Ginny Redish shares her passion for clear communication and usability through her consulting work, highly interactive workshops, and speaking engagements. She has been called the “mother of usability” and a “pioneer in plain language.” Her newest, award-winning book, Letting Go of the Words – Writing Web Content that Works, gives you lots of guidance and examples to share with your clients and colleagues. Ginny is an STC Fellow, winner of the Ken Rainey Award for Excellence in Research, co-founder of the STC User and User Experience SIG, on the editorial board of the STC journal, and a frequent speaker at the STC Summit.
Where we’ve been; where we’re going
Journey back in time to see a quick and very visual history of STC and our profession. Revel in the changes that both ideas and technology have wrought. See how our demographics changed, our skills broadened, our domains expanded. And also see what has been constant-the underlying focus on helping people do their tasks, meet their goals, solve their problems.
And then consider with Ginny how this history-plus the “where we are now” you heard from Saul Carliner-helps us think about the future. Where is your career going? Where is the profession going? What’s next for us to get excited about?
Karen Schriver’s enthusiasm for making content clear, compelling, and usable developed through her years of experience in writing and designing communications for clients around the world. But like many communication design professionals, she found that personal experience—while essential—was not enough. For the past several decades, Karen has combed the empirical research literature with an eye toward creating more effective people-centered communications. Karen’s book, Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, has been called a landmark. She is an STC fellow. She has won fourteen international and national awards for her research. She is a former professor of rhetoric and information design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Karen is now writing a new book about ways to reach busy readers through evidence-based information design and plain language. When she is not running to catch a plane, she can be found frolicking along the Allegheny River with her giant white dog Juno.
Improving your professional value: Using evidence to influence decision making
Technical communicators are an entrepreneurial lot. Many of us are redefining ourselves by expanding both what we do and how we do it. We are also looking for empirical support about why we do what we do and how we can do it better. Come listen to Karen Schriver offer ways to develop your personal expertise and increase your credibility by drawing on research. See how becoming a critical consumer of research can help you more effectively argue from evidence to influence decision making on the job.
Karen will share stories from her extensive consulting experience to shed light on the value of being able to argue from evidence rather than opinion.