Learning, the Endless Possibilities

by Debbie Kerr, President

Webinar (aka Telephone Seminar) on "Creating Training That Sticks"

Open to one and all (geared to the intermediate/beginner level) on December 6 at the Waterloo Public Library. Free for STC members! Read all about it.

Vote “Yes” or “No” for Free Online Training

Tieline is monthly newsletter that gets sent by email to council leaders. In the November issue, there was an article from the Sacremento Chapter STC about a website that offers great online training. What that chapter did was pay the $1000 fee and then used the five licences that they received to let their members select which training they would like to take.

Review the Website

We are considering doing the same thing for our members, because we realize that not all of you can come to our education days. We want you to go to www.vtc.com and look through the site and see if there are courses on this site that you would be interested in taking — for free.

Cast Your Vote

Once you review the website, cast your vote on the home page of our website. Please only vote once so that we get an accurate reading of the number of people who are likely to use this site. We don’t want to invest money in something that people won’t use. We also want to get a sense of how busy the site might be if we purchased five licenses.

February’s General Meeting

The first general meeting of the new year is in February. So, don’t go rushing out to the university in January only to be disappointed. We plan to do something special for our February meeting. We may even arrange to do a Webcast, so that those of you who have never been able to attend a general meeting can actually see what goes on. We are working out the details even as you are reading this text. Keep checking the calendar page of our website. It’s the first page where the details will be posted.

We haven’t forgotten that the name of this chapter is “Southwestern Ontario” so we are trying to reach out to more of that area using technology. If you can’t come to the meetings, we will try to bring some of the meetings to you.

If you have a special topic that you would like to see covered, let me know, and I will see what I can do.

Spring Education Workshop: Sarah O’Keefe comes to town in April

We welcome Sarah O’Keefe to Southwestern Ontario from April 24-26th, 2007. A well-known expert in all things XML, Sarah will usher spring into the region with a two day workshop titled XML and Structured Authoring. Working together with Sarah, we’ve custom-designed this workshop to provide something for those new to XML, as well as for those already using XML in their authoring environment.

Day One and Day Two

Days one and two will explore the possibility of using Extensible Markup Language (XML) and structured authoring in your publishing efforts. You will receive a solid introduction to XML and will understand how to fit XML into your environment efficiently and effectively.

Day Three

For those among us who are on the cutting edge, an optional third day will offer advanced tips and tricks for people who have already tackled XML and are now seeking additional tool and guidelines for easing the learning curve and the overall implementation.

More About Sarah O’Keefe

Sarah O'Keefe is the founder and president of Scriptorium Publishing, a company that helps companies develop and deliver high-quality documentation for high-tech products. Sarah offers consultation on issues such as identifying the best tools and strategies for a company's documentation process and has coauthored several books. Within the STC, Sarah’s name has become synonymous with XML and moving documentation forward to meet multi-format publishing demands. For more information about Sarah, visit http://www.scriptorium.com.

For more information

Pricing and registration information will be available on the Southwestern Ontario website in late January 2007. In the meantime, if you would like to be placed on the preliminary registration list or for more information, please email leanne@leannerollins.com.

About Debbie Kerr

In the 20 years that Debbie has been writing documentation, she has worked in a variety of industries: government, retail, software, and insurance. She is currently employed at The Economical Insurance Group in Waterloo, where she has stepped out of her traditional role of writing user guides and help files, and now writes a variety of specifications.

Debbie has been a member of the STC since 1994 and has been a council member for many years. For the second year in a row, Debbie has bravely taken on the role of Chapter President.