Igniting Minds at STC India Conference

I participated in the STC India Annual Conference this year. The conference was held at Sheraton, Saket, New Delhi from 11 Nov - 13 Nov 2010. This was the first time that STC India Conference was held in New Delhi. 

This was also the first time that I participated in the conference. If that wasn't motivating enough, I also got an opportunity to present! This post is a reflection of some of what I took away from the conference. But this wasn't all. Just as Benjamin Disraeli says “Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” 

The agenda of this year's conference included topics that have never been presented before. I am not surprised because my own presentation focused on 'design walkthroughs and reviews', which is not the kind of topic that the technical writing community is used to hearing about (more about that later). Certainly, the topics extended beyond the usual language and tools and allowed the community to discuss about technical writing as a career, the future for Indian TechComm, and various trends in technical writing, training and technology. The underlying theme of most presentations was to encourage technical writers to move from 'being a technical communicator to a knowledge manager - curating and aggregating content and knowledge'.

All presentations were split into three tracks: General, Knowledge Unlimited, and Open Up. Since these three tracks were running in parallel in three different rooms, there were many interesting presenters that I would have loved to hear...but couldn't. But from the sessions that I did participate in, here are some that made the most impact on me: 

1) Knowledge, wisdom and the joy of writing - Rachel McAlpine - Director, Contented

• Write to find out what you will write.
• Write small things that may or may not fit together.
• Don't even think about being published.
• Break all the rules. Write what you feel like writing.

2) Freelancing Survival Kit - Ravi Kumar - Principal Technical Writer, Progress Software

• (Initially, as a writer...) Dabble in everything. Find a niche for yourself in the long-run.
•  Be conscious of your digital footprint. Search yourself frequently. Take charge of your online brand.
• If you don't show up on Google, you don't exist.

3) Keynote Speaker - Dr. Naresh Gupta - MD, Adobe India

Trends of Technical Communication

• Movement from unstructured to structured authoring
• Device explosion necessitating multi-screen, multi-channel publishing
• Easily searchable, highly personalized content
• Increasing demand for rich media in technical communication
• Collaborative content creation
• Single-sourcing of technical communication and training content

In the natural world, we interact with information by seeing, hearing, touching, feeling, and smelling. (When it comes to technical communication), we must get back to the natural way to interact with information.

4) Interactive and Web 2.0 Delivery Mechanisms for Technical Documentation -Ankur Jain - Product Manager, Adobe RoboHelp

• There is a fundamental shift in the way people experience ideas and information today.
• There is a changing mindset about technical communicators. From a necessary evil, technical communicators are now a strategic asset.

5) Collective Intelligence: Convergence of Enterprise 2.0 Technologies and Learning Trends - Nafay Kumail - Co-founder, Kreeo.com

• In the new economy, training is the number 1 source of competitive advantage. 
• Knowledge is a function of collective information. 
• Collective knowledge = social expression
  
  
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My Session at STC India Conference

I delivered a 45- minute session on Day 2, on the topic 'An Effective Design Walkthrough - a step towards delivering the best design' within the 'Knowledge Unlimited' track of the conference.

As a part of the development process, design reviews usually happen when designing any product (or service). However, many reviews fail to capture the mistakes or flaws in the design or end up critiquing the designer more than the design! Conducting effective design walkthroughs is both a science and an art. My focus was to share best practices and tips about how to plan, prepare (for), and conduct a design walkthrough in order to make it effective.

The concepts discussed in the presentation were applicable to conducting a design walkthrough of software, user interfaces, manuals, technical papers, and training design.  The presentation aimed to highlight the importance of a design walkthrough as a quality practice that allows designers to obtain an early validation of design decisions. I had an interesting audience who was curious and yet comfortable exploring new ideas about design review and walkthroughs. 

I had a lot to learn and share during this conference. I thank STC India to give me this opportunity to present my views and also participate and get energized with an intelligent and bright community! I look forward to participating in other STC events and hope to bring many more ideas back and share them with my readers.

Presenting at STC India Conference

I will be presenting at the 12th STC India Conference this November at The Sheraton, Saket District Centre, New Delhi, India.

You can catch me in the 'Knowledge Unlimited' session on Day 2, 13 November 2010 at 2:00 PM IST. I will be sharing my views on how to plan and conduct effective design walkthroughs.

I look forward to your participation!

From An Employee to a Consultant - A Story of Embracing Change

I have been working on designing and developing a training workshop on embracing change and transition. Perhaps, the timing was just right. I say this because I am just about ready to celebrate my one-year anniversary as an independent consultant and what a change it has been! I am writing this post as a way to reflect and capture my learning over the last one year specifically related to making this transition. Maybe this can help people who are contemplating the shift.

After many years of a successful and a very happy corporate life, last year I decided to make a change! Having worked for 10 years with a leading training company, I knew that no other company would seem good enough. Therefore, I decided to make a shift to independent consulting. There were some big changes and some small. Overall, I can say that I have performed well. I owe this to my ability to embrace the change and make healthy transitions and my good fortune to work with extremely wonderful clients who believed in my skills and gave me an opportunity to partner with them.

