Hello everyone,
I want to share with you the upcoming “Live Web Seminars” available through the month of April and beginning of June.
Seminar Pricing
Benefits: No travel time; Pay per site and not per person; Train without leaving the office
Cost: Members $59 each; Not Yet Members $149 each; Student Member $29 each. Note: Cost is transferable but is not refundable. Registration closes the day prior to each webinar. Please add regina.tatum@stc.org to your address book to ensure receipt of registration emails.
GETTING TO KNOW YOU: USER RESEARCH FUNDAMENTALS ANYONE CAN USE
Karen Bachmann
Wednesday, 18 June | 1:00–2:00 PM EDT (GMT-4)
User research is the foundation of user experience, but conducting user research can seem intimidating when just starting out. At its essence, user research is just asking users about themselves in a constructive and focused way. This webinar will help you learn the basic building blocks for user research, from planning to effectively sharing findings.
TARGETING CONTENT TO YOUR USERS’ GOALS
Alyssa Fox
Thursday, 19 June | 4:00–5:00 PM EDT (GMT-4)
In today’s business environment, everyone is doing more with less. How do you provide the content your users need, when they need it, with fewer people and less time to do it? Taking into account these factors, along with our agile environment, the presenter’s team started shifting toward content targeted to achieving users’ goals. This type of content gives specific information when and where necessary, documents best practices, provides extensive and relevant examples, and does not document the obvious or easily discoverable.
TAKING HELP TO THE NEXT STEP: EMBEDDED VIDEO
Matthew West
Tuesday, 8 July | 10:00–11:00 AM EDT (GMT-4)
People are more connected than ever and video is becoming the ubiquitous channel for delivering how-to content to the connected world. Product help no longer has to be static text and long descriptive passages. That rich text content can be delivered as short video clips embedded into online help, meaning that text can be minimized to key points for those users who need only a simple answer, while complex content can be delivered as a quick video tutorial, reducing complex help documents to simple content that is more likely to be used.
CLOSE THE CHASM BETWEEN THE EXPERT AND THE NOVICE TO ACHIEVE POSITIVE OUTCOMES
Judith Shenouda
Friday, 11 July | 1:00–2:00 PM EDT (GMT-4)
The webinar explores how breakdowns in communication between the expert and the novice interfere with achieving positive outcomes in all areas of human endeavor and provides advice on ways that technical communicators—and others—can close the chasm for the good of all.
ESSENTIALS FOR LAUNCHING YOUR OWN TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION BUSINESS
Ann Marie Queeney
Wednesday, 16 July | 1:00–2:00 PM EDT (GMT-4)
You’re thinking about striking out on your own—but how do you make your dream a reality? This webinar covers the essential components to ensure a successful launch of a technical communication business.
THE SECURE COMMUNICATOR—BEST PRACTICES FOR SURVIVING HEARTBLEED AND OTHER THREATS
Ben Woelk
Thursday, 17 July | 4:00–5:00 PM EDT (GMT-4)
Do you understand how you’ve been affected by the Heartbleed bug? Are you worried about maintaining your privacy online? (You should be.) Do you know how to best protect client or company information? Is it safe to use social media? Have you heard of ransomware? Are you worried about identity theft? If you don’t know how to answer one or more of these questions, this webinar is for you!
STYLES GONE WILD? CSS CONCEPTS IN A NUTSHELL
Neil Perlin
Friday, 18 July | 1:00–2:00 PM EDT (GMT-4)
New online content techniques like multichannel publishing and responsive design rely heavily on best practices for development. One of the most important of those practices is the use of styles and style sheets, in line with W3C recommendations that style codes be removed from HTML files and put in a style sheet, or CSS, instead. The result will be cleaner, more future-proofed content. If you’re new to CSS, it may look impenetrable but there actually is logic to it. Understand that logic and the rest begins to fall into place. If you’ve decided that it’s time to make serious and correct use of styles but aren’t sure where to start, this presentation will get you going.
Tricia Spayer
Tuesday, 22 July | 10:00–11:00 AM EDT (GMT-4)
When planning a trip, it’s essential to know your destination. This is also true for graphics. You need to know where the graphics are going to be seen before you add them to your documentation. The destination will determine the best format, resolution, and size of graphic to use. Come to this webinar to plan your graphics journey. You will also learn about the benefits of using graphics vs. text, what makes an effective graphic, best practices for graphics, the types of graphics, single-sourcing graphics, effective callouts, and enhancing illustrations and photographs.
GRAPHICS AND AUDIO FOR MORE ENGAGING PRESENTATIONS
Robert Hershenow
Wednesday, 23 July | 1:00–2:00 PM EDT (GMT-4)
The right sounds and graphics can make your presentations more engaging and effective. This webinar will show you how to find, edit, and use photos, clip art, and audio to make better presentations. We will look at design principles and creative techniques, and also at the science behind boosting information transfer with multimedia content.
VISUALIZING DOCUMENTS WITH SCALABLE VECTOR GRAPHICS
David Gardiner
Tuesday, 29 July | 10:00–11:00 AM EDT (GMT-4)
Scalable vector graphics (SVG) is part of HTML5 and has considerable potential for producing hyperlinked infographics for online help. This webinar shows how SVG can be the basis for new online documentation interfaces that integrate with topic-based help and improve the user experience. Learn how SVG as an enabling technology can be the basis for visual-first interfaces that improve accessibility of technical documents.
These webinars are very helpful as well as convenient. Please take advantage of these informative presentations.
R.D. Sharninghouse
Editor, Memo 2 Members Newsletter
ralph2010@knights.ucf.edu