Scott Abel is a content management strategist whose strength lies in helping organizations improve the way they author, maintain, and deliver their information assets. He’s also the manager of the largest social network for content professionals, The Content Wrangler Community and the program manager for both the Documentation and Training and Web Content conferences. Scott’s blog, TheContentWrangler.com, is a popular resource for professional communicators who value content as a business asset, worthy of being managed.

Ann Adams has been a computer trainer, programmer, software development manager and sales engineer. She has over twenty years experience in content management, software localization, machine language translation and SGML and XML authoring. She has spoken at XML, STC, Documation and LISA conferences. Ann is currently working on DITA authoring, content management and translation processes for the printer division of Kyocera. Previous employers include Xerox, Symantec and Wolters Kluwer.

President of Integrated Technologies, Inc. since 1991, Thomas Aldous is a Certified Technical Trainer and a Certified Adobe Expert. His company, with his lead, specializes in the conversion of unstructured documentation to XML and SGML, content management systems and foreign language translation solutions. Integrated Technologies, Inc. has Adobe Certified Training Centers in both Rhode Island and Florida.

SDL is the leader in global information management and offers a mix of technology and services to meet the specific needs and requirements of each individual client. Since 1992, we have built the most extensive global footprint in the industry and with over 2000 employees SDL is the largest, most technically advanced and capable company of its kind in the world. 19 of the world’s top 25 brands trust SDL to help them operate on the global stage.

As Vice President of Global Information Management Solutions David leads the team that work with those top brands—as well as brands vying to become top global players. He helps them understand how their day to day operations around the world affect their global strategy. David firmly believes that small changes in global operating practices or the effective application of technology can help SDLs clients reach corporate goals more easily.

Rahel Anne Bailie operates 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 a team of seasoned consultants and partners help organizations with requirements and content analysis phases, through to assistance with RFP preparation and vendor selection. Rahel has many years of experience in the content development and user experience environments, 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, has been involved in Content Management Professionals, and holds memberships in related professional associations such as Information Architecture Institute and Usability Professionals Association in order to keep current in pertinent practice areas.

Darren Barefoot is a Vancouver-based writer, marketer and technologist. He’s spent the last decade working for technology companies in Canada and Europe. Darren regularly speaks about marketing and Web 2.0.

Along with partner Julie Szabo, he helped found Northern Voice, Canada’s social media conference. Darren maintains a personal blog at DarrenBarefoot.com.

Darren’s company, Capulet Communications is a marketing company that specializes in promoting remarkable products and services--especially terrific technology. Darren is also co-author of the new eBook, Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook.

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.

Michael Boses is Chief Technology Officer of In.vision Research Corporation, and has been designing and implementing enterprise software for 25 years. His experience ranges from highly agile software start-ups like In.vision to lumbering behemoths such as Control Data and Contel. What did he learn from all that?

• People don’t dislike change; they dislike bad software that forces them to change.
• If you really listen to the user you can get things pretty close to right the first time.
• If you think you have a good idea and the programmers don’t say it’s impossible, start over.

Michael’s realistic outlook and absolute dependence on listening to the user have helped him to help others succeed with some of the largest XML initiatives in existence.

Brendan Boyle is a Senior Application Engineer at PTC, specializing in XML Publishing and Enterprise Content Management. Brendan has focused on the evolution of Data Management, specifically the impact of DITA on information taxonomy. Prior to joining PTC Brendan worked as a consultant in the areas of XML Publishing and Legacy Data Migration. His experiences as a systems integrator in this realm give him great insight in assisting businesses with the creation of scalable enterprise publishing solutions.

Berry Braster is the Director of Tedopres’ North American operations, which is based in Austin, Texas. Tedopres provides translation and technical documentation services to the industry, and is headquartered in the Netherlands. Berry, fluent in 4 languages, holds a BA in International Marketing Management from the University of Amsterdam and has a background in international business and marketing. Before joining Tedopres, Berry was the Marketing Director for an organization specialized in quality assurance and regulatory affairs in Washington, DC. He has been with Tedopres for 6 years, during which he has been involved with the implementation of controlled language with companies in various industries.

Aaron Davis is a partner in DMN Communications, a technical communications consultancy based in Toronto, Canada. He has almost 10 years experience as a technical communicator, authoring technical and product collateral for companies in the telecommunications, enterprise software, and financial services industries.

