Boston and Northern New England Chapter members at the Chicago Conference in May 2001. Left to right: Justin Kelley, Lynne Nadeau, John Garison, Lynn Harris, Steve Murphy, Hans Fenstermacher, Deb Sauer, Marguerite Krupp.

I went to the Chicago STC conference hoping to get energized, to see what is happening generally in our profession, and to learn about a few specific subjects that are relevant to my current work. I came back with a few good ideas and projects for myself, but without good answers for some of the questions that I brought with me.

The subject areas that I had targeted were Web-based training, single sourcing, and documenting APIs. I decided that the WBT write-ups in the Conference Proceedings were substantial enough that I could skip those sessions. So, the conference really isn't over yet, because I am still working my way through the papers I brought back with me.

Single sourcing seems to be the current Holy Grail of technical writing. One session that I attended was standing room only. So far, this seems to be an area in which there are many consultants ready to sell expensive tools and services to help documentation departments achieve their goals, but there is not yet an integrated set of applications available to smaller organizations that cannot afford tens of thousands of dollars for document management systems.

Alma Nahigian and Mark Hanigan.

This brings me to an observation about the vendor area. It seemed to me that a huge percentage of the vendors were companies that want to translate my documentation into either foreign languages or XML. The number of vendors selling something that I can sit at my PC and use (such as FrameMaker, ForeHelp, Robohelp, etc.) was minuscule. Until some of these applications that have been central to our lives the past ten years or so can seamlessly import and export to a common database (or get blown away by a new and better competitor), single sourcing will be a bit out of reach.

I made it to the API sessions. I wish I had been to the API presentation by Susan Gallagher three years ago, when I was starting to work on API documentation. If you are in danger of having to document an API, check Susan's Web page.

Denise Dunne, Hans Fenstermacher, Ginny Owens.

My favorite session was one that I had not planned on attending. I got to talking with Susan Morse at one of the networking luncheons, and she got me excited enough to attend her session on using creative writing techniques to enhance my creativity as a technical writer. This was one session where people were not ready to leave when the time was up.

So what did I come back with? Well, after viewing the award-winning documentation display, I have a very good idea for a quick reference card for one of my upcoming projects. I plan to analyze the semantic structure of my documentation so that I am ready for XML when it's ready for me. And, of course, I came back with a battery-powered fan, some pens, two blue squishy balls, playing cards, a clock/calculator, among other trinkets.

Fred Wersan is a technical writer at MAK Technologies, Cambridge, MA, where he documents applications and APIs, manages the intranet, answers support calls, edits proposals, and squeezes blue squishy balls. Edited by David Levitt.