I'm just on my way back from the STC Israel Convention that was held in Herzelia, the hi-tech suburb of Tel Aviv, on June 4. The STC Israel Chapter also celebrated its 40th anniversary!

As a board member of the STC France Chapter, I'm going to relate a bit of what I noticed about the organization of the event before giving my report of the sessions I attended. I hope our general members will be interested and comment on this organization, so that we can perhaps adopt some of the ideas for future STC France Chapter events.

Organization

STC Israel holds one-day conventions during the work week - these conventions are all day events with several tracks. This year, there were four tracks: Information Design, New Tools and Technologies, XML and CMS, and Professional Skills

The Israel Chapter is comparable in size to the France Chapter. They have 110 members, compared to around 90 members for the France Chapter. There were 300 paid attendees at this year's convention. This compares to only around 40-60 attendees at recent STC France Chapter Annual Conferences, despite a comparable high quality program, similar topics (technology, personal development, trends, and localization issues), and great speakers. In fact, Patrick Hofmann, who led a very successful workshop and was a speaker at our conference in February, was the opening keynote speaker in Israel.

The fact that a chapter of similar size to our own can put on such a large and successful conference is encouraging. Feedback from our own Annual Conference back in February was overwhelmingly positive, yet we clearly need help in boosting attendance. I tried to get as many tips as possible from the organizers of the STC Israel Convention to explain their success, and help us improve our performance.

One key success factor was that STC Israel has lots of sponsors. This meant that the STC Israel Chapter could make the Convention extremely cheap for members (and all their other events during their year are free of charge.) In addition, sponsors are just as interested as the event organizers in having a good turnout and can be a great help in publicizing the event. We were successful in getting some sponsorship for our conference this year, but not enough to allow us to reduce the price of our annual conference to the point where price no longer becomes an issue for attendees. This is clearly an area where we need to work harder, and if you want to help with sponsorship activities, or think you or your employer would be interested in sponsoring next year's STC France Chapter conference, please get in touch with a member of the board.

I spoke to Mike Hamilton of MadCap Software during the convention, and he will be presenting or manning his stand (or both) at the TEKOM annual conference in Germany in November this year, and he would love an excuse to come to Paris afterwards. For those who weren't aware, MadCap Software was formed by the former development team of RoboHelp, after the product was purchased by Macromedia (and subsequently by Adobe). Mike's keen to show off MadCap's range of innovative help authoring and content management software. The French distributor of AuthorIT is also interested in giving a product demo. Is this something you'd be interested in? If so, please let us know. Better still, why not offer to lend a hand and help put these meetings together?

What I really noticed about the STC Israel event, however, was the fantastic membership involvement in the convention. The chapter actually had a sponsorship committee, an organization committee, a program committee, all working together to make the event a success. Our own past two conferences have been organized mainly by 3 or 4 board members, and while we have called on members to become more involved, we haven't been very successful in mobilizing our membership. If you're interested in getting involved, please get in touch! Even a small investment in time can make a big difference in the overall success of our chapter events.

Content of the Convention

After the introductory remarks by Zev Frutkoff, the STC Israel President and Linda Oestereich, President of STC, Patrick Hofmann started the day off with his presentation on the ROI of Visual Information Design.

Those who saw Patrick in London last October, or at the STC France Conference in Paris in February, would have recognised the presentation, but his delivery of it is always unique to the particular audience, so it's never boring to see it again. If you have not had the pleasure of seeing this presentation, I heartily recommend it.

Patrick demonstrates, with three case studies and *real* metrics (retrieved from his customer's accounting department), the ROI that was achieved with good visual design. He also shows how he develops his designs: He first creates a text storyboard, with each step confined to a 5cm x 5 cm box (in order to limit the amount of text for each step!), then he creates a drawing for each "box". If the pictures don't work in the end, or if they need supplementary, the captions are all ready! He also explains how he conducts user tests, by asking a local temping agency for exactly the profile of recruits he wants. He has found this method to be far more efficient and cost-effective than any other volunteer recruitment method he's ever tried - you pay for a half-day's work and everyone's happy! When you see Patrick's case studies, you are really convinced.

