tcworld China 2019 Program

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  • Day 1

    May 30, 2019

  • Registration
    Where
    Lobby

  • Global companies grapple with the complexities of creating, translating, and delivering content to every customer, in every language, across all channels. For many, this process is entirely too manual, time-consuming, and costly. The secret to streamlining the content supply chain can be found in a new, more holistic approach to content. Cruce Saunders, founder of [A] - simplea.com, is the author of Content Engineering for a Multi-Channel World. His team provides cutting-edge content consulting to some of the largest companies in the world. He looks to the power of the [A] Content Intelligence Framework, AI, and a new operating model for content to transform and automate the content supply chain.

    This opening keynote will investigate:

    • The current state of enterprise content, and emerging content creation trends
    • The patterns that enable personalization at scale, across proliferating channels including chatbots, voice assistants, AR/VR, and IoT devices
    • Publishing transformations happening today: how technology, people, and process work together to create new futures, structures, and teams to evolve in the face of constant change
    TC Trends and NextGen Content
    Where
    Room 1

  • In a world where Google sets the gold standard for providing relevant search results, how can technical documentation teams create findability that is always spot-on for every single reader?

    Relevance of search is determined by a combination of content metadata, contextual knowledge about the user, and the search query itself. The challenge therefore resides in collecting and analyzing these elements, and applying them systematically to every search query to create truly personalized search results.

    Information Development/Content Delivery
    Where
    Room 4

  • In the age of big data, cloud computing, and mobile information, digital experience of product information is becoming more and more important. Traditional text-version information may exist for a long time and become a user dictionary, and information visualization, interactivity, search, mobile access, lightweight requirements, and others, will increasingly become the mainstream of today's information experience. This presentation will take the success story in the digital transformation of IBM host product information (ADFZ host Configuration Assistant) as an example to share and explore how to meet the trend of the times and user needs. How to make the cross-product-line procedure information experience more popular.
    Information Development/Content Delivery
    TC Trends and NextGen Content
    Where
    Room 2

  • In the digital transformation of information, it is inevitable that one of the questions we need to answer is: How does information keep abreast of customer interaction contacts to provide the best experience.

    So, How to match contacts and information?

    How to do information experience architecture design and development?

    How to evaluate and quantify the user experience and incorporate it into the devops process?

    This topic focus on the practice and thinking in exploration of information experience.

    Content Strategy/Experience/Marketing
    Where
    Room 3

  • Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen recently said – “People buy experiences, not products.” Almost every large company has recognized that it is in the customer experience business. Understanding the customer journey and brand interactions across channels and platforms and their impact on customer experience is crucial for creating a unified CX strategy. But too often, marketing and technical communication content silos and a cluttered IT landscape create disconnected content worlds in voice and tone, visual consistency, and unified accessibility. It’s a complex system coming with a lot of challenges. In this presentation, Stefan Gentz, Senior Worldwide Technical Communication Evangelist at Adobe, will dive with you into the world of customer experience strategy and how to blend technical communication seamlessly into the digital experience world of today’s customers.
    Content Strategy/Experience/Marketing
    Where
    Room 1

  • The main goal of TC practitioners is to maximize the value of tech docs and the profits of doc products. Based on my own experience, I'd like to introduce the mindset of tech doc online operation and delivery. How to combine the cold and high telecom technology with the daily life of the masses, so as to realize the perfect combination of technology and humanity? How to better serve clients, and expand audiences? This presentation will bring some new ideas and mindset.
    Content Strategy/Experience/Marketing
    Where
    Room 2

  • How to adapt the big guides of yesterday into modularized narratives that are easy to maintain, scale well, and still allow for a ‘guide-like’ experience when it is required? This presentation will describe the work documentation writers at Red Hat are doing to solve this problem: re-purposing the existing body of documentation into modular units that can be combined into user-story-based content.
    Information Development/Content Delivery
    Where
    Room 1

  • When the project schedule is tight, the information design used to improve user experience is often sacrificed. How to remove the wall in the mind? Another way is to use a tool that decouples software functions independently. It is an effective way to crack UA implementation problems and provides a broader imagination for digital, diversified, and intelligent user assistant design.

