Presenters Quick List
Presenters
Marc Asturias, Cisco
Presentation: [Case Study] Information Quality Management at Cisco Provides Benefits Beyond Improved Quality
Marc Asturias is an author, editor and technologist with 18 years of experience in technical documentation and training. His work at Cisco is in the areas of information quality, content management, technical training development, and collaborative technologies. He is often recognized for his work in the areas of new media and distributed writing.
Berry Braster, Tedopres
Berry Braster is the Director of Tedopres’ North American operations, which is based in Austin, Texas. 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 that specialized in quality assurance and regulatory affairs in Washington, DC. He has been with Tedopres for 8 years, during which he has managed implementations of controlled language with companies in various industries.
Lisa Calhoun, Write2Market
Presentation: Reimagining Writing: Freeing Writing Teams To Deliver More Effective Content
Lisa Calhoun founded Write2Market in 2003 because she was convinced that now is the time for a new era in business communication. Passionate and evangelical about results-driven writing, she and her team have developed Write2Market into one of the country’s leading content authorities, with citations in USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek. Write2Market’s client roster ranges from Fortune 100 firms such as ADP, Kaiser Permanente and Motorola to interactive marketing powerhouses such as FG2.
Lisa pursued a degree in professional writing from Baylor University on National Merit Scholarship and graduated summa cum laude in 1994. Her first position was with a small San Antonio ad agency as a copywriter, which led to working with BBDO and Ogilvy Worldwide in Manhattan. Lisa received her MBA from University of Texas with honors in 2003.
Kendra Carter, Author-it
Presentation: Maximizing Use of Author-it
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.
Burt Courtier, Epson America, Inc.
Presentation: [Case Study] Moving from Silos to a Collective Farm: Developing Epson America's Hosted CMS with DocZone DITA
Burt Courtier is the Manager of the Documentation and Software Integration teams for Epson America, Inc., a leading provider of award-winning image capture and image output products for the consumer, photographic, business, and graphic arts markets. Burt has over 22 years of experience in the areas of business and technical communications and software development. In an effort to keep up with faster product development cycles and expanded product lines, Burt embarked on a two-year odyssey to identify and adopt the “perfect” content management and publishing solution.
Before his move to Epson America in 1995, Burt worked in Japan for 10 years as a writer, editor, and manager for such companies as Seiko Epson Corporation, Japan Quarterly magazine, and IR Japan.
Lucinda Croft, ILOG
Presentation: The Journey From FrameMaker to XML: A Story About Migration and a Rare Bird
Lucinda Croft joined ILOG in January 2007. She has worked in technical documentation and information engineering for the past 13 years with companies including Nagra, Reuters FS, Canal+ Technologies and Alcatel. Previously Lucinda worked as a systems and software engineer for British Telecom.
Aaron Davis, DMN Communications
Presentation: Think Simple: A Fresh Perspective on User Assistance
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 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.
Seth Earley, Earley and Associates
Presentation: Building a Search Strategy & Developing a Content Management Strategy & Metadata, Taxonomies, and Information Architecture: Putting the Pieces Together: Faceted Search is Really Navigation or is Guided Navigation Really Search?
Seth Earley has been implementing content management and knowledge management projects for over 12 years and has been in the technology field for more than 20 years. He is founder of the Boston Knowledge Management Forum and co-author of Practical Knowledge Management from the IBM Press. He is former adjunct professor at Northeastern University, where he taught graduate courses in Knowledge Management Infrastructure and E Business Strategy.
Seth has developed search, content and knowledge strategies for global organizations and has developed underlying taxonomies for a diverse roster of Fortune 1000 companies. He is a popular speaker and workshop leader at conferences throughout North America speaking on intranet design, knowledge management, content management systems and strategy, taxonomy development and other related topics.
David Esrati, The Next Wave
Presentation: WordPress Workshop - The Fastest Way To a Community on the Internet: It's Free, It's Powerful and It May Be Too Good To Be True & The Content Providers Crystal Ball: What Everybody Missed During the Digital Revolution
What happens when you mix a born salesman with the U.S. Army Special Force? A small, unconventional ad agency that is regularly threatened with expulsion from the local ad club. Founded in 1988, The Next Wave creates ads, content and strategies for creating an emotional response from a precisely targeted market. Blogs, web 2.0, open source software and guerrilla marketing are favorite tools—as well as creating provocative content.
Chip Gettinger, SDL Trisoft
Presentation: Migrating to DITA and Component Content Management for Global Customers
Chip Gettinger is Vice President XML Solutions, at SDL and Trisoft. He is responsible for managing successful customer deployments of the Trisoft Component-based Content Management System (CCMS) using DITA as an information model.
Gettinger has over 20 years experience in technical sales and an active participant in the industry as well as with customer deployment of DITA with CCMS solutions. He has held management positions in sales, product marketing, training, course development and technical writing at Astoria Software, Harlequin, XyEnterprise and Agfa Corporation.
