Presenters

Mark Ambrose is a Senior Enterprise Solutions Manager for SDL International, the world’s leading provider of global information management solutions. SDL provides global information management (GIM) solutions through a combination of enterprise software, professional services - including business process consulting, outsourcing and solution delivery - and solutions partners. SDL has customers spanning consumer, SME and enterprise markets, including global industry leaders Phillips, John Deere, Mercury, FedEx, Dell, BMC, Bayer, Bosch, Canon, DAF, DaimlerChrysler, HP, Intel, Kodak, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Reuters, Siemens, SAP and Volkswagen.

Mr. Ambrose has over 15 years of content, configuration, and globalization management experience in various roles providing insight into global content management methodologies and strategies. His current focus is on global information management strategies spanning XML, Web and other content management systems.

Tim Bombosch is a Project Management Professional (PMP) with 10+ years experience in technical communications. At Lasselle-Ramsay Information Development Services, Tim manages projects ranging from high tech and bio tech to localization and consumer electronics. He is the secretary of the Society for Technical Communication Management Special Interest Group and the former president of Society for Technical Communication San Francisco.  Tim also teaches project management and technical communications at the University of California Extension. He received his PhD from Stanford University, where he taught German literature, philosophy, and film.

Michael Boses is Chief Technology Officer of In.vision Research Corporation, a vendor of XML authoring software. Michael is a frequent conference speaker where he brings a product-neutral perspective based upon real-world experience helping organizations succeed with XML. On a daily basis, Michael collaborates on projects that involve moving hundreds or thousands of users to XML authoring, and realizes that no matter what the size, project success comes down to improving each author’s user experience and productivity.

Dr. Andrew Bredenkamp is co-founder and CEO of acrolinx, the world’s leading provider of content quality management software. Andrew has nearly 20 years’ experience in multilingual information development. Before starting acrolinx, Andrew was Head of the Technology Transfer Centre at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) Language Technology Lab. Andrew holds degrees in technical translation and linguistics and a Ph.D. in Computational Linguistics.

Susan Burton, CAE, executive director of the Society for Technical Communication, has a 30-year track record of association management successes. She has worked for a wide variety of trade and professional associations, most recently as president and CEO of the American College of Health Care Administrators, changing the culture to be responsive, open, and transparent. She has served as the interim CEO for three associations, each of which hired her to take them through a transition to become more cost-effective and improve customer service.

Prior to these assignments, Burton was the first paid CEO of the Vision Council of America (VCA), which started as a desk in a law office. Under her leadership, VCA grew to a $7 million association with the second largest trade show on the globe. VCA’s public awareness program won prestigious American Society of Association Executives and Public Relations Society of America awards for increasing consumer awareness of the importance of eye care and eyewear.

Burton has experience with every major functional area in association management: chapter relations, membership, marketing, meeting planning, finances, education, certification, publications, advocacy, awards, and competitions. She has a B.A. in American history and education and an M.A. in Chinese history, and she earned the highest score in the nation when she became a Certified Association Executive (CAE) in 1984.

Contact Susan at +1 571 366 1901 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Kendra Carter is a Senior Consultant with Author-it Software Corporation, the world’s leading provider of component content management software. A trainer and consultant, Carter has been educating clients on Author-it best practices for the past nine years. She assists clients in implementing business processes that meet their unique authoring and content management needs.
Previously, she worked as a business analyst and technical writer for various software companies in the Southeast region of the United States.

Albert Chu is responsible for developing business and marketing alliances on behalf of ACCESS CO., LTD. with leading companies in the telecommunications, consumer electronics and media industries. As VP, Marketing & Alliances, he drives the ACCESS Connect Ecosystem partner program, a global ecosystem of companies that are setting the market direction for innovative converged technologies and solutions developed by ACCESS and its partners. In addition, Chu is responsible for the marketing operations for ACCESS Systems Americas.  Chu came to ACCESS from PalmSource, where he was vice president of business development.
From 1996 to 2002, Chu was the business development vice president at AT&T Labs, where he brought emerging technologies to market. In addition, he headed the OneComm Project Office, overseeing the product management, research and development, operations and business development of a suite of unified communications services for AT&T business units and external service providers.
From 1982 to 1996, Chu was at Apple Computer, where his last position was vice president of corporate marketing alliances. His earlier responsibilities at Apple included product planning and strategy vice president in the Personal Interactive Electronics Division, marketing vice president in the New Media and Entertainment Division, and Japan business development director in Apple Pacific. He was responsible for the product marketing and product introduction teams for dozens of Apple’s key products, including the Apple III, Newton, and Apple’s localized products for the Japanese and Asia Pacific market.
Chu has a degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University and completed the Advanced Executive Program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Bob Donaldson is responsible for streamlining processes using technology, thereby delivering innovative services to clients efficiently. As manager of the McElroy Translation Glocal initiative, Donaldson develops strategic alliances with like-minded partners worldwide to offer the most comprehensive language services in the industry.