Aaron’s passion is creating enjoyable user experiences through the development of effective content and delivery strategies. As a proud user advocate, Aaron is constantly exploring new ways of delivering information to users and challenging the status quo. He’s been sharing his insights about technical communications and usability since 2005 on his company’s weblog, Communications from DMN.

In addition to his writing and business development duties, Aaron is an active blogger, web entrepreneur, and and a frequent contributor to the DMN podcast that continues to attract a diverse global audience.

Steve Davis is the President of Author-it Software Corporation. In this position, he is responsible for the strategic and operational management of Author-it.

Following a successful career in the Royal New Zealand Navy, Steve spent nine years working with companies in New Zealand, Australia and the United States with an emphasis on business management, marketing, strategic planning, capital raising and international expansion.

Prior to joining Author-it, Steve held the role of Chief Marketing Officer with wireless systems integrator, ECONZ Wireless, where he was part of the senior management team playing a key role in developing and executing expansion plans. Steve relocated to the US and worked to establish business operations, recruit staff and secure key partnerships with Qualcomm and Verizon Wireless.

Steve has a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Griffith University, Queensland, a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) from the University of Auckland and is a Certified Developer of Enterprise.

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, Jeff 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.

Joshua Duhl is Director of Product Marketing for Quark.  He oversees and guides the product direction of Quark’s server products. Duhl comes to Quark with over 20 years of marketing, product management, market analysis, software engineering, and consulting experience.

He was most recently Vice President of Product Management and Strategy at ClearStory Systems, a digital asset management (DAM) software vendor, where he led the company’s product strategy, roadmap and rollout. Duhl was Director of Research for IDC’s Content Management and Rich Media software service, covering the content management, DAM, authoring software, dynamic publishing and digital rights management markets. He was selected by IDC’s clients as one of three 2003 Global Research Advisory Council Analysts of the Year. As an independent consultant for 10 years, Joshua provided strategic marketing, product planning and positioning guidance to a variety of software companies.  Prior to forming Stillpoint, Joshua held product marketing and engineering positions in ONTOS, Ontologic, Cambridge Robotics, and Prime Computer. He holds a bachelors degree in Computer Science from Haverford College.

Anne Gentle currently works as a senior technical writer at Advanced Solutions International, which provides management software for professional and social organizations such as the Society for Technical Communication. She wrote a blog for her employer at BMC Software on talk.bmc.com since 2005, but in 2007 she started writing new content for her blog at JustWriteClick.com. She has been a technical writer for over ten years, and has acquired many interests in that time, including structured authoring, social media, XML models for technical documentation such as Darwin Information Typing Architecture, blogging, wikis, online user assistance, and writing in an Agile development environment.

Dr. Robert Glushko is an Adjunct Professor at the University of California at Berkeley in the School of Information, the Director of the Center for Document Engineering, and one of the founding faculty members of the Information and Service Design and Services Science, Management and Engineering programs. He received a B.A. in psychology from Stanford University, a M.S. in software engineering from the Wang Institute, and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of California, San Diego.

During the 1990s he founded or co-founded three companies, the last of which was Veo Systems in 1997, which pioneered the use of XML for electronic commerce before its 1999 acquisition by Commerce One. He was named an Engineering Fellow by Commerce One in 2001. He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 2002 and has received awards for outstanding teaching and mentoring.

Joe Gollner is the Vice President e-Publishing Solutions for Stilo International, where he leads an interdisciplinary team in designing, developing and deploying content management and publishing solutions. Gollner came to Stilo through the acquisition, in 2004, of XIA Systems Corporation, a highly-regarded XML solution provider that he had founded in 1998.

Joe has been using and advocating open content standards since 1987 and has successfully implemented over 100 large-scale content management and publishing solutions. He has worked with such industry leaders as Boeing, Samsung, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, Xerox, the US Department of Defense, the Russian Academy of Science, Lockheed-Martin, the Canadian Government, InContext Corporation and NATO Headquarters. He was educated in a wide variety of subjects at Queen’s University (BA Literature and Mathematics) and the University of Oxford (Master’s of Philosophy). On the more practical side, he has also completed graduate programs in project management, business analysis and knowledge management.

