Presenters

Rahel Anne Bailie is principal of Intentional Design Inc., a Vancouver, BC consultancy that focuses on the interrelated areas of content management, content development, and usability. Rahel brings substantial business and communication experience to her projects, where she and her team help organizations with requirements and content analysis phases, through to assistance with RFP preparation and vendor selection. Her experience in content development and user experience and her perspectives are informed by her experience and studies.

A self-identified geek, Rahel is drawn to technology like a moth to flame, and embraces technologies that serve to improve the performance of communication products and the processes to create and maintain them. She was elected Associate Fellow of the Society of Technical Communication in 2006, is a member of Content Management Professionals Association, and holds memberships in related professional associations such as UPA and IAI to stay current in pertinent practice areas.

Simon Bate has worked for large and small companies on both coasts. Throughout his career in technical publications (writing and managing), he has always looked for ways to make the computer do as much of his work as possible.  Now he enjoys working full-time as a publications toolsmith.

Nicky Bleiel is a Senior Information Developer at ComponentOne. She has been a technical communicator for more than twelve years. Nicky started her career writing books and producing them in hardcopy format, but she has since embraced online help and user assistance, web design, single-sourcing, usability, e-learning, and knowledge management. She has experience writing for products in a variety of industries; including media sales, industrial automation, simulation, and pharmacy.

Nicky has delivered presentations at the Society for Technical Communication (STC) international, local, and regional levels, and has been pleased to share her experience with other STC leaders on Leadership Day at the annual conference. She has presented at other conferences and local meetings as well. Topics have included various tools and technologies, user assistance design, single sourcing, and wikis for knowledge management.

Jeffrey Deskins is a Principal Consultant at JustSystems and has nearly 20 years experience in information development technology. Previously a Services Manager and Solutions Architect at Iditarod Systems, Jeff was instrumental in the implementation of S1000D for the Boeing 787—the first use of S1000D for civilian aircraft.

Before Iditarod, he was a Principal Consultant and Solutions Architect for Arbortext, developing enterprise publishing solutions in various vertical industries including Aerospace, Life Sciences, Pharmaceutical, Automotive, and Manufacturing. Jeff has worked in a variety of information development roles for Bombardier, McDonnell Douglas, and Rockwell International, as a technical writer and SGML analyst.

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.

What happens when you mix a born salesman with the U.S. Army Special Forces? A small, unconventional ad agency that is regularly threatened with expulsion from the local ad club. Founded in 1988, The Next Wave creates ads that force an emotional response from a precisely targeted market. Blogs and the ‘net have been a favorite low-cost weapon since 2004.

Jeff Filo has been at PTC for 12 years; eight years in training and development. Currently, he’s the Curriculum Development Manager for Global Services Development and owns all internal course and curricula development for GS Delivery organization.

Tim Grantham is the team leader of the documentation standards team for Thermo Fisher Scientific, a global supplier of products for laboratories with $10 billion (US) in annual revenues. Tim’s technical publications team at Thermo Scientific Laboratory Automation and Cellular Imaging won 11 Society for Technical Communication awards in six years for a wide range of hardware and software user guides, programming reference guides, and service manuals. Prior to Thermo, Tim was for ten years a national award winning freelance journalist, corporate communications writer, and technical writer in his native Canada.

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.

Maxwell Hoffmann currently serves as a Production Lead for localization vendor Welocalize. Working from the company production center in Portland, Oregon, Hoffmann coordinates project-specific multilingual production and helps design publishing solutions tailored to client-specific needs. With nearly 25 years of desktop publishing experience, he has also specialized in multilingual publishing, document conversion, XML and process training in the localization industry for over 11 years.

With a BA in Graphic Arts from California State University, Fresno, Hoffmann began his career as a commercial artist, moved into digital typesetting, then migrated into training and technical sales support for a variety of UNIX-based publishing software vendors, including Interleaf. In that capacity he managed large-scale publishing solutions in the aerospace, medical, automotive and pharmaceutical industries, serving clients ranging from Boeing to the National Security Agency.

Hoffmann also served as Product Marketing Manager and Director of Worldwide Sales Training for FrameMaker at Frame Technology, and was designated an Adobe Community Expert on FrameMaker by Adobe Systems in 2007. He has created single-source publishing solutions for over 15 years and has trained over 1,250 customers and sales professionals on multi-platform, scalable tech doc solutions and localization best practices.