    1. Provide users with personalized assistance,including traditional materials, intelligent materials (accurate personalized recommendations, guide guidelines, automated execution, etc.).

    2. Through a specific tool and service platform, you can quickly develop all kinds of user-aware information

    3. The product can be improved by "Let the software speak" according to the panorama trajectory analysis of a user's behavior.

    Information Development/Content Delivery
    Where
    Room 3

  • The presentation will focus on the analysis of MT&PE data based on MT Plugins for CAT tools. Users’ preferences towards different MTs when translating into different languages in different industries will be analyzed. Besides, the time they spent on PE and the revisions they made will be considered for comparing pros and cons between multiple MTs. By doing so, users can be recommended with the most suitable MT and provided with practical reference when conducting their MT+PE work.
    Globalization and Localization
    Where
    Room 2

  • China's large and medium-sized enterprises continue to expand their global market share by relying on high quality and resonanble prices. Now it is urgent to obtain a user experience and evaluation that is commensurate with the quality of their products in the after-sales service field, thereby further consolidating and expanding market share. However, China enterprises have misunderstandings and difficulties in their efforts in this area. They have a huge gap with the first-class standards of world-class enterprises.

    Large and medium-sized enterprises have many product models, frequent product updates, so the requirements for content production, content management, content translation and multi-channel publishing of technical information are: content production tool should be simple to operate, content management system should be intelligent, content translation should be quickly and low cost, finally multi-channel publishing needs to be completed with one click only.

    Founded in 2003, Sinoview provides enterprises with complete solutions for technical content writing, management, publishing and translation. We have both insight into future trends and strong development capabilities, so that companies not only have cretive ideas, but also have a proven practical solution.
    Information Development/Content Delivery
    Where
    Room 4

  • The power of the digital world has changed the way companies interact with customers. Content drives customer journeys and streamlines experiences across touchpoints. However, to manage this content across channels and languages on a global scale, companies need to start from content leverage the advantages of structured content management across the content supply chain, applying best practices across creation, translation to delivery.

    In this talk, you will learn more about how to overcome the limitations of traditional content creation and publishing. You will discover how new technologies optimize the customer experience through collaborative creation, taxonomy management, and dynamic publishing. You will also learn how a content supply chain approach can help companies meet their current and future content needs through intelligence and automation using structured content management.

    Content Strategy/Experience/Marketing
    TC Trends and NextGen Content
    Where
    Room 1

  • With the adoption of new privacy regulations (the EU’s GDPR, the US’s Privacy Shield, and others), regulatory bodies are going to pressure the internet industry into a regime of strict consumer protections. If companies want to be part of lucrative and growing markets, they are going to have to comply with these new regulations, designed to protect customers’ privacy. Requiring opt-in to data gathering, rather than onerous opt-out; making it easier to move your data to a preferred carrier; enhanced data protection measures and requirements; transparency about data breaches; the appointment of data protection officers; and severe penalties; are just some of regulators’ new gifts to the consumer. We will review the constraints imposed by these major regulations, what they mean in terms of features and architecture in content delivery platforms, and how enterprises can retool to meet them and compete successfully.
    Globalization and Localization
    Information Development/Content Delivery
    Where
    Room 3

  • Terminology is essential for all kinds of technical communication because terms and the concepts behind are the main carriers of domain-specific knowledge. Therefore, terminology management is necessary for all persons and companies involved in creating and translating technical documentation. Computer tools are supporting not only terminology management, but also helping technical writers and translators to work efficiently. Interfaces and data re-use between these tools are required. One of the technologies helping technical translators is machine translation. Although machine translation support is available more than 50 years, neural machine translation (NMT) systems with AI technologies are now entering the market and convincing users with improved linguistic results. However, how can these NMT systems handle company-specific and innovative terminology? The presentation will explain the necessity for terminology management and the way how terminology can support technical writing and translation, with a specific focus on machine translation.
    Globalization and Localization
    Where
    Room 2