Eric Gott is a Director in Canada for RedDot - The Open Text Web Solutions Group, a leading Web Content Management solution provider.  He has been consulting with Fortune 500 organizations, government agencies, and medium-sized companies for over 20 years. Eric has expertise in identifying the requirements for these organizations to achieve optimized online experiences for their customers, partners and employees. During his seven years in the WCM space, he has advocated solutions that create, manage and deliver the content that drives business. Gott has a Bachelor of Commerce from McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario, as well as an MBA from York University in Toronto.

Mike Hamilton is the Vice President of Product Management at MadCap Software where he is working on the next generation authoring tool, Flare. Before joining MadCap Software, he was the Product Manager for the RoboHelp product line since the days of Blue Sky Software, eHelp, and Macromedia. Hamilton joined the RoboHelp team in the mid ’90s as a founding member of the Training Solutions Program team, where he co-authored the certified training materials supporting the RoboHelp family. He’s been working on industry leading authoring tools ever since.

Hamilton has over 20 years of experience in training, technical communication, multimedia development, and software development at several organizations including Macromedia, eHelp/Blue Sky Software, Cymer, a leading supplier of laser illumination sources in the semiconductor industry, National Steel and Shipbuilding, and the US Navy.

Maxwell Hoffmann currently serves as a Production Lead for localization vendor Welocalize. Working from Welocalize’s Portland, Oregon production center, 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 10 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.

Dave Holmes is a Programmer Writer at Business Objects. Over the last six years, he has worked in a variety of positions in technical writing, software development and training. His professional interests include XML Authoring and Publishing, and finding simple ways to explain complex ideas.

Alan Houser is a distinguished consultant and trainer in the fields of XML, XML technologies, publishing workflows, and authoring and publishing tools. Houser holds an M.A. in Professional Writing and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Houser is an Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication, a member of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee, and a popular presenter at technical communication conferences.

RJ Jacquez is the Senior Technical Evangelist for the new Adobe Technical Communication Suite (FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Captivate and Acrobat 3D) at Adobe Systems Incorporated, where he champions these products both internally and externally. With over fifteen years of experience with Adobe FrameMaker and related technologies, RJ is instrumental in addressing customer requirements and market trends in future releases of these applications. Before joining Adobe, Jacquez was the VP of Technology at Quadralay Corporation and Product Manager at eHelp Corporation where he spearheaded the development of an innovative software application, RoboHelp for FrameMaker, that extended FrameMaker’s publishing capabilities. In addition, RJ was a Senior Product Evangelist for Macromedia, Inc., where he promoted both Captivate and RoboHelp. RJ has lectured extensively on various topics, including single-sourcing, ePublishing, Delivering Richer Technical Documents, Help Authoring, XML, DITA, S1000D and SPL.

Tom Johnson writes a popular blog, IdRatherBeWriting.com, and also interviews technical writing luminaries for his podcast, Tech Writer Voices (available at the same URL). He is a senior technical writer for the User Education team at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is also a member of the Society for Technical Communication Intermountain Chapter in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is interested in combining social media with online help to change the way users experience and interact with help.

Pamela Kostur is a partner in Parallax Communications, a full-service communications consulting company in Toronto, Canada. With a focus on content and writing, Parallax specializes in content management strategies, corporate and marketing communications, technical communication and content development.

Pamela has been writing professionally for over 20 years and has extensive experience working with clients around the world in the software, technology, high tech, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, life sciences, and financial services industries. Her expertise lies in aligning content with user needs and business requirements. The goal is always consistently structured content, for efficient content management implementation and optimum usability.

Pamela has authored several articles and taught workshops on topics such as miscommunication, usability, content management, information architecture, content modeling, writing for reuse, and structured writing. She is also a co-author of the best-selling Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy (New Riders, 2002).

Stewart Mader works with business, academic, and non-profit organizations to grow vibrant collaborative communities. He is Wiki Evangelist for Atlassian, publishes Blog on Wiki Patterns (www.ikiw.org), and founded Wikipatterns.com. He is the author of two books: Wikipatterns: a practical guide to improving productivity and collaboration in your organization, which is being published by Wiley in early 2008, and Using Wiki in Education, an online book on how the wiki is transforming education and research.