He received his bachelor’s degree in Graphic Arts Technology, Business Emphasis, from Northern Illinois University.
Joe Gollner, Stilo International
Presentation: Knowledge Archaeology: Raiders of the Lost Art
Joe Gollner leads a team of specialists at Stilo in the design, development and delivery of state-of-the-art content processing solutions that leverage the OmniMark content processing platform. Joe has worked in the content management market, with an emphasis on open standards and large-scale systems, for over 20 years. As solution architect and project manager, he is accustomed to balancing technical, financial and political realities that invariably accompany CM initiatives. He was educated in a wide variety of subjects at Queens University (B.A.) and the University of Oxford (M.Phil.).
Maxwell Hoffmann, Globalization Partners International
Presentation: Globalizing a CMS-based Website from the Ground Up: How to Design, Develop and Deploy a Website for an International Audience
Maxwell Hoffmann has specialized in localization, multilingual publishing, document conversion, XML and process training in the translation industry for over 12 years. He has over 20 years of DTP experience and a Degree 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. He designed and managed large scale publishing solutions in the aerospace, automotive and Life Sciences industries. His clients ranged 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. He was designated an Adobe Community Expert on FrameMaker. Hoffmann has created single-source publishing solutions for over 15 years and has trained over 1,300 people on scalable tech doc and website solutions and localization best practices.
Currently, Hoffmann works as Director of Document Globalization Practice for Globalization Partners International.
Adam Hyde, FLOSS Manuals
Presentation: Firefox Book Sprint: From Zero to Book in Two Days (Day One)
Adam Hyde is a New Zealander based in Berlin. His career has been through many stages including managing radio stations in New Zealand, IT management at XS4ALL (.nl), tactical media (Radio21, HelpB92), and for the last 4 years he has been a professional new media artist. Adam is now solely focused on managing the development of FLOSS Manuals, a user-generated documentation project, the aim of which is to document the world of free software. The documentation is created by the FLOSS Manuals community and is licensed under the GPL.
RJ Jacquez, Adobe Systems, Inc.
Presentation: Adobe AIR and Adobe Captivate: Developing Web 2.0 Documentation
RJ Jacquez is a Senior Product Evangelist at Adobe Systems for Technical Communication and eLearning. With over fifteen years of experience, Jacquez is instrumental in addressing customer requirements and market trends in future releases of Adobe 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, which extended FrameMaker’s publishing capabilities. In addition, RJ was a Senior Product Evangelist for Macromedia, Inc., where he promoted both Captivate and RoboHelp.
RJ is an active blogger at http://blogs.adobe.com/rjacquez, and has lectured extensively on various topics, including single-sourcing, ePublishing, eLearning, Delivering Richer Technical Documents, Help Authoring, XML, DITA, S1000D and SPL.
Pamela Kostur, Parallax Communications
Presentation: Writing Modular Content: Making Content Behave & Building Content Models: Constructing with Content
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, structured writing, 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, telecommunications, life sciences, manufacturing, and financial services industries. Her expertise lies in aligning content with users’ needs and business requirements. The goal is always consistently structured content, for efficient content management 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).
Joan Lasselle, Lasselle-Ramsay
Presentation: Using a Balanced Scorecard to Measure the Value of Content
Joan Lasselle is founder and president of Lasselle-Ramsay, Inc.. Since 1982 Lasselle-Ramsay has helped global 1000 companies get control of their new product or service content and deliver superior customer experience through content infrastructures. Lasselle-Ramsay has worked with over 600 industry leading companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, Boston Scientific, and Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company.
Joan has over 25 years experience developing new product content and training for high tech, healthcare, finance and insurance industries. She is a senior member of the Society for Technical Communication, a past board member of Content Management Professionals, and a regular contributor at industry conferences. Joan serves on the National Leadership Council for Women’s Business Enterprise National Council and teaches technical communications at the University of California Extension. She holds a M.Ed. from the University of Oregon.
Stewart Mader, Future Changes: Grow Your Wiki
Presentation: In With Wiki, Out With Structure (Hint: It’s not what you think it means!) & Learn How To Use a Wiki At Work
Stewart Mader is a wiki expert, experienced educational technologist, teacher, and author of the books Wikipatterns and Using Wiki in Education. He publishes the blog Future Changes, and teaches people at Fortune 500 companies, universities, non-profits, and small businesses how to improve productivity and collaboration using wikis.
Ed Marshall, Marshall Documentation Consulting
Presentation: APIs and SDKs Workshop & Using Shareware / Freeware Tools: Increase Your Productivity and Accuracy
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.
Mary McRae, OASIS
Presentation: Flatter, Leaner, Smarter: Open Standards and Your Future
Mary McRae is Director of Technical Committee Administration for the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). McRae provides front-line support for OASIS committees and the standards they produce. She works with OASIS Technical Committee chairs, guiding them through the OASIS technical process and helping them reach the goals and objectives of their charters. Mary also serves on the OASIS Technical Advisory Board.
