00-4:30]

Kendall Scott
kendall@softdocwiz.com

• The state of the art of systems documentation: less than optimal
• The mechanics of producing documentation during various phases of a software development project
• Agile documentation: Producing, managing, and impacting documentation projects

The purpose of the tutorial is to introduce IT specialists--developers, administrators, technical writers and business analysts--to some best practices for documenting information systems. The key theme is that in a systems environment, living information--information that's written and published on demand and regularly updated--has become far more important than manuals, help systems, and other documentation staples. To meet the increased demand for living information, companies must abandon the idea of a "documentation department" and take a flexible, agile approach to systems documentation.

The tutorial will be designed to benefit two types of students: Technical writers who wish to get a head start on obtaining advanced skills that will increase their professional respect and income and find out about a fresh, original treatment of difficult issues that they face daily; and development managers who wish to learn how better documentation practices can improve the functioning of other IT departments (development groups, systems administration groups, etc.) and how they can derive more benefit from their documentation budgets.

Lecture with discussion and exercises

Data Visualizations and Usability cancelled

Wednesday, October 15, Half day Afternoon [1:00-4:30]

Barbara Mirel
bmirel@msn.com
University of Michigan

• Introduction to data visualizations for complex problems and exploratory analysis
• Data visualization techniques for making complex comparisons

The goal of this tutorial is to provide participants with a basic "literacy" regarding information visualizations in terms of how they support and enhance the socio-cognitive, perceptual, and contextual demands of exploratory inquiry and what visualization designs are most useful for the three areas of support mentioned above. The benefits that participants will gain from the tutorial include being able to:

• Identify interactive graphics that are relevant to users' needs and actual approaches for comparisons; saving and recalling views, and analysis in a keystroke.
• Explain why certain graphics are better than others for particular complex problem solving needs, contextual conditions, and constraints.
• Determine usefulness criteria for various problem solving tasks based on the functional roles that these tasks play in users' integrated yet open-ended patterns of inquiry.
• Relate these usefulness criteria to relevant visualization, socio-cognitive, and perceptual principles.
• Apply visualization principles and techniques the creation of conceptual designs and instruction that usefully support problem solvers in their dynamic work in context.

Interface and documentation specialists and interaction designers

Lecture, discussion, and hands-on exercises.