From The Editor’s Desk

Thursday, 14 November | 4:00–5:00 PM EST (GMT-5)

With the changes in technology, finding information isn’t just about search and perusing an index anymore. Interface navigation and navigational cues, such as button design and icons, also affect the ease of which users can find information. This presentation covers the challenges and ways technical communicators can ease the pain.

Tuesday, 19 November | 10:00–11:00 AM EST (GMT-5 )

For most product manufacturers, delivering adequate documentation is a constant challenge. The increasing complexity of products and the stricter regulations for product documentation often lead to extensive documentation sets with 500+ pages manuals online or in print. The question is: how effective is all this documentation?

Thursday, 21 November | 4:00–5:00 PM EST (GMT-5 )

For most product manufacturers, delivering adequate documentation is a constant challenge. The increasing complexity of products and the stricter regulations for product documentation often lead to extensive documentation sets with 500+ pages manuals online or in print. The question is: how effective is all this documentation? This presentation gives an overview of what targeted documentation is, how to create or convert to targeted documentation libraries, and how it can help improve the overall user experience and reduce costs.

Tuesday, 3 December | 10:00–11:00 AM EST (GMT-5)

In this webinar, user research expert Cory Lebson will introduce attendees to a number of tools and techniques for conducting qualitative user research to assess Web content.In this webinar, user research expert Cory Lebson will introduce attendees to a number of tools and techniques for conducting qualitative user research to improve your Web content. Find out when and why you should conduct focus groups to assess a Web strategy. Learn how you can better understand your users with ethnographic research or interviews and test your assumptions with a usability study. Assess the organization of content with a card sort. And consider the best ways to get stakeholder buy-in for your research initiatives.

Wednesday, 4 December | 1:00–2:00 PM EST (GMT-5)

Often because of interface limitations, search is the only means you have available to allow users to find information. To help generate more relevant results, you can incorporate index entries into metadata. In this webinar, Cheryl Landes will provide an overview of what metadata is and share tips on how to include index entries in metadata.

Thursday, 5 December | 4:00–5:00 PM EST (GMT-5)

Companies that successfully integrate translation into the product-development process reap the financial benefits of simultaneous global releases, high-quality products that meet the needs of all their customers, and improved perception of customer service. Such integration also requires the localization vendor to take a long-term view toward its client relationships because, while integration results in short-term loss of revenue on a project, the overall budget for localization doesn’t typically go down. Rather, client companies use the savings to expand their localized offerings.

There are so many great topics that will be covered, so please take advantage of these seminars.  There are certainly a lot for you to choose from or you could attend them all!

R.D. Sharninghouse
Editor, Memo 2 Members Newsletter
ralph2010@knights.ucf.edu