Alan Houser is president of Group Wellesley, Inc., a Pittsburgh-based firm that provides consulting, training, and application development services to support single-source publishing, electronic publishing, and XML-based publishing.

Houser is an Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication and a member of the OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Technical Committee. He is a popular conference presenter, and has delivered seminars in structured authoring, XML, and DITA around the globe.

Brenda Huettner is an independent technical communication consultant who specializes in increasing her client’s awareness of the benefits of quality documentation. For the past 20 years or so, she’s worked as a writer, editor, trainer, and manager, for both software and hardware companies.  She is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication, a Senior Member of IEEE and active in the IEEE Professional Communication Society, and belongs to the Usability Professionals Association. In addition to supporting the documentation needs of her clients, Brenda has published several books and articles, and presented half-day, full-day, and multi-day courses on writing, project management, usability, and career management. She also gives emergency preparedness and disaster recovery classes through the Red Cross, and is webmaster for a variety of nonprofit organizations.

Her most recent book is Captivate 3.0: The Definitive Guide available from Wordware Press. 

Alison Huettner has a doctorate in linguistics and has worked in natural language software for 19 years. Based in Pittsburgh, she has been involved in several of the start-ups and early-stage companies affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University. She spent five years as contributing linguist and coordinator on the Caterpillar Technical English project, handling both controlled English and machine translation. Her professional experience also includes parsing technology, fact extraction, document retrieval, entity extraction, affect analysis, text-to-speech, and speech recognition systems. A career in small companies has fostered versatility: Alison’s skillset also includes project management, software process, technical documentation, and quality assurance. She has published a number of technical articles and conference papers.

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. He’ 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’s 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.

Lee Anne Kowalski is a user assistance architecture specialist, 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 IBM Corporate User Technologies organization. The team is responsible for developing technology and tools for use in developing user assistance mechanisms in IBM’s software projects and delivering help content within software products. In 2006, the team delivered the “IBM User Interface Help System built on Eclipse” tool as an IBM alphaWorks emerging technology.

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 the Solari Company 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.

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.

Jeff Nolan is the vice president of Software-as-a-Service at NewsGator Technologies, Inc. and has significant experience directing innovation in the areas of social media and Enterprise 2.0 technologies. Prior to joining NewsGator, Nolan led Teqlo, a high-profile startup that develops platforms for mashups and other user-assembled applications, and was also a general partner at SAP Ventures and later led the strategy team for the Apollo Group at SAP. Nolan also continues to author the popular Venture Chronicles blog and has significant experience in speaking at various conferences including Defrag conference in November 2007.

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 .

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.

Theresa Putkey started her illustrious career in the software world as a technical writer. Having a short attention span, she moved to contracting, then consulting, from technical writing to information architecture and content management.

Theresa is a full time consultant who runs Key Pointe, Inc. She lives vacation to vacation, working hard in the meantime. She is most familiar with desktop and web-based software solutions and enjoys dealing with large amounts of disorganized information, finding sense within nonsense, and publishing the information in a useful, meaningful, appropriate, and findable way.

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.

David “Lefty” Schlesinger is Director of Open Source Technologies at ACCESS Co., Ltd., working principally on open source strategy and community relations, and representing ACCESS in a number of industry and community initiatives. Lefty is responsible for open source licensing compliance practices within ACCESS, and is the author of internal “open source best practices” curriculum for the company.

Lefty is well-known in the open source community and is a frequent presenter and panelist at open source-related conferences, and has spoken this year at the Finnish Centre for Open Source Software’s Verso Business Series, FOSTEL (the Free and Open Source Telephony Conference), the Ottawa Linux Symposium, the GNOME Users’ and Developers’ European Conference and a variety of other prestigious open source venues. He was the keynote speaker at this year’s Northwest Technical Conference for Undergraduates at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. Lefty’s paper on the Hiker Project was published in this year’s “Proceedings of the Ottawa Linux Symposium”.

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.

Mirhonda Studevant works as a KB Content Developer within the Ceridian’ Information and Knowledge Management group. Mirhonda was awarded the first-ever undergraduate degree in Technical and Professional Communication from Southern Polytechnic State University. She also earned an MBA, with a Knowledge and Learning Management concentration, from Walden University. Her key interest areas include information design, usability, search engine optimization, decision sciences and knowledge management. Mirhonda is Senior Member of the Society for Technical Communication. She has contributed articles to the STC Atlanta newsletter as well as Intercom. Her favorite saying is “"Vision without execution is hallucination”.

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.

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.