I started in the Information Design track and attended the presentation by several Comverse employees on "Towards More Usable Documentation". Their main message was "Move into single-sourcing and use XML!" That is a message I am quite familiar with, so I was more attentive when the presentation turned to the importance of incorporating an editor into the project team. The editor is the first person to read the product documentation, and his/her job is to make sure the document is readable. As a lone writer, and now lead writer in a team of two, this is a luxury I've never had, but I would strongly encourage any good documentation team to invest in. For a small company, this might mean using the services of an outside editor, but it could mean great savings in the end. The editor makes sure the style guide is applied, the vocabulary is consistent, and the grammar is correct.

The Comverse team then introduced their "Documentation Engineer". This was a job title I was unfamiliar with, so I was really intrigued. He, in this case, makes sure the document is usable, that it is technically complete and correct. He serves as an intermediary between R&D and the writing staff to make sure the information flow is good and reliable. Again, I thought this role would make a great addition to any doc team, but especially for those in companies where information flow is poor or non-existant.

For my second session, I switched to the New Tools and Technologies track (anyone who knows me knows that I'm a bit of a gadget freak!) Gilad Maayan (winner of the student award in last year's STC Trans European Technical Communications Competition who I had met in Paris in February at the awards dinner), presented how he and his team created their "Online Help, the Next Generation: The Making of a Wiki Documentation Portal." We in the French Chapter are already well-informed about wikis - we've had meetings on the topic in the past, and the board has been experimenting with our own wiki to help share information among the leadership team. Gilad explained why his company decided to use a commercial wiki (Confluence by Atlassian) rather than an open source one (greater control of permissions, less setting-up time, better support so less time lost). Jeffrey Walker, President of Atlassian, presented Confluence via a recorded presentation. Check out the Gigaspaces' remarkable online help wiki , which has become a success story for Atlassian -- and you can see why!

We had a great buffet lunch and between each session there was good networking time (never enough). After lunch, the Chapter distributed its competition and achievment awards. Then we started the prize drawings. The event sponsors had contributed over $12000 of software, licenses, and training!

I stayed on the New Tools and Technologies track to see Jonathan Golan present how SDL Trados's MultiTerm software is used for terminology management. The subject is of great interest to us all, especially if we are also dealing with translation. Jonathan convinced me that MultiTerm certainly offers significant improvements over managing one's glossary with a spreadsheet, however it didn't seem to me to provide all the answers. You still need Trados to screen your documents for consistency. The MultiTerm software is not a control tool; it creates the reference for control. If you'd be interested in seeing a demo of MultiTerm/Trados for yourself, let us know and we'll try and set up a chapter meeting in Paris and invite someone along from SDL to discuss their solutions.

Anyone who follows the FrameMaker users' lists or discussions about Adobe Acrobat is familiar with the name Shlomo Perets. Schlomo's company, MicroType, offers training all over the United States several times a year and in Israel. It would be great to get him in France! He presented a talk entitled "Using Software Media Clips to Enhance Documentation & Training Materials". Although we identify him with Adobe, he gave a very fair overview of other tools, both commercial and free, that are available for creating media clips. He also gave us some guidelines (Short, 2-3 minute-long clips are easier to handle and if you have to re-record, you just do that bit. Think ahead - plan and write a script.)

The day ended with the last of the prize drawings and the final address by Donald DePalma, author of "Business without Borders", who spoke about the "Technical Communicator in a Global Market." It was an inspiring speech, very upbeat about the importance of the technical communicator. I have since read a review of the book and think it will take a slot on my wish list.

Conclusion

I was happy to attend this conference and the Israel Chapter welcomed me and thanked me many times for making the trip. My batteries are recharged.

I hope this account will encourage you to come to our French Chapter conferences and meetings - even if it means a bit of personal investment. Better still, I hope you will join the organizing committee for our events - believe me, your personal investment will be rewarded ten-fold!