Before joining McElroy in early 2007, Donaldson spent several years as an independent IT strategy and project management consultant, helping companies in many industries define and implement a strategic technology roadmap. He has more than 25 years of experience in creative technology application and has held executive management positions in a number of technology-oriented companies. Donaldson also brings an educational background in Slavic Linguistics, six years of experience as an army Russian linguist and some experience as a freelance translator to his current position, giving him a unique combination of technology and industry-insider perspectives.

Bob Doyle is the editor of CMS Review and the founder of DITA Users, an international organization with 750 members in 35 countries, which provides web-based tools for writers getting started with DITA. A member of the OASIS DITA Editorial Board, Bob publishes the DITA specifications as an Eclipse Help DITA Infocenter and edits the DITA Newsletter. Bob’s other DITA support sites include DITA Blog, DITA News, DITA Tutor, and DITA Wiki. He writes regularly on structured publishing at EContent Magazine.

Chip Gettinger joined Astoria Software at its inception and has over 20 years experience working with content management, authoring and publishing tools. He works closely with industry organizations, partners and customers leading the adoption of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), an open source XML based architecture used for dynamic production and publication of technical documentation, and is a member of the international consortium OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards).

William Hagen is a technical writer with Hughes Network Systems. Previously he served as a newspaper reporter, an editor, a technical writer and technical publications manager for high-tech companies over a 20-year span. Hagen has received professional awards throughout his career, including four awards from the Society for Technical Communication.

Adam Hyde is the founder and manager of FLOSS Manuals and a digital technologies consultant. Hyde was born in New Zealand and started his working life managing independent radio stations. He left New Zealand to work as a Business Development Manager in Australia for a small ISP before heading to Europe where he was employed by Dutch ISP XS4ALL (Amsterdam). At XS4ALL Hyde managed several technical departments and was part of the management crew that steered the company through the .com collapse into continued profitability.

After leaving XS4ALL in 2002 Hyde remained a consultant for the company while pursuing a career as a professional digital artist. His artistic practice traversed the world and his work has won several awards and been exhibited in many galleries internationally including the New Museum (New York, USA) and the Pompideau (Paris, France).

In 2007 Adam returned from Antarctica after 3 months where he was an artist in residence at South Africas SANAE research base, and committed himself full-time to FLOSS Manuals.

Tom Idleman has over 20 years experience as a technical writer and manager, including extended engagements at IBM, Apple Computer, Unisys, Portal Software, and Claris.  For Lasselle-Ramsay, Tom develops technical training for writers migrating to structured authoring, especially using DITA and Just Systems XMetaL. His work at Lasselle-Ramsay includes system administration and API documentation for Palm, Inc. Tom’s DITA expertise is extensive. At IBM, he led a team that migrated entire library sets from HTML and FrameMaker to DITA-based XML, producing online Help and PDF documentation. The migration included rewriting and rearchitecting all of the library content for DITA as well as identifying an effective content reuse model.

Roy Jacobsen is a writer, editor, and speaker with more than 20 years of experience in a variety of fields, including 15 years as a technical writer and editor working in software development. Roy is the owner of Writing, Clear and Simple, which offers writing, editing, and writing coaching services. Jacobsen also is the sole technical writer for Protech Associates, Inc., where he is responsible for the online and print documentation for their flagship product, as well several other projects. He’s passionate about creating documentation systems that users actually enjoy using, focused on their needs and built around their goals.

Roy also is a contributing editor for The Editorial Eye.

Char James-Tanny is president of JTF Associates, Inc., and has more than twenty-five years of experience as a technical writer. She is well known in the Help community for her knowledge of online Help tools and concepts. Char’s original Help Authoring Tool (HAT) Comparison Matrix is now available as an interactive database. Char is an Author-it Certified Consultant, a 2008 Microsoft Help MVP, and the secretary of the Society for Technical Communication.

Eliot leads publishers through various content management initiatives, including RSuite CMS implementations, XML and desktop publishing applications, DITA requirements and standardization, and information and process analysis. He is fluent in XML, XSLT, XSL-FO, DTD development, XSD Schema, XPath, XQuery, XInclude, Xlink, and other standards that relate to information management and publishing. Eliot has worked with a number of Really Strategies’ customers including McGraw Hill, SAGE Publications, and Audible.

Tamara Knezic is a a quality-conscious problem-solver who has worked as a professional writer for 18 years. Currently, she’s working as a Senior Technical Writer for a mobile software company in Toronto Ontario.