Jess McMullin has been working in design and user experience since 1997. He specializes in helping clients work with multiple stakeholders to bridge competing viewpoints, align project vision, and create a clear understanding of the problems at hand. His value-centered approach grounds strategy at the intersection of business goals and customer goals – the sweet spot that produces sustainable value and real innovation.

Jess regularly writes and speaks at conferences about user experience, design thinking, and innovation. His work with the design and user experience community is focused on helping practitioners increase their influence in the organizations they work with.

Jess co-founded the Information Architecture Institute (IAI), the international professional organization for information architects, and served on the IAI Board of Directors from 2004-2006. In 2003, he founded nForm User Experience, a boutique consultancy that counts Comcast, Move.com, and Charles Schwab as clients.

He blogs about business, design, and innovation at bplusd.org.

Sherry Michaels is the President and owner of Michaels and Associates Docntrain, Ltd. Because there is an existing disconnect between the two, Michaels and Associates specializes in training and documentation services that align C-level goals and objectives with ground-level implementation. The company has won awards for their training, documentation and internet content, including for the company web site.

Teresa 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.

Scott Nesbitt is a partner in DMN Communications, a technical communications consultancy based in Toronto, Canada. Scott is a writer with 15 years for professional experience; 13 of them as a technical communicator. He’s been blogging about technical communications since 2005 on his company’s weblog, Communications from DMN.

Before embarking on his career as a technical communicator, Scott’s training ground for blogging was a large number of op-eds, essays, and reviews that the wrote for a variety of publications. He began blogging in 2002, with a collection of random musings and rants of topics that interested and/or annoyed him. While that blog has been retired, Scott continues to flex his blogging muscles at Communications from DMN and with blogs that discuss using Linux.

Sarah O’Keefe is founder and president of Scriptorium Publishing Services, Inc. The company develops and deploys structured authoring environments, and also provides classroom and web-based training for FrameMaker, XML, XSL, and other publishing topics. Sarah’s publishing credits include FrameMaker 7: The Complete Reference, The WebWorks Publisher Cookbook, Technical Writing 101, FrameMaker for Dummies, and numerous white papers.

Todd O’Neill is a media consultant and award winning media producer with more than two decades of experience. He has extensive experience in e-commerce, disc based multimedia and business video. Todd brings that experience to bear in his professional mission: Enable people to leverage electronic media to achieve their communications objectives.

Todd has presented at national conferences and taught at the college level for more than 15 years. He blogs at DoingMedia.net.

Mark Patla is the Director of Sales, North America, for Author-it Software Corporation. In this position, he is responsible for the acquisition and growth of client partnerships in the North American region.
Following nearly a decade tenure at Verizon, Mark spent five years as a Strategic Partnership Manager for a Fortune 50 financial institution. Along with building existing relationships with various other Fortune 500 organizations, Mark has played a key role in the development and execution of internal and external strategic growth plans. Mark brings with him a seasoned relationship management background within telecom, finance and insurance, over-the-phone interpretation (OPI), and the computer software industry.
Mark has a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from The University of Phoenix, Southern California, and a Bachelor of Science (BS) from Humboldt State University, Arcata, California.

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. He provides training, consulting, and development for online content methodologies like structured authoring and single sourcing, related technologies like XML, and related tools like Flare, RoboHelp, Captivate, and Mimic.  He can be reached at , http://www.hyperword.com.

Robert (Butch) Pfremmer is VP and Globalization Lead with Welocalize. Butch currently heads up the Welocalize eLearning practice and has over 20 years of experience in global content development. Butch works with Welocalize’s customers to develop effective, global content strategies for user assistance and rich media formats that are ready for localization! Butch presents frequently at conferences and client workshops on a range of topics from writing Global English to Controlled Language to Translation tools and workflow to Flash and XML localization techniques.

Prior to joining Welocalize, Butch helped develop IBM’s SGML/XML user-assistance strategy and implementation of IBMIdDoc. Butch served as chief architect for IBM’s translation toolset. Butch holds a B.S. in Computer Science, B.A. in Accounting, and is pursuing post-graduate work in Human Computer Interfaces and Online Learning technologies. Butch is a member of STC, ASTD and eLearning Guild.