  • Some technical documents are easy to read, while others are painful.What are the factors that bring about the differences in these reading experiences? The main role of technical text is to help users understand the information and then complete the task. Technical texts with a good reading experience should have the following characteristics: 1). Fast reading speed; 2). High mission completion rate; 3). Short task completion time; 4). Visual aesthetics; 5). Low cognitive load 6). Low degree of visual fatigue. Various components of the text are likely to have an impact on the reading experience, such as row length, row height, font size, font, picture aspect ratio, title font size ratio at all levels, number of paragraphs, background color, and so on. This report will share our exploration of this issue and focus on sharing our empirical research on the impact of the element "row length" on the reading experience, mainly on research processes, experimental design and research tools (such as eye tracker, brain activities, skin activities), etc.
    Academics
    Education and Training
    Where
    Room 1

  • User-generated content (UGC) is a growing trend in technical writing. With the explosive uptake of Internet applications and cloud computing technologies, the way users obtain and use information is different from the past. This creates challenges for effective information development but also provides opportunities for progress.

    How can you inspire users to communicate with your products and writers? How can experts contribute their best practices to your documentation? How can you make your content user-friendly and scenario-based? How can you make the value of the content measurable and visible?

    Nowadays, documentation is not only there to help existing customers use the product; it can be a touchpoint for potential customers too. Through our bounty program, users can get involved in making contributions to the content, by editing documentation, or by making content proposals through crowdsourcing channels or technology communities.

    TC Trends and NextGen Content
    Where
    Room 1

  • China is investing heavily in Industry 4.0 technologies for its “Smart Factories” initiative - part of the “Made in China 2025” programme. But the various platforms and initiatives around the world for these technologies are saying very little about information.

    This presentation shares the main points of the model known as Information 4.0, an informational response to Industry 4.0. This model was developed by the Information 4.0 Consortium, which promotes exchange between the worlds of technology and information development and management. The model represents our understanding of what is needed to effectively meet the informational needs of users faced with AI, IoT, Bionics, Augmented Reality, etc. We don’t consider this model as definitive or fixed, it is a living body that will evolve with changing needs.

    The presentation focuses on two central notions: High contextuality Molecular information

    New technological capacities, tied to mobile devices, wearables, and eventually implants, will make it so that context and content interact, change each other, and influence user behavior. Ultra-fine context sensing and personalisation cannot happen without AI, and information design must become molecular – chunked into very small units – to support it.

    This also means that development technologies and the technology of information management and delivery need to be integrated at the moment of product design, with technical communicators inside product design teams. This is part of the theory of agile product design, but has not, so far, been well implemented.

    In a place like China, where there is no long history of practice, there is a particularly good opportunity for leadership and innovation developing new practices adapted to the future. This kind of approach is also applicable to initiatives such as Smart Cities, another area where China is investing heavily.

    TC Trends and NextGen Content
    Where
    Room 3

  • Why are companies willing to invest a lot of resources in building TC teams and platforms?

    How do TC people constantly tap into their own value and get full recognition?

    How does external non-professional evaluation evolve into an internal professional evaluation?

    How can big data be used to integrate management ideas?

    The development direction of TC business and the future conception of a TCer

    This presentation introduces the development of enterprise technical documentation in terms of personnel, technology and platform.

    Managing TC
    Where
    Room 2

  • Structured writing is applied to a wide variety of writing approaches. Some say that most technical writing is “structured writing", because the writing process is approached in a methodical structured way. According to this definition, all documents with some sort of structure must have been the result of a structured approach.

    In this workshop, structured writing means a standardized, methodological approach to content creation incorporating systematic labeling, modular, topic-based architecture, constrained writing environments, and the separation of content and form.

    This approach is the key to creating intelligent content, applying single sourcing strategy and a must-have mindset for CMS implementation.

    Structured writing and DITA is frequently required in job descriptions. If you are an experienced writer seeking a promotion to be an information architect, this is a quick beginning.

    Information Development/Content Delivery
    Where
    Room 4

  • ECM concept, value, and function.

    ECM platform big picture view, establishment, project road sign, and operation.

    ECM development trends.