1) From a fixed monthly paycheck to an open opportunity to earn as much as I want - I guess this was a big change as it impacts both financially and emotionally. I never complained about my fixed pay :) but to get the opportunity to earn as much as my skills pay was a big change. I also realized the importance and value of my own skills. When you work with the same employer for 10 years, your skills are known and appreciated. However, when clients with whom I hadn’t worked with, started appreciating my skills and competencies it certainly felt nice. And when they paid well, it worked out quite well. I guess it is a choice. If a steady paycheck is your peace of mind, think about this carefully before you step on the other side. I believed in my skills and raised the bar for my own self. When my clients liked what they got, they automatically became referrals for my new clients.

Learning: If your skills are 'marketable' and you can provide 'value' to your clients, there is no limit on the pay cheque. You need to have confidence in your abilities to take this leap. If you believe in yourself, others will.

2) From coffee conversations to mostly tea...alone - This one was a tough change. I don’t think I was prepared for it enough. Truly speaking, I still miss being around people walking up to my desk asking me questions, sharing their experiences, and the general environment of working with other faces! I have since come a long way and can manage to work ‘by myself’. It wasn’t easy. I made an extra effort to participate in social forums, have had several coffee conversations online, written more blogs, connected with people in online meetings and webinars, and registered for face-to-face learning events. What all of this taught me - better communication skills, ability to work with ambiguity, and working across cultures, timelines, and instructional design styles.

Learning: If you want to stay in touch with humanity, there is no stopping you. Any and all communication makes a difference. You should be willing to take the first step to communicate.

3) From a hectic but stable work life to a more fluid life – Corporate life isn’t easy. And a 9 - 6 job never stops at 6. Over the last few years, I was spending far more time on office assignments and professional training (related to my work) at the cost of my personal life. After making the shift, I diligently stuck to 9 - 6 and have worked very few weekends. Yes, it is again at a cost. But I can deal with this cost! Now, I have more time for myself, my family, and networking – both social and professional. However, this also means moving from a fixed and stable schedule to a more flexible and sometimes an unreliable and unpredictable one. As an employee, there is always work for you. As a consultant, you need to create your own work. There can be downtimes but if you plan your moves correctly, you can completely avoid them.

Learning: You need to be able to deal with fluidity, ambiguity, and sometimes no work! In time, you will manage your schedule better to ‘guarantee’ work for a couple of months. If you acquire and build good relationships, you have a better work calendar! It all depends on you.

4) From a protected cocoon to the big world - In my corporate life, I felt safe, protected, and nicely surrounded by people and processes around me. There were risks I still took but guess they weren’t very big risks cause others were always reviewing and guiding. I had a system to fall back upon. But when I started on my own, it was like coming out of a cocoon. I was the one deciding everything – the process, product, and price! It was probably the right time for me because I was fortunate enough to be exposed to many different clients and situations in my 10-year career. But this can be very intimidating to folks who are new to this industry. And all these decisions were potential risks. Some worked and some didn’t. I learned along the way.

Learning: Trust your instincts and be willing to take risks. You may not think you have entrepreneurial skills. But when you need them, you will see them at play.

5) From reporting to a boss to ‘I am the boss’ – I have always enjoyed working with my supervisors. I haven’t had bad bosses or perhaps I was a good employee! :) As much as I love being my own boss, I do, at times, miss being mentored by someone who is looking and evaluating my work closely. This also actually puts more pressure on me to create my own vision or plan and then evaluate my work against it. This is tough to do. It is tough to be a visionary and then be objective about your own performance. But if you are mature and believe in learning, you can do it. The ‘boss’ now is a metaphor for me to create my vision, to self-evaluate, to appraise, to point mistakes to myself, and to learn from them. I am my own boss means that I need to plan my own career and development.

Learning: Be your own boss means far more than you think. Being your boss means to first identify where you want to be and then help yourself get there. Keep evaluating and learning from your mistakes. Do an objective evaluation of your own performance because no one else is coming to do it for you!

To be where I am today, took many changes – some inflicted by circumstances and others by my own self. I also made conscious transitions towards managing these changes. I learned, unlearned, and (re)learned. I developed new skills and practiced skills that I hadn’t used for a while. I am certainly a better instructional designer now then I was a year ago. I am perhaps a better project manager now since I rely only on myself to multitask and switch between the roles of an instructional designer and a project manager. But there is one thing that hasn’t changed. I have always been self-motivated and passionate about all things learning and training and I love the product/service I offer. When I was an employee I loved it then. As a consultant, I am as passionate about it.

In these five learning points, I have tried to sum up my experience of the last one year. They only represent some of the changes and how I dealt with them. By no means do I want to romanticise independent consulting. It is not easy. And you can’t see everything in black or white. A more realistic view would be to understand the tones of grey and appreciate that just like many other working styles – independent consulting is a working style. It may suit some and may not suit others. You need to understand yourself, evaluate your skills and competencies, know the risks, and understand the potential rewards. You need to be self-motivated, self-driven, organized, and resilient, and most importantly, you need to define your own measure of success.

I summarize this with post with the following quote from Anita Roddick that captures my feelings completely:

“Success to me is not about money or status or fame, it’s about finding a livelihood that brings me joy and self-sufficiency and a sense of contributing to the world."