Dr. Lee Anne Kowalski is a technical writing consultant, helping teams and organizations exploit the user assistance mechanisms in Eclipse effectively. From 2003 to 2007, Kowalski was IBM’s User Assistance Technology Lead in the Corporate User Technologies organization. In this role, she led the project team responsible for developing the tools for delivering help content used within IBM software products. In 2006, her team delivered the “IBM User Interface Help System built on Eclipse” tool as an IBM alphaWorks emerging technology. She has presented at conferences on topics ranging from Eclipse technology to information architecture and user assistance.

Stewart Mader works with business, academic, and non-profit organizations to grow vibrant collaborative communities. He is Wiki Evangelist for Atlassian, publishes Grow Your Wiki, and founded Wikipatterns.com.

He is the author of two books: Wikipatterns: A Practical Guide to Improving Productivity and Collaboration in Your Organization and Using Wiki in Education, an online book on wiki use in education and research.

Rich Maggiani, a Communication Consultant with over 25 years experience, enjoys viewing the world as metaphor. Retreating to the tranquility and solitude of the wilderness helps him gain the clarity that metaphors can bring to an otherwise noisy world. He then applies these insights in professional settings to attain the simple, clear communication necessary to enlighten people and bring them together toward a common goal (such as increased market share). Rich founded Solari Communication to help clients prosper through sound communication. He also writes, teaches, and speaks about communication topics.

Ray Magnan is a Boston-based education technology consultant for the high tech industry. Areas of expertise include information architecture, distance education, blended learning, instructional design, and technical marketing communications.

Magnan has worked at a number of software companies over the past 15 years including GE Healthcare, IDX Systems, ATG, Transition Systems Inc., and VERSYSS. He has presented at a number of documentation and training conferences over the past few years. His articles have appeared in the Society for Technical Communication and American Society for Training and Development publications.

Steve Manning is a Principal with The Rockley Group and has over 18 years experience in the documentation field. He is a skilled developer of documentation (WinHelp, HTML Help, Web sites, XML, and Lotus Notes) and has helped many clients select technologies for authoring, content management, and delivery solutions. Manning has also helped implement content management systems, created custom XML DTDs, revised existing DTDs (including DITA specializations), created and revised stylesheets, and written implementation plans for software integration vendors.
Manning teaches Enterprise Content Management at the University of Toronto, and is a frequent speaker at conferences on XML and content management. He is also a co-author of Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy with Ann Rockley. Manning currently serves as a member of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee.

Ed Marshall is an independent consulting writer, with 20 years experience writing and producing documentation for highly technical products including Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Java-based products, Software Developer Kits (SDKs), Web Services, and other tools for developers. He is the sole proprietor of Marshall Documentation Consulting. Ed has presented talks on source code control, developer documentation, and editing / proofreading at the local and international levels of the STC.

Paul is an information architect and program manager at EMC Corporation. He is responsible for implementing a corporate-wide XML authoring environment at EMC. He has 17 years experience in software as a developer, technical writer, trainer, and manager.

Teresa Mulvihill has a Bachelor of Science in International Communications and Technology from the University of Washington in Seattle and over eleven years experience in technical communications. Her expertise lies in XML publishing for hardware and software companies of all sizes. She has worked in the US, Spain, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

In close to 13 years as a technical writer (and almost 15 years as a professional writer), Scott has authored user, administrator, and developer documentation. His employers and clients have included companies in the financial services, telecommunications, security, Web applications and manufacturing sectors. He has also developed marketing collateral and written over 200 published articles.

Scott is a believer in providing documentation and information in the most useful format for users. To that end, he’s constantly studying new methods for content delivery and exploring the latest authoring tools and techniques.

Neil Perlin has 29 years experience in technical communication, with 23 in training, consulting, and development for online formats and tools like WinHelp, HTML Help, CE Help, RoboHelp, Flare, ScreenCam, Captivate, Mimic, and many now known only in legend. Neil spent six years at Digital Equipment Corp., then became a partner in a documentation consulting firm in the late 1980s, before forming Hyper/Word Services in 1990.

Neil writes columns and articles on online help and documentation and is a popular speaker at IEEE PCS, STC, and other professional groups. He is Adobe Certified for RoboHelp and Captivate and Madcap Certified for Flare and Mimic. Neil provides training, consulting, and development for online content methodologies like structured authoring and single sourcing, XML, and a wide variety of software applications. He can be reached at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Kristina is a Senior Consultant for Welchman Consulting with over ten years experience helping organizations achieve their content management and portal solution goals. Her experience spans the government, private, and non-profit sectors, as a government employee, management consultant, and entrepreneur.

Prior to entering the consulting world, Kristina spent time in the intelligence community as an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency and a team member of BDM International, specializing in classified projects. Since then, Kristina has expanded her skills to serve government clients including the F.B.I., U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Small Business Administration, and the U.S. General Services Administration, private sector clients BEA, WorldCom, and Fannie Mae, as well as non-profit organizations St. Jude’s Hospital, CARE International, and PBS.