    Others
    Where
    Room 2

  • These days, the term Industrie 4.0 is on everyone’s lips. According to the most recent developments, making use of the term only seems natural – but it has to be distinguished what really belongs to Industrie 4.0 and what does not. We encounter ourselves in a world where there is such thing as an administration shell; a digital representation of the real asset in the digital world. Not only is communication between these assets possible – moreover, every asset is represented by a smart sibling and is assigned properties – which form the basis of everything. Being put in the semiotic triangle, Industry 4.0 thereby links the concept we have of an object, the physical object as the asset, and the IT-model as the smart sibling. The physical and the digital world blend into each other not only with smart factories, but also with smart products. With regard to the “reference architectural model Industry 4.0”, this presentation aims at covering the heart of Industry 4.0.
    TC Trends and NextGen Content
    Where
    Room 3

  • As an important part of version delivery, the timeliness, accuracy and integrity of documents have always been a great challenge. After three years of accumulation, ZTE has established the DevOps platform for the entire document, covering the four systems of production, construction, consumption and feedback.

    This theme covers:

    (1) Document DevOps Delivery Value: How to bring the value of improving document development efficiency, reducing operating costs, shortening delivery cycle and improving customer satisfaction for internal and external users.

    (2) Document DevOps support theory: three-tree model and DIKW model.

    (3) Document DevOps core practices: collaborative development, continuous publishing, on-demand publishing, quality assurance, high availability, sustainable growth and other means and methods.

    Information Development/Content Delivery
    TC Trends and NextGen Content
    Where
    Room 1

  • Day 2

    May 31, 2019

  • Recent years witness rapid growth in technical communication in China, evidence of which is supported by the increase of market demands from 20% in 2016 to 38% in 2018. The fact that almost 80% of Chinese technical communicators are self-taught is alarming, because there is a striking shortage in TC educational resources in China. In this context, pioneering TC courses have been offered in a small number of universities in their attempt to fill the gap between market needs and education. Since TC is little known to university students, and most TC courses are stand-alone ones, it is very challenging to decide what to be included in teaching and what TC skillset to arm students with in just one semester. It is demonstrated in this presentation that starting from building TC mindset in students is an effective way of delivering this course. Various mindset-building ways will be illustrated in addition to a special project-based course design, in which industry supervisor’s involvement with student projects turn out to be highly successful.
    Education and Training
    Where
    Room 2

  • Information experience will not be limited documentation that's all TCs know. But how to scale out our work to help enterprise, especailly software enterprise and service provider to gain bussiness success is the goal. My presentation will introduce what we think and do now.
    Content Strategy/Experience/Marketing
    Where
    Room 3

  • Managing terminology is essential for technical writers and translators, but also for language service providers, companies and organizations. But how to design and configure a termbase that ideally matches the respective needs and objectives. Klaus-Dirk Schmitz explains how to build a best practice, concept-oriented termbase in this workshop. This workshop is ideal for those who want to understand what types of language and terminological information should be included in a termbase, what terminological principles should be followed, and how to organize and use termbases effectively.
    Globalization and Localization
    Where
    Room 4

  • Is the device broken? Does it need replacement? Or can it be fixed in the field? These are questions your field service or your customers face sooner or later. We as technical documentation departments need to produce and deliver a wealth of information. But how do we provide fast, accurate and best fitting answers to actual challenges?

    Technical documentation departments are torn between two poles. On the one hand they should provide accurate information in the most efficient manner in time.  On the other hand traditional workflows producing PDF files to be printed no longer meet the demands of customers and field service providers. Structure content authoring is not only the state of the art way for efficient production of technical documentation. But can also be used as source of intelligent information to support customers and field service providers in far more ways than just lengthy manuals.

    For example letting customers find the right answer rapidly via a self-service app. Or letting an interactive fault tree guide them through the decision making process of dealing with a support case. Others have experienced the benefits of ordering spare parts orders right the first time all the time. In Industry 4.0 environmental machine data can give operators as well as technicians actual advice on the actions to be taken in a certain context. Service technicians are more efficient if intelligent maintenance tables only show them the tasks to be done.

    This talk investigates how SCHEMA's customers excel in technical documentation and in service thanks to structured content authoring.

    Information Development/Content Delivery
    TC Trends and NextGen Content
    Where
    Room 1

  • Measuring the success of technical writing deliverables has always been difficult. Now that we've transformed ourselves to "user assistance", measuring the success based on how easy and how well the customers have been using the software could be one possibility.