She joined the OASIS staff in 2004, but has been an active member since 1995, serving on the OASIS Board of Directors in 1999. Mary became involved in structured markup languages in 1992, while working for Butterworth Legal Publishers, where she mastered the nuances of document analysis, DTD development, structured editors, and content management systems. Later, as Vice President of XML Solutions and Principal XML Technologist for DMSi, she used her skills at project management, needs analysis, requirements definition, product selection, schema development, application customization, and training to help clients avoid the pitfalls she encountered herself as an early adopter. Sandwiched in between, Mary was the Manager of Sales Support for Xyvision (now XyEnterprise), focusing on SGML/XML content management solutions.
Mary is co-author of Office 2003 XML and a frequent speaker at industry conferences. In her spare time, Mary is a textile artist. She is based in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, USA.
Scott Nesbitt, DMN Communications
Presentation: Think Simple: A Fresh Perspective on User Assistance
In close to 14 years as a technical writer (and almost 17 years as a professional writer), Scott Nesbitt 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 close to 300 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.
Douglas Pearson, ENLASO
Presentation: Use of Structure and Metadata in Localization
Doug Pearson has worked as a Localization Engineer for ENLASO for over a decade. He is experienced in desktop publishing, programming, XML, single-source document design for multiple-format output, and in anticipating the needs of production staff throughout every stage of the publishing and localization process. These are all requirements for developing holistic, all-encompassing, custom solutions for a diverse collection of clients. Doug has developed dozens of plug-ins to assist both document authoring and localization for structured and non-structured versions of FrameMaker. He holds a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University.
Neil Perlin, Hyper/Word Services
Presentation: Using Options Efficiently in MadCap Flare: Setting Up a Flare Project & A Short Introduction to MadCap Flare & Using Help Authoring Tools to Create Test-Bed Content Management Systems
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.
Ann Rockley, The Rockley Group Inc.
Presentation: Moving to Structured Content & The Structured Content Technology Landscape & Making Content Intelligent
Ann Rockley is President of The Rockley Group, a consultancy that has an international reputation for developing customer-centric enterprise content management strategies and component management 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 field in 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 the organizer of Intelligent Content 2009.
Rockley is also a 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 only report surveying XML-based tools CMS Watch XML and Component Content Management Systems and the best-selling book Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy (New Riders Publishing ISBN 0-7357-1306-5).
Janet Swisher, FLOSS Manuals
Presentation: Firefox Book Sprint: From Zero to Book in Two Days (Day One)
Janet Swisher’s first experience with online collaborative writing was compiling the Twin Peaks FAQ for the Usenet group alt.tv.twin-peaks in 1991. Later she became a professional technical writer, working at Trilogy Software, Motorola (now Freescale) Semiconductor, and currently Enthought, Inc., which makes software for scientific data analysis and visualization and releases some of it as open source. She has volunteered as an editor on the OOoAuthors project, developing manuals for the OpenOffice.org open source productivity suite. She has participated in a number of FLOSS Manuals book sprints. She writes about open source software and technical communication on her Techie Tech Writer blog.
Kent Taylor, acrolinx
Presentation: [Case Study] Information Quality Management at Cisco Provides Benefits Beyond Improved Quality
Kent Taylor is an industry veteran (with the scars to prove it!) with 20 years experience managing tech pubs and training operations at AT&T/Lucent Technologies, and another 10 years of consulting experience. Taylor has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in terms of large-scale multimedia, multilanguage information supply chains. An early implementer of Gen Code, SGML, XML, single-sourcing, and machine translation technology, Taylor never loses sight of issues that impact content quality.
Nancy Thompson, Epson America, Inc.
Presentation: [Case Study] Moving from Silos to a Collective Farm: Developing Epson America's Hosted CMS with DocZone DITA
After 19 years as a technical writer and editor for the Documentation Department of Epson America, Nancy recently embarked on a new path as the CMS Implementation Specialist, charged with bringing the department into the age of structured authoring and single-source publishing using the DITA information model. Nancy assisted in the year-long search for DITA-compliant CMS, authoring, and publication tools by attending conferences and webinars, and mining resources on the Internet.
Prior to her position at Epson, Nancy developed documentation and ran research projects for the Institute for Social Science Research at UCLA, after graduation from the Communication Studies Department.
Linda Urban, Linda Urban Communications, LLC
Presentation: Paths to Success: Networking and Contributing (It's All About Relationships) & Topic-based Authoring: Getting Your Feet Wet
Linda Urban has over 25 years experience in technical communication. As a consultant for Urban Creations, 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.
Julio Vazquez, SDI
Presentation: Structured Authoring and DITA
Julio Vazquez is currently an information architect with SDI. In his previous career with IBM, he was on the corporate team that defined DITA and wrote the first article on the language in April of 2002. He has presented at STC-Carolina, DITA East and TechComm conferences on various topics and is a staunch DITA advocate.
