On March 17, 2009, the STC Canada West Coast Chapter held its first Pecha Kucha event, featuring a variety of presentations intended to reflect on and encourage personal and professional growth.
A Pecha Kucha presentation lasts 6 minutes and 40 seconds, featuring 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. A Pecha Kucha night combines several presentations in this format.
This article was live blogged during the event, and will develop organically as we edit for clarity, and add photos and presenter slides.
Before and after the official program meeting, attendees networked with each other and enjoyed the refreshments, most notably, sushi, graciously provided by Cyberscribe Solutions. Thanks Liessi!
The Presenters
Introduction by Heather Sommerville
Pam Drucker—Condensing a big message into a little image
Takuro Ishikawa—Why technical writers should learn about negotiation and conflict resolution
Susan Patch —Developing a workable documentation process by “being” Agile rather than “doing” Agile
Lois Patterson—How you can use DITA, MathML, LaTeX, and sundry tools to include mathematical content in documentation
Laurie Rae—Open Stack (OpenID and OAuth), a set of Open Standards for providing a distributed and secure means of connecting online
Karen Rempel—The vision fast: a wilderness rite of passage for marking life transitions, connecting with nature, and opening to your inner guidance
Jose Uzcategui—Teaching English in Japan
Eagranie Yuh—How I learned to stop worrying and love the Spoon
The Presentations
Welcome to the STC CWC program meeting for March 17, 2009. About 35 people are in attendance at the YWCA Downtown Vancouver to listen to presentations from a wide cross-section of our members and volunteers.
Heather Sommerville compared Pecha Kucha to haiku or the sonnet due to its strict format… somewhat like a strict-format open mic night. The presentations are on a variety of topics intended to reflect on and encourage professional growth.
Pam introduced her talk with the history of the smiley, where the original creator received $45 for his now iconic masterpiece. She later walked through history of the peace symbol, the multi-religion COEXIST symbol, and the new blue gradient STC logo.
When relating to typefaces, different styles give way to different personalities.
The official Obama logo took two weeks of collaboration. The stickiness depends on how it’s used as well as how others use it. The primary message is to symbolize hope, as indicated by the red and white stripe horizon with a rising sun in the blue sky, made from a sideways C representing change.
Who owned the Obama campaign? Designeres were given the opportunity to produce great work to rise above all the same ol’ same ol’ that would have a long shelf life not only during the campaign but during his entire time as president.
Shamrock, horseshoe, fortune cookie - all symbolize good luck.
Many are surprised by Takuro’s background in conflict resolution, first learned while working in Colombia. Technical communicators need to understand conflict resolution.
Humans are fascinated by conflicts. We watch movies that feature conflict because they are entertaining, as long as the conflict doesn’t include us. Conflict is usually associated with finger-pointing, swearing, and nasty things happening between people. If we find it unpleasant, the natural reaction is avoidance.
Conflict itself is neither good nor bad; how we solve them makes them so. When two or more people experience conflict, they could see it as an opportunity to improve the status quo: in a technical communicator’s case, to create high quality, usable documentation.
Benefit of conflict: Different people can compare their goals and objectives, and working through the conflict builds eamwork skills.
He illustrated a conflict scenario conceived by Mary Parker Follet (probably the most important name in the field of the field of conflict resolution), about two children arguing over the last orange in the house. The standard solution would be to cut the orange in half. But is that the best way to solve the problem?
What if each had different ideas for that last orange. For instance, if the boy wanted to make juice, and the girl wanted orange peel candy? They could easily solve the problem by understanding the needs and wants of the other. This understanding would lead to the better solution of peeling the orange, which would provide each with a complete part of the orange they needed.
There is little discussion about agile itself in documentation. Susan believes its important to stop thinking of “agile” as a process, and rather a way of life.
Agile started in 2001 when skiers from different methodologies spent a trip on the mountains together. During this trip, the personal differences led the group to determine four core values of being agile.
Individuals and interactions more than processes and tools. Face to face communication is preferred over remote locations. Preference is given to developing working software, delivered to the customer as often as practical and possible, over “fixing it in the documentation.”
Customer negotiation is key. Responding to change quickly requires customer involvement early in the process, and often during development.
Sustainable pace of development without burning out the team. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
Teams develop organically on their own. They need to be allowed to organize themselves, with the key being to optimize the work that is not done.
A technical writer has trouble fitting into an agile team, unless they realize an important part of their role will be in developing user scenarios. On an agile team, tech writers integrate with the development process, rather than treating developers as Subject Matter Experts (SME).
KIS - Keep it Simple; KIL - Keep it Light - Create just enough documentation, just in time to fill its purpose. Usually developed in parallel alongside development, you need to work from the same requirements the engineers are working from.
Develop design patterns for documentation: Templates with blanks to fill in, structured authoring. Personal nit: Structured authoring doesn’t have to be DITA!
Susan’s favourite tools for agile documentation development: Whiteboard with markers and digital camera
Note: Susan will speak on this topic in more detail at our May 19, 2009 program meeting
At QUIC Financial, Lois has a requirement for expressing complex mathematical formulas and equations within their documentation using LaTeX (pronounced LAY-tek).
A primary challenge is the variety of tools used in developing documentation: LaTeX, MathML, and Word Processing tools.
SVG is XML markup that looks nice in Firefox, but is not human friendly for editing it.
The three parts to the documentation life cycle: Input, Review, and Publish.