    Customer issues have always been an toll on the development resource. We've started an initiative to prevent recurring customer issues by transforming the help content. In the presentation, I will use examples to show how we transform the content: We've done analysis of our target audience's real tasks, mapped content towards those tasks, and improved the structure and semantic tagging of our content to make it more discoverable and easier to consume.

    To track the success of the content transformation, we have been monitoring the number of customer tickets and see how the transformed content actually makes an impact on the customer issues.

    Content Strategy/Experience/Marketing
    Where
    Room 3

  • Xi’an International Studies University (XISU) is one of the first universities in China to start offering TC course in the 1990s. This presentation introduces how a technical writing course has evolved from a task-based course to a client-based course over about eight years of practice. The assessment of the learning outcomes has been changed from a report to the teacher to a report to both the teacher and the clients. This presentation will introduce the results of a case study done in this course. The students have been surveyed and both the students and clients have been interviewed on the process of participating in this course. The results suggest that the students have benefited from this “real world” experience in communicating with the clients. The students understand more of the key concepts in Technical Communication by practicing on both the projects and the clients. They develop not only their TC skills but also their communication skills in studying this course. Therefore, the client-based approach can be used in technical writing courses to improve students’ understanding and also their working procedures to grow to be more professional practitioners.
    Education and Training
    Where
    Room 2

  • In our high technology world the need for quality content is always growing. However, how that content is delivered or received is constantly evolving. In this session Jennifer will cover the concepts around “Micro-content” and how it will impact traditional technical authoring.
    Information Development/Content Delivery
    TC Trends and NextGen Content
    Where
    Room 1

  • This workshop provides hands-on, practical techniques for applying cognitive science to User Assistance. Interactive exercises will demonstrate how to use learning theory to create useful information and build cognitive demand. We explore practical ways to plug the “black holes of knowledge” that come from our habit of going out to the web to get quick fixes for an urgent, immediate problem, again using interactive exercises that lead us to solutions. We’ll also debate, discuss, and brainstorm together.

    Primary topics are: Deductive Reasoning - you can figure it out yourself! Gestalt: Filling in the gaps Constructivism: where do users find meaning in UA? Action-Learning and Cognitive Demand What’s Competency got to do with connections? Finding help and making it count through Connectivism Learning by doing and generalisation Does Your Content Strategy Include Your Product? The Cognitive Spiral: Integrated Connective Competency Learning is more Important than Knowing Integrated Stakeholder Communities: creating value and re-injecting it into the system

    Academics
    Information Development/Content Delivery
    TC Trends and NextGen Content
    Where
    Room 4

  • Apart from the technology trend buzz words “AI” and “Big Data”, some localization companies go extra to provide the content one stop solution including content marketing, technical writing, design and video creation. The extra services are extremely important to enable China companies go global.

    The biggest challenge to go extra is to find the overseas native speaker talents (content marketing mainly) and bring them to work onsite in China.

    In this speech, WeiWei Cao will share Alibaba International User Experience best practices how to build up the remote and in-house resource pool to provide the seamless one stop content solution (content and design).

    Globalization and Localization
    Where
    Room 3

  • For the majority of the Chinese companies, especially the small and mediam-sized ones, the globalization of their technical documents is an important task as well as a challenge, due to their limited budget and lack of well-trained English technical writing personnels. From time to time, they just let the online machine translation do the globalization job and the results are disastrous. Therefore, to streamline and simplify their Chinese technical writing seems to be a reasonable option.
    Globalization and Localization
    Where
    Room 2

  • While “Agile” and “Continuous” are notions most often associated with software development-related activities, it has progressively impacted the way we define translation and localization processes, especially among software, gaming and ecommerce companies.

    And if most organizations like to set this is as a mid- or long-term objective, it is however not a localization process that is recommended for all types of enterprises.

    Globalization and Localization
    Where
    Room 1

  • China GDP is huge today, but there are not so many famous globalized Chinese companies. What are the problems? What are the root reasons behind? How should the companies do to overcome the problems? What could other parties (service providers, third parties, etc.) do to help their customers become being really global?

