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Print Futures 2008 Portfolio Show

Antoine — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:23:02 +0000

Come and support the grads of the Print Futures program at our portfolio show this Thursday from 4:30pm to 7:30pm. You can drop in or stay for the whole event.

There’ll be free food, free music, and free conversation with some of the most talented writers this side of the Fraser River. The booze you’ll have to pay for.

Heading to DocTrain West

Antoine — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:13:55 +0000

I won a ticket to this year’s DocTrain West conference through the Westcoast STC! I’d like to thank the organizer Scott Abel and the good people at the STC for giving me this terrific opportunity. As I mentioned before, if you can afford the $899, or have a generous employer, then be there or don’t-be-square.

Conference expounds future of CMS

Antoine — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:56:20 +0000

The content convergence and integration conference was a mind-blowing excursion into the wild terrains of content management. For those confused by the conference title, let me tell you the gist of it (from what I could gather).

We live in the information age, yet for the most part organizations fail to use content as a commodity and a valuable asset. As writers, we need to impress upon decision makers that the strategic use of content can indeed achieve the goals of the company, and is not a superfluous add-on. Furthermore, we can leverage social media and new ways of organizing content (such as folksonomy and dynamic publishing) to create a heightened user experience that goes beyond the traditional user manual. Oh, but for more conservative companies, the traditional manual works just fine.

Well, there’s more to it than that – a lot more. Presentations ran the gambit from DAM to DITA to XML and everything in between. It was a pleasure to volunteer at the event and work with the fine folks at the Strategy A consulting group, who were responsible for organizing and running the show.

Content Convergence & Integration 2008

Antoine — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:35:06 +0000

This conference kicked off in Vancouver today and is the place to be if you’re facing content management issues in your professional life as a technical writer, or if you want to stay on the leading edge of developments in the field. Each day has a specific theme. Day 1 (today) is about content, day 2 about technology, and day 3 about user relationships. I’ll be volunteering there the whole day tomorrow, and will tell you all about it later (if you’re going, be sure to say hello).

Highlights? The future of XML publishing, the new Quark dynamic publishing demos, social media, mobile content management , and of course, the fabulous food.

Pearls book launch

Antoine — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:31:37 +0000

On Friday I had the pleasure of attending the 27th Pearls book launch, the annual anthology of creative writing works by Douglas College students. My story, The Reluctant Teacher, was published in it this year. I’ve had some poetry published in Pearls before, but that was about 8 years ago, so it’s been a while. A few of the authors read by candlelight and I got to see a few familiar faces. Good times.

Northern Voice a wrap

Antoine — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:11:57 +0000

I’m glad I was able to attend Northern Voice this year – it was informative and inspiring for the most part. All the clicking laptops around me were a bit daunting, but gave me something to aspire to.

The morning kicked off with the keynote address by Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress (the excellent blogging platform on which this website is based). Listen to the audio here.

I then listened to a talk by the CEO of Broadband Mechanics, Marc Canter on bringing social to software. Next was an inspirational diatribe on the state of our stats-obsessed blogging world by Dave Olson.

In the afternoon, Alan Levine gave us 50 web 2.0 ways to tell a story (his was a tearjerker about a dog). Vancouver photographer Kris Krug then faced off against his mentor Alex Waterhouse-Hayward on the best medium for photography – hard copy or digital?

Finally, Rob Cottingham gave a talk called Blogger 911, about using blogs for crisis communications, something we’re doing a lot of in PR class. He also draws some great cartoons about social media – check them out on his page.

Overall it was worth going and I’ll be going next year – hopefully with a laptop this time!

Come to Northern Voice 2008

Antoine — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:56:49 +0000

Whether you’re a hardcore blogger or just thinking of starting one up, you can’t miss Northern Voice, Vancouver’s 4th blogging and social media conference. This event gets bigger and more popular every year, but is still “cheap, friendly and open to all.” It’s only $40 for one day ($60 for both).

On a similar note, the second DocTrain West is coming to Vancouver in May and the topic is – gosh, what a shocker – Web 2.0 and it’s impact on communication. If you have $999 to spare, or maybe a generous employer, then do attend – it’s the crÃ¨me de la crÃ¨me of conferences for technical communicators.