Kristina holds a BA in International Studies and an MBA in International Business, Pacific Rim from Dominican University of California. She is a certified Project Management Professional and an active volunteer member of the Project Management Institute.

Donna Reynolds has 30+ years experience in technical and instructional design. She spent more than a decade as a technical writer, senior editor, and publication designer at the University of California, San Francisco. As a freelance writer/illustrator/designer, she has worked with leading firms like Oracle, Sun, Netscape, Tyco, and Booz Allen. She has also illustrated dozens of computer-related books, and has developed and taught a variety of college-level software courses.

Jonathan Ruhlen is a Senior Sales Executive for Author-it Software Corporation, the world’s leading provider of component content management software. He has extensive experience with Author-it, having worked previously as an Author-it Certified Consultant with Content Solutions for over four years, learning the tool extensively and writing training documentation for Author-it’s Localization Manager Module. He has been all over the World, from Singapore, to California, to Pennsylvania, to Georgia, teaching End User Training classes and providing demonstrations of Author-it. He has also worked with several companies, including Intergraph, Itron, Scientific-Atlanta, Inc., The Regional Medical Center in Memphis, and others, setting up their libraries and developing their templates for the look and feel of their outputs. Jonathan has a Bachelor of Science (BS) from University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.

Jennifer Shankle works as a KB Content Developer within Ceridian’s Information and Knowledge Management group. Jennifer has a master’s degree in Instructional Systems Technology from the University of Central Florida and an undergraduate degree in Secondary Science Education from Florida State University. She taught secondary Biology and Physics for four years before accepting a position with Arthur Andersen. Jennifer’s work experience includes creating training materials, release documentation, online help, marketing collateral, and knowledge base content.

Ronald G. Shapiro, Ph.D., a Fellow in the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) and a Certified Human Factors Professional (CHFP), is the Manager of IBM Technical Learning, New Employee Orientation, University Tuition Payment Programs and Career Services. Ron is also on the Executive Council of HFES and a past-president of the Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association. He has served as the chair of National Ergonomics Month, the HFES Speakers Bureau and HFES Volunteers Committee. He is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in Science and Engineering.

Ron received his B.A. from the University of Rochester and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Ohio State in Experimental Psychology. He developed the first version of Games in the 1970s when he taught Introduction to Psychology at Ohio State University.

Christine Marini Sigman is Principal Technical Writer and Engines Documentation Team Leader at Endeca Technologies in Cambridge, MA. She is pursuing an MS in Technical Communication, with a specialization in International Technical Communication Development, at Northeastern University. Her articles on various aspects of technical communication from an individual contributor’s perspective have appeared in the STC’s Intercom magazine.

Richard Sikes has been immersed in localization since 1989, having held senior localization management positions at several industry-leading software publishers. He now works under his own label—Localization Flow Technologies—as a freelance globalization management consultant and trainer. As well as his long-time association with The Localization Institute, Richard is a Language Technology Evangelist for across Systems, a trainer and consultant for Plunet GmbH, and a Certified PASSOLO Trainer. He holds a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine, Diplom Betriebswirt FH from the Volkshochschule Heidelberg, and an MBA from the University of Toronto. Richard has presented frequently on a wide variety of topics at the Localization World and Gilbane Conferences, and his articles appear with regularity in MultiLingual magazine.

Pushpinder is an Adoption Architect for PTC Global Services Development team, which is responsible for all the product training needs of PTC consultants worldwide. She is responsible for architecting and helping to deploy a DITA-based, single-source solution for courses developed and maintained by the Global Services Development team. Pushpinder came to PTC as part of the Arbortext acquisition.

Linda Urban has over 25 years experience in technical communication. As a consultant, Linda works on training solutions, software and hardware documentation, online help systems, product usability, and user interface design. She focuses on developing solutions that meet user needs and company goals, and her work has received local and international Society for Technical Communication (STC) awards. She also teaches courses in technical communication at the UC Berkeley Extension. Linda is a Senior Member of the STC, a member of Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, and the Information Architecture Institute. Her website is http://www.urbancreations.com.

Armin Wahl is responsible fror sales and new business development efforts in the United States for Across Systems. He has worked in high-level positions in the IT, plastic and service industries where he became familiar with the translation requirements and challenges of globally operating corporations. Wahl holds a degree in International Business Management.

John Watkins has an extensive background in product engineering and localization, having worked in international business for nearly 20 years. During his career, John has worked extensively in medicinal chemistry, software product development, human resource policies and procedures, and business process engineering. He spent 10 years in Europe, leading an international team on product development and analysis for the European Commission. As the president of ENLASO, John guides the production teams to ensure customers receive consistent, high-quality localization services. John received his M.Sc. from the University of Cincinnati.