    In Jason’s observation, the reasons of issues are far beyond lacking of hands-on skills, instead, what’s more important is on deeper level, such as principles, structures, strategies, or even mindsets and value propositions. To really help those companies, it requires systemic thinking and full involvement of internal stakeholders and external expertise from TC, MarCom, L10n, I18n, etc.

    Globalization and Localization
    Where
    Room 2

  • Translation is the vital part of big international events. If everything going on smoothly nobody cares about it but if something going on incorrectly everybody mentioned it. How to avoid any inconvenience for end-users? How to provide them the best possible work conditions? The last but not the least question is how to pay them good enough and at the same time reduce costs for the end-clients? During the organization of interpretation services you have a number of “How” questions. Fortunately IT technology helps to find a solution. Based on the number of International events such as Winter Olympic Games or World Cup 2018 we will show you the efficiency of this solution from economic and organizational sides. Furthermore, we are going to present our unique Vendor Suggestion System and how it was used to increase vendor performance and suitability. The VSS is based on AI approach and will help you to choose the right interpreter or engineer for your project using its Evaluation and Suggestion modules.
    Globalization and Localization
    Managing TC
    Where
    Room 3

  • The discussion will focus on the following questions (Chinese TC practitioners pain points): - Very few Chinese universities offer technical communication education, as a graduate student, how can I prepare for a technical writer job? - I’m a junior writer with 2 years working experience. I am worried about my future. Is technical writing a job that I can spend my entire life to pursue? Or I need to change my role to be a designer or salesman or whatever? - I’m a writer with 5 years experience. I am good at my job. My only concern is that our management does not value writers at all. We get less paid than engineers, get no training, and get no promotion. I’m frustrated with this. What shall I do? - I’m a writer with 10 years experience. I get tired with my job. I’m already familiar with my responsibilities and job content, processes and tools. I reach the bottleneck in my career. What shall I do? - I’m a writer and I think I also do things beyond a writer, such as translating documents, writing marketing articles, and even giving English training to developers. What are a writer’s responsibilities in your opinion?
    Career Development
    Managing TC
    Where
    Room 1

  • The enterprise content marketing is among the latest business model innovation esp. for online business. This talk will focus on the content marketing best practices in an enterprise setting. In will include the framework, methodology, and technical platform to enable an automated/targeted marketing model. We will also talk about the challengers and solutions facing a start-up where everything happens fast.
    Content Strategy/Experience/Marketing
    Where
    Room 1

  • Technical documentation is often intended to be used by software developers. This presentation introduces participants to the needs of developers and demonstrates how technical writers can help to meet those needs. The strategies discussed are particularly relevant to REST API documentation, but the presentation is suitable for anyone who is interested in creating resources for developers.
    Information Development/Content Delivery
    Where
    Room 3

  • In late 2018 Adobe released an entirely new generation of RoboHelp – developed from scratch, starting with code line one. In this hands-on workshop, Stefan Gentz, Senior Worldwide Evangelist for Technical Communication at Adobe, will introduce you to this new HAT powerhouse generation.

    In this workshop you will:

    – Get an introduction to the all-new user interface,

    – learn how to configure RoboHelp 2019 for your needs,

    – create a new project from scratch,

    – import content from Microsoft Word and FrameMaker,

    – create your first CSS3 Stylesheet with the new visual CSS designer,

    – edit the XML-based HTML5 in the all-new source code editor,

    – learn how to work with snippets, variables, and conditional text,

    – learn how to re-use content, create micro-content, personalize content, and reuse content.

    – experience the magic of “Responsive Authoring,”

    – and finally, publish your project to Responsive HTML5 and PDF.

    To take full advantage of the workshop, you may want to bring your own laptop and pre-install the new RoboHelp 2019. You can download a free and fully functional 30-day trial version here:

    https://www.adobe.com/products/robohelp/download-trial/try.html
    Information Development/Content Delivery
    Where
    Room 4

  • There’s a lot of talk about IoT and how global companies are heading there. Business models are changing as manufacturers and service organizations are looking to improve their aftermarket business thanks to predictive maintenance, as well as create new revenue streams.