Alan J. Porter has 20 plus years in corporate publishing in the UK and USA. He has been involved in the development and adoption of various publishing standards and has been a regular speaker at industry conferences. He has held senior management positions at various publishing software and services companies, allied with extensive consulting experience. He is currently VP-Operations for Quadralay Corporation. His client base has included Boeing, Canadian Government, Forbes, McGraw-Hill, Mercedes, Sun, UK Royal Air Force and many other Fortune 1000 companies. He is a published author with a couple of books and several magazine articles to his name.

Ann Rockley is President of The Rockley Group, Inc, a consultancy that has an international reputation for developing customer-centric enterprise content management strategies and underlying information architecture.

Rockley is a frequent contributor to trade and industry publications and a featured speaker at numerous conferences in North America and Europe.

She has been instrumental in establishing the fields of online documentation, single sourcing (content reuse), unified content strategies, and content management best practices. Rockley is co-chair of the OASIS DITA Enterprise Business Documents Subcommittee. Rockley led Content Management Professionals to a prestigious eContent 100 award in 2005.

Rockley is also Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication and has a Master of Information Science from the University of Toronto. Rockley is the author of the best-selling book, “Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy” (New Riders Publishing ISBN 0-7357-1306-5).

Heidi Sandler has been a Technical Writer for the past ten years, creating engineering and marketing documents for the Integrated Solutions department at Siemens Building Technologies in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. She has also taught college English and worked as a copy editor in the academic and non-profit sectors. Heidi began working with XML and Single Sourcing in the fall of 2000 and has used it every day since.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts in German Language and Literature, and a Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. Heidi is a youth volunteer as well as an accomplished member of Toastmasters International, where she has achieved the title of Distinguished Toastmaster. She lives in the Chicago area with her two daughters.

Joe Sokohl has more than 15 years of experience in user experience-related fields. He has concentrated on crafting excellent user experiences, using information architecture, interaction design, writing, and user research. At Keane, Joe acts as an advocate for user experience consulting: Information architecture, user research, interaction design, and usability evaluation along with visual design and web design. He manages the careers and education of 35 mostly offshore IAs, visual designers, technical writers, and web developers. Mentoring them in competency skills along with general business consulting practices combines with evangelizing best practices in UX among both internal and external clients.

Previously he held UX-oriented positions in Hamburg, Germany; Richmond, VA; Chicago, IL; and Durham, NC. He’s also been a soldier, a cook, a radio DJ, a road manager, a teacher, and a reporter once upon a time.

Matt’s background in digital prepress prepared him for his current job, helping companies and individuals produce content using both the Adobe Technical Communication Suite and Adobe Creative Suite. He regularly trains groups in all related applications and also consults in document conversion and template design for both structured and unstructured documents. He is an Adobe beta tester, and regular Adobe representative at industry conferences.

Recovering Tech Pubs Director and structured writing/content management/single sourcing/multi-use/multi-purposing champion and Quality Management zealot. I’ve made it to step 11 (and actually retired) three times, but keep having setbacks. Each new breakthrough in tech pubs technology brings me back to the field with renewed hopes of achieving the holy grail of cost, quality, and timeliness ... in multiple media and multiple languages.

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 STC awards. She also teaches courses in technical communication at the UC Berkeley Extension. Linda is a Senior Member of the Society for Technical Communication, a member of Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, and the Information Architecture Institute. Her website is http://www.urbancreations.com.

Noz Urbina is Business Development Manager for Mekon Ltd, where he provides XML solutions consultancy services to global organizations and SMEs. With five years in mark-up technology, training and services, Noz frequently is brought in to projects to perform requirements analysis and to address issues of human interface design. His main interest area is mastering the magic nexus where business goals, end-user sensitivities, and technology converge.

Previous to working with Mekon, Noz worked in the Blast XMetaL team as Partner Manager, facilitating the growth and cross-pollination of a pan-European partner network of content solutions and tool providers, and has held a number of business development, technical services, and sales positions where he was able to develop his expertise in a cutting-edge, efficiency-driven, business context.

Mark E. Wallis is a Senior Information Developer for IBM Internet Security Systems. Mark has been developing online and print-based user assistance for over 25 years. He has a BA in Technical Journalism and Computer Science from Colorado State University. An active judge in regional and international online communications competitions, he has received numerous awards for his user guides, quick references, online help, HTML-based help, and marketing materials.