Live Blogging from WritersUA Conference

Hello Chatterbox world...

I thought I'd try something new this time around. The WritersUA Conference on Software User Assistance has free wifi in the meeting rooms so I'm going to try a little live blogging. First time for me, so humor me in my stumbles and perhaps some less than interesting updates. Hopefully some will be exciting to follow if not a little interesting. **Note -- read bottom to top for a chronological order of events**

Wednesday

Yay! Presentation finished. Enjoyed talking to people and starting new conversations. It's been a great conference. Off to the final session (including raffle prizes) and then to the airport. It's a late night flight back to the East coast. Only have one request, please be nice to me Delta. Going to a conference has turned me into a bag lady. We'll see if I get scolded or not. Otherwise, it's been a great conference and I've really appreciated the opportunity to learn and take back great information to my team. Maybe someday WritersUA can have me back. Attending and speaking has been a great experience for a technical writer who still feels new to the field after only three years! And thanks Seattle for playing my host for the last five days. It was nice meeting you. However, I'm ready to go home and back to *normal life*. I miss you! :-)

All set up in my session room, lappy (my laptop) is ready to present, but am I?

For lunch, made a quick run (in reality brisk walk in the snow) to Pike Place Market. Picked up a couple dozen doughnuts (they're small). Hope they travel well. Also found Three Girls Bakery where I had the best turkey sandwich ever! Saving half for the airport later. Always thinking about ways to save my company money for the bottom line. Purchase one dinner for 6.85 and make it last for two! :-)

Listened to Charlene's great session on twitter, lots of resources to look over especially because I'd like to expand my use of twitter and make sure it's a relevant work tool. I found it fun to tweet about the session on my mobile, I felt very in the now for once and not two steps behind (at least for the writers ua crowd).

Good morning! Had a great breakfast and eager to hear this session on usability testing. We have a group of technical writers on the Documentation team interested in usability testing, hoping to take back some good information to improve our processes. Admittedly, I am getting nervous/excited for my session @1:30p. Before that though, I'm going on a doughnut treasure hunt. I hear some of the best doughnuts are at the Pike Place Market!

Tuesday

i think after this last session, I'm going to get some good chowder on the waterfront before heading back to my hotel room to practice *lots and lots* before my session tomorrow. Want to do well and provide value in my presentation. However, all I can do is talk from experience. I've learned a lot of lessons from corporate blogging, let's see what my audience thinks of my best practices and benefits!

All of a sudden, I got really cold, maybe Seattle forgot to turn up the thermostat when the temps started dropping. Otherwise it's on to my last session of the day... best practices for embedded user assistance. Hoping it will build upon my last session.

Still unable to check work email. Have bad feeling Friday will be ugly email day where I have to dig myself out. However, session on user assistance in forms is giving me lots of great examples and things to think about. There sure are a lot of really bad forms out there!

Yum, grilled cheese from Beecher's Handmade Cheese shop. A slight case of food coma but I'm on to a session on user assistance in web forms. I'm hoping to learn some more information about good user assistance for web-based application fields. 

Time for lunch... going to pike place market to roam around and get my walk on!

In my first breakout session - Docs to Wiki: Redesigning and Restructuring Content. I've been doing some docs to wiki in the last year myself by taking content from structured and unstructured Framemaker to our internal Sharepoint wiki. Wondering if I can learn some new tips today in case we do some more documentation to wiki in the future.

Starting the day with the keynote session on the status of Microsoft in the post-Gates era. It's funny and interesting and I'm wanting to research more about Ray Ozzie and how he's bringing change to the company (including open source?!?) as the chief software architect.

Day 2 of the conference. I think I might have altered the weather pattern in downtown Seattle. I didn't see rain on Sunday or Monday or so far today. Have I brought sunshine from Charleston all the way to the West coast?

Monday

First day at the conference has been great. Will try to review my live blogging skills and improve my technique before tomorrow. Important step to remember, charge laptop!

Last session of the day is about techniques for reviewing a user interface. She presented the session at last year's writersua and I can't remember if Steve or Denise attended it last year. I hope not because if that's the case I should hop into another session. She did give out australian chocolate! Bonus points for including chocolate! We'll see what I can learn in this session, then I'm off for a walk outside before retiring for the night. I'm trying to stay on EST time so the transition back isn't so rough.

Finally found a fueling station, after a great networking lunch, my next session was on Microsoft Help version 3. The laptop charged while I attended the session. Then I charged it some more during a break. Laptops are slow to recharge I'm learning. Also slow, development at Microsoft. Turns out they made a key design change on Friday and no demo at the conference.

Up next... I'm off to my first breakout session. I'm attending one on User-centered Design of Context-sensitive Help. Will have to give a blog update after the session, my laptop battery needs some re-charging. Lesson learned, find a fueling station every chance I get! 

I really like what he has to say about how visual communication can be incorporated by technical communicators, even if you don't have a cartoonist (luckily BB does!), you can really work on isolation through sequence. You don't have to put everything into the technical documentation, just the need to know. Sequence through static images has similar theory around it as comics.

"That's the beauty of sequence" It helps you focus on one thing at a time instead of worrying about steps 14, 15, 16, 17 when you're still on step 2. Interesitng thoughts from Scott so far! He's a genius about visual communication especially in way comics can relay facts and not just tell a story.

Paraphrasing here - comics help you "focus the mind on only what it needs to know now..."  

Keynote is more of a Q&A than a traditional presentation. Scott's giving the background of Google Chrome and how he got there.

Ready for the keynote speaker, Scott McCloud. Joe Welinske, President of WritersUA, is doing the introduction. I think he just said 323 attendees are here.

Conference begins! Picked up my packet easy peazy. For being a presenter, they even gave me a nice box of chocolates. Breakfast was a deluxe continental breakfast. I tried to fill up so I didn't have to worry too much about eating the rest of the day. TIme to focus!

Sunday

Sunday was a taste of Seattle. I did some sightseeing including the Space Needle and a walk along the waterfront. I even took a ferry boat ride. I enjoyed seeing the city my favorite way... walking! Only thing not accomplished was a visit to the Pike Place market. My hotel is pretty close so I'm thinking i'll take several trips over the next three days. I even bought a rain coat here! I'm thinking it will come in handy (according to the weather forecasts). Overall an awesome day to get settled in and learn what Seattle is like. Favorite thing, the city is pretty chill and not crowded. Seattle is relaxed despite the abundance of coffee shops everywhere. I'm anxious to try a few espressos here and there. Tomorrow, the conference starts.