    But what does this mean for the technical communicator? What is his/her role in all of this? This presentation will:

    • paint the big (IoT) picture and inform technical communicators and technical documentation managers on the crucial role technical documentation plays in this new landscape.

    • help with further understanding about the impact of IoT on Service Information.

    • and explain how a solid content strategy (allowing for dynamic and aug-mented service information delivery) combined with IoT strategies will improve the profitability in the service business in both the short and long term.
    Information Development/Content Delivery
    Where
    Room 2

  • Have you ever tried to build the end-to-end content strategy from scratch, from benchmarking competitors, designing the internal and external collaboration model, to implementing the strategy in various channels across the product API, GUI, and official website? In this session, we’ll share our practice in a Chinese company who is shooting global market, how we helped streamline their content experience.
    Content Strategy/Experience/Marketing
    Where
    Room 1

  • No more disconnect between the writing of code and the writing of documentation. Modern documentation can be written, published, and maintained using the same methods software code is developed. Docs processes become more agile and more approachable for developers.

    In this presentation, Robert Kratky will talk about tech writing workflows that include editing plain-text formats, collaborating through version-control repositories, running custom scripts for validation checks, and automating docs deployment.

    Is it for you? How can you benefit from adopting a process that treats docs as programmers treat software source code? Come and learn about it!

    Information Development/Content Delivery
    TC Trends and NextGen Content
    Where
    Room 3

  • With 5G, Internet of Things, and products interacting with each other, there will be new expectations on Technical Information and content producers. The combination of Industry 4.0 and Content 4.0 will be challenging. We have to be smart in how we communicate technology, and how we use the produced product data and knowledge gained. Nate will talk about strategies, research, and standards that will be important for the future of TC. He will share findings and current expectations from customers – this will also cover presentation formats for future generations and how the role of a Technical Communicator will evolve.

    Nate will share results from recent research projects that they have been involved in and give information about research projects they are about to start. He will also share their sources for business analysis so you can follow the trends yourselves; for example industry standards, podcasts, and communities.
    TC Trends and NextGen Content
    Where
    Room 2

  • Communication issues remain a pain for TWs regardless of their industry: hard to get input from a developer, difficult to get review feedback from a Product Owner, sometimes even harder to speak the same language as the R&D people.

    This panel discussion sheds lights on how to correctly communicate and interact with an R&D people, from the perspective of a developer, a product owner, and a quality assurance engineer. The topic covers the following:

    - My role and my job responsibilities, part of my work requires communication with a TW

    - My pain points or frustrations when a conversation occurs between a TW and me, examples provided

    - My suggestions and expectations towards a TW in terms of communication, for example, how to get information efficiently?

    Career Development
    Where
    Room 1

  • In this hands-on workshop, you will learn valuable methods to lead yourself better which in turn will make you a better leader. Whether you've been in charge of leading a team for a long time, or you're just getting started with your career - you will definitely benefit from this workshop! We will start out with tools for self-management, from goal-setting up to fear-setting, and how to push beyond your limits. Then we will transfer these tools onto leading others.
    Career Development
    Managing TC
    Where
    Room 4

  • As we transition from traditional graphical user interfaces to web-based applications, and more recently to conversational user interfaces, the challenges have changed; and so has the definition of good copy. It is important to understand narrative and conversational design to be able to convert product requirements into a clear and engaging user story. As a technical communicator, you must showcase an inventor’s spirit, highly refined aesthetic sensibilities, and a fine-tuned ability to contextually communicate the right message in the right place at the right time. When people read content that is of a conversational tone, it gives them a feeling that they’re being spoken to directly.

    The essence of good copy is to turn every message in your product into a valuable conversation. You can keep these tips in mind: Copy must contain useful data but must not be poorly presented Copy must be presented in a visually amazing way but not show the lack of meaning and purpose.

    You must keep a good balance between words and graphics, and make them work together. You must aim to make your words more approachable and less arduous for your readers. By using both empathy and logic to design your product, you must play the pivotal role of endorsing the product with not just good but great copy.

    As a technical communicator, you can expand your portfolio by being an advocate for your product's design. You can work towards shaping product experiences by creating useful, meaningful copy and drive cohesive product narratives across multiple platforms and touch points. You must advocate the design you want to see in your user interface by creating not just good but great copy.

