Are you a technical communicator? Let the Four Lakes Chapter of the STC be your link to the local community of technical communication professionals. Our Chapter has been providing technical communicators living or working in the Dane County area with valuable networking opportunities and educational resources since 1991. The Four Lakes Chapter is a forum for learning about the latest trends in the technical communication field.

Attend chapter meetings, read our newsletter, network with your peers, and take part in professional development activities. Your links to these activities are found on this website, many free of charge or at nominal cost. If you aren't already a member, join STC to get these benefits plus discounts, invitations, and much more to keep you informed about the world of technical communications.

DITA-in-a-Day Workshop Series

The STC Wisconsin, Four Lakes, and Twin Cities communities cooperatively present everything you need to know about DITA in July. Leigh White returns to the Midwest to share her DITA expertise. The workshops provide practical, hands-on experience to creating DITA modular, reusable, structured documentation, and ways to assemble topics for different audiences and outputs.

• Milwaukee, WI - Content Modeling Workshop on July 11th
• Minneapolis, MN - DITA in a Day; Authoring on July 13th
• Madison, WI - DITA in a Day; Authoring on July 15th
• Milwaukee, WI - DITA in a Day; Production on July 18th

To learn more about and register for the Milwaukee DITA workshops, visit www.stc-wi.org.

To learn more about and register for the Minneapolis DITA workshop, visit www.stctc.org.

DITA-in-a-Day Workshop Series; Wednesday, July 15th @ ETC in Middleton, WI

What? This full-day workshop begins with an overview of DITA-the intention behind it and how it promotes a structured, single-source approach to authoring. Next, you'll learn about the concept, reference, task and topic information types, including the purposes and components (elements) of each. Instructional segments are followed by an opportunity for you to put the principles you just learned to use, creating a set of DITA topics from scratch. Then, you learn about DITA maps and, time permitting, create some of your own, building different deliverables for different audiences. If time does not permit, the instructor provides a demonstration of several approaches to organizing a ditamap and the resulting output. Attendees are writers, editors, content managers-anyone who needs to create modular, reusable, structured documentation. Ideally, attendees should have a basic knowledge of the principles of XML and topic-based, structured authoring, though such knowledge is not absolutely necessary.

Where? Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC), located at 3031 Pleasant View Rd in Middleton, Wisconsin. For driving directions, take a look here; for an overall map of ETC in relation to main roads in the Madison area, please look here. Thank you ETC for all your help and support with this workshop.

When? Wednesday, July 15th: 8:30am-4:00pm

Cost: Only $50 for STC members, $85 for non-members, and $25 for students. Lunch is included for all attendees. To RSVP, please pay via the paypal button below:

Membership level

STC members $50.00 Non-members $85.00 Students $25.00

Number of spots remaining: 9 of 20

Workshop speaker: Leigh White is a technical communicator with over 15 years of experience as a content creator, content manager, and production coordinator. One of her primary interests is exploring ways that small technical publications groups can leverage existing tools and improve processes to maximize the reuse of their content, improve their efficiency, increase their offerings and save their sanity. To accomplish these goals, Leigh advocates that effective technical communicators need to be more than writers; they need to be part programmer, part designer and part project manager. She is also a devotee of XML and structured documentation and she believes that DITA might just save the world. Her other professional interests include DTD and XSLT design, FrameMaker template design, and relational database design for small, proprietary content management systems. When she is not parked in front of a computer, Leigh enjoys reading, running, hiking, bouldering, photography, motorcycles and a variety of other rather dangerous activities.

Additional workshop details:

• Computers and software are available for use during the workshop; however, if you have a laptop with Frame 8 installed (or trial Frame 8), please bring your computer. Contact board@stc4lakes.org if you need a trial version of Frame.
• Space is extremely limited, so note that this workshop is only open to the first 20 people that RSVP.
• Discounted hotel rates are available; please email board@stc4lakes.org for details.

Chapter Meetings: Looking Ahead

We are currently planning the following chapter meetings:

• STC 4 Lakes happy hour. Tentatively scheduled for sometime in July.
• Two Madison-area managers will present on using Agile methodologies to produce better documentation in less time. This presentation is tentatively scheduled for September 2009.
• Technical Communications: The Latest Research - November 2009

Check the STC 4 Lakes blog for new job postings!

Please visit the STC Four Lakes Blog (http://stc4lakes.wordpress.com/) for all of the details.

STC 4 Lakes is now on Facebook

Stay in contact with technical communicators in the Madison, WI area!

February Technicalities Is Now Available

Click here to read the latest and greatest issue of the Four Lakes chapter newsletter.

2009 STC 4 Lakes Board Members

Meet the 4 Lakes Board members for the current year on the Chapter Info page.

We also have a few remaining spots open on the STC 4 Lakes board. Please email board@stc4lakes.org for additional details.