Those who don’t use LaTeX often use MS Word with math editor, FrameMaker with equation editor, or OpenOffice with built-in math editor that outputs MathML. However, Lois’ experience with FrameMaker and OpenOffice hasn’t been the most pleasant.
A nice combination is XMetaL with MathFlow. It’s slick and fun, and perfect for DITA authoring.
For publshing, most converters and rendering tools export as graphics.
To support MathML in DITA authoring you need to upgrade to DITA 1.1 specification, and expand the DITA Open Toolkit through plugins.
Laurie is presently writing a book on the Open Stack, which is not a standard specification for universal single sign-on, but rather a combination of platforms that support it, such as OpenID, XRDS-Simple, OAuth, PortableContacts, and OpenSocial.
Her experience grew from her involvement with SXIP, known for SXIP enterprise authentication products.
Single sign on usually requires an provider who verifies a user’s identity, and the target website they wish to log into.
OpenID doesn’t pass information from the provider to the target website. When a user logs in through OpenID, the target website asks the OpenID provider to prove the user’s identity, and return a verification to the target.
OAuth is a lot simpler. It’s like a valet key of the web. It can grant personal information to external websites without the target website knowing the username and password.
To get an OpenID, you can visit http://openid.net/get, or use one of your existing OpenIDs through Flickr, Wordpress.com, or another provider.
Laurie’s original role was to research and write the book. As the concept took shape she became the editor of the project, with a constantly shifting writer team. She equates her experience with chasing after elephants with a butterfly net.
Writing a book requires a lot of perseverence. At least she has some interesting stick figure drawings to describe the user experience of using these tools.
Welcome to Monkey Valley! Karen’s retreat centre is a perfect location for a vision quest, during which participants spend three days and three nights in the wilderness with no food, no shelter, and no company.
Located just east of Merritt, Monkey Valley is a scenic 4-hour drive from Vancouver, BC.
Consistent with the theme of nature, the resort is powered through solar panels and wood heat. The vision quest starts with a ceremony the night before, then sends participants out into their solo.
Karen trained to be a guide in the School of Lost Borders four years ago, based on First Nations rights of passage made relevant to our time. Karen earned three credits towards her master’s degree from Naropa University by fasting on her first vision quest in Wyoming with others in her program.
Karen’s co-guide, Kim, brings a transformational life coaching skill into her role as a guide. They teach everyone the skills needed to fast safely and survive the solo time in the wild, and work with each faster’s unique intention for the ceremony.
We are drawn to different things in nature that brings us back to something from ourselves. Each participant’s vision quest is different, and will feel specifically tailored for the individual.
Spending time in the scenery is awesome: a gift. While the quest itself is a solo experience, the group returns to share from the gift they receive on their quest.
The next vision fast retreat is July 5 - 11, 2009. Please see http://www.monkeyvalleyretreat.com for more information. Call Karen at 604.251.6337 if you have any questions.
Note: Jose’s last name rhymes with “Who’s got the key?”
Many people visit Japan for several reasons: the culture, the language, manga, etc. Jose found that he travel Japan by teaching ESL. He started in Vancouver with a company called KTC, (now iTTTi), who trained him in and sent him to Japan. They provided extensive support to help with the culture shock.
After being assigned to one location where the commute took an hour each way, he started his own business for teaching language in that town. He set up shop, built a website, found a partner, and went for it.
If you go to Japan, take in all the experiences: swim naked in the hot springs, join a taiko group, hike in volcano, go parachuting, visit castles, go canoeing through waterfalls, surf often, and enjoy all the cute misuses of the English language, for instance Merry Chiristimas.
He returned to Canada to become an Assistant Language Teacher with interac, the best known company in Japan, and has now started a social media marketing consulting company, to educate others in branding and business development.
A Loving Spoonful, affectionately known as “the Spoon”, provides free nutritious meals for people with HIV/AIDS. She started as a volunteer, and eventually grew her involvement to become a committee member. Their motto is “No one living with AIDS should live with hunger.”
Jen (Director of Volunteer Services), the cat wrangler of over 200 volunteers, is charged with training everybody. She enlisted Eagranie to write the volunteer manual, intended to teach the wide range of activities and responsibilities of the group.
The spirit of the volunteers and the environment is energetic and light. They use themes “just because”, for instance, “Smile: it’s Tuesday.”
John (Director of Client Services) provides levity and accounts for a lot of the spirit.
They receive weird gifts, such as parcels without labels. This year the team turned it into a “guess what this is” game, adding to the light-hearted spirit of the organization.
Chancho (Jen’s dog) is a 60 lb. English bulldog who loves to help by destroying empty boxes. Sadly, he couldn’t distinguish between empty and full boxes, so his efforts to help have been postponed for the time being.
While “The Spoon” receives some government funding, it holds several events each year to raise money.
March 2008 Dining Out for Life raised $45,000 (12,857 meals).
June 2008 Project Empty Bowl art auction raised $15,000 (4,286 meals).
November 2008: Prairie Fairies Fow Supper raised $11,000 (3,142 meals)
November 2008: World AIDS Day Function raised $50,000 (14,286 meals)
March 2009 Dining Out for Life happened on March 12, 2009, and the final tally hasn’t been counted yet. DOFL is unique in that you can help the organization by eating out at a participating restaurant, who manages the act of donating from their proceeds on your behalf.
In addition to exceptional opportunities for those who can’t say “no”, the organization provides amazing experience for people to learn new skills and help a good cause.
Eagranie showed a special photo from July 2008: A float in the Vancouver Pride Parade where she danced as Audrey Hepburn.