    Information Development/Content Delivery
    Where
    Room 3

  • Quan’s presentation focuses on accessibility for disabled users in technical communication. As technology democratizes information resources, an increasing number of disabled persons require accessible documents, websites, and content. In the U.S., there were 814 web-accessibility lawsuits in 2017 and more than 1000 in the first half of 2018 (Bureau of Internet Accessibility, 2018). Improving accessibility of information is not only ethical but also vital.

    Quan’s talk addresses the following three aspects: Accessibility-related policies, important professional and corporate guidelines, and accessibility techniques. First, he gives an overview of policies including Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (Federal Electronic and Information Technology). These policies largely guide the practice of information and Web accessibility and provide valuable lessons for developing markets like China. Quan introduces widely-adopted professional guidelines, with a focus on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) by the W3C. He discusses how visual, motor, auditory, and cognitive disabilities affect information use and key techniques to eliminate barriers of information access.

    Technical communicators work in a wide variety of settings and with a variety of document medium and genres. Quan’s talk aims to raise awareness of accessibility among technical communicators, provide a professional framework for reference, and offer helpful tips. It is his bigger hope that Chinese technical communicators would examine how accessibility applies to their work and advocate for accessibility.

    Reference: 2018’s flood of accessibility lawsuits. Bureau of Internet Accessibility. https://www.boia.org/blog/2018s-flood-of-accessibility-lawsuits

    Information Development/Content Delivery
    Where
    Room 2

  • The focus of the study is the professional communication happening between designers and clients during the course of conducting a design project. A design project is never an easy task in terms of communication because 1) it usually involves in multiple stakeholders, therefore, each party holds its own value, interest, perspective, expectation, and level of knowledge and expertise which can cause potential conflicts; and 2)it is also likely to take multiple development stages, with each stage has different objectives and work that cannot be achieved without consensus or compromise among clients and designers. How do designers communicate their plan, approach, rationales, and concerns to the clients? How do designers respond to clients’ demands? Can designers uphold their value while adjusting to clients’ business needs?

    In this study, the researcher seeks to provide insights with three cases. The first designer is practicing service design in Finland, the second one is an interior designer who works for a Vietnamese furniture company, and the third one is a UX designer based in China. Each of the participating designers work with a specific group of clients of distinctive demands, and the communication varies profoundly in local contexts. The analysis and discussion will include three aspects: the communication challenges designers encounter, the role of technical communication in designer-clients relationship, and designers’ awareness and use of technical communication.

    It needs to be noted that this is a study at its preliminary stage. The long-term goals include providing support to working professionals with regards to workplace communication and exploring the possibility of applying technical communication education in university departments like Design and Engineering. The researcher intends to share primary data including narratives and interview responses with the hope of sparking feedback and critique from the audience.

    Academics
    Where
    Room 2

  • Do you feel that Technical Writing (TW) is a dead-end job with zero or limited career prospects? Do you feel that people just don’t understand what you do, don’t seem to care or at least not appreciate what you do? Do you wonder if TW has a future and do we really need to create these mammoth User Guides? Is this all there is? Is there life after TW?

    If you have these concerns, then this presentation is for you! The term User eXperience (UX) has been around for a while, but User eXperience Writer (UXW) is the latest buzz phrase that’s just emerging now. Evolving from TW to UXW is not a natural phenomenon, so this presentation will show you how. First, you must overcome all the obstacles. The first are the traditional TW’ers themselves. ‘Leave us alone to endlessly tweak the mammoth. We like being alone.’ Then, there’s your boss. ‘Can’t they just keep doing what they’re doing until a customer says they don’t need these User Guides.’

    Finally, there are the User Interface Designers and the Graphic Artists in the UXD team. ‘Who are these upstarts to encroach on our territory?’ So, will this presentation be a ‘eat less, exercise more’ list of obviousisms? No. It’ll simply be a TW-to-UXW walkthrough using two case studies. I’ll show the path, but you will have to walk it yourself.

    Career Development
    Content Strategy/Experience/Marketing
    Where
    Room 3