MiniConference schedule, presentations and presenters

STC IDL SIG & WDCB Fall Frightfest MiniConference: What scares you and how you faced it down

Come and talk about what scares you and how you faced it down.

When? October 21, 2023

10:30 am – 16:00 ET
09:30 am – 15:00 CT
08:30 am – 14:00 MT
07:30 am – 13:00 PT

Where? Zoom (of course)

Registration prices:

Free to Students, academics, retirees, volunteers and presenters (to volunteer, email programs@stcidlsig.org)
STC IDL SIG Members $5.00
STC Members $20.00
NonMembers $40.00

The all-day virtual MiniConference provides a variety of educational sessions related to technical communication, instructional design, and learning.

We are excited to announce that our keynote speaker will be Phylise Banner, a recognized superhero and pioneer in the LX design space. Read more about Banner on her website and share in our excitement.

Our day will be both educational and fun. Grab your Zoom-friendly Halloween costume, play a few warmup games, and maybe even win a prize. See the schedule and read more about the presentations and presenters below.

Schedule of Eerie educational sessions with nightmarish networking breaks

All times Eastern

10:30 am – Grisly games and intimidating intros with Villainous Viqui Dill
11:00 am – Killer Keynote with Phrightful Phylise Banner
11:45 am – “Caldron Bubble: Incorporating Cookbook Design Elements into Technical Documentation” with Jittery Jamye Sagan
12:30 pm – Buzzworthy BioBreak #1
12:45 pm – “Somebody’s Watching Me: Make Presenting on Zoom Not-So-Scary” with Rogue Rachel Eichen
1:30 pm – “Are your presentations frightfully ineffective? Let’s do better.” with Terrifying Traci Nathans-Kelly, Ph.D
2:15 pm – Bewildering Break #2
2:30 pm – “We Need New Blood: Creating Video Content” with Murderous Maralee Sautter
3:15 pm – “Supercharge your Documentation through Storytelling Superpowers” with Alex Hale
4:00 pm – Beastly BioBreak #3 to get in costume
4:20 pm – Wicked Wrapup and Chilling costume prizes: Villainous Viqui Dill
5:00 pm – Go home happy!

Presentations and presenters

Killer Keynote with Phrightful Phylise Banner

Caldron Bubble: Incorporating Cookbook Design Elements into Technical Documentation with Jittery Jamye Sagan

Cookbooks not only contain a treasure trove of not only delicious recipes and anecdotes, but also serve as prime examples of solid technical communication. After all, recipes use words and images to help explain how to prepare a specific dish.

In this presentation, we will examine several examples of effective recipe design elements from various cookbook recipes. These examples will focus on the following elements of cookbook recipes:

Overall layout, including columns and use of space
Images, including photographs and drawings
Text, including font styles and the wording itself.

As we examine each design element, we will also learn how they help make instructions – the recipe –easy to understand. We will then show how to apply them in our own technical communication deliverables, including job aids and quick reference guides.

Thus, cleanly-formatted and well-worded recipes from cookbooks can serve as the recipe for success in creating clear and concise technical communication.

About the Speaker

As the Pharmacy Communication Advisor for H-E-B, Jamye helps design training programs and materials for various projects and initiatives within the pharmacy department. She also manages communications between the corporate office and the store pharmacies.

An Associate Fellow of STC, Jamye serves as the current President of the South Central Texas chapter. She also volunteers with the Instructional Design and Learning SIG as its Treasurer and Survey Manager and belongs to various SIGs. Jamye has also volunteered at the Society level in various roles, including the Community Affairs Committee, the Community Achievement Award and Pacesetter Award committees, and the Associate Fellow committee. Over the past several years, she has reviewed several publications for the Technical Communication journal.

When not making “sense out of the seemingly senseless” in the tech comm world, Jamye enjoys transforming yarn into pretty and useful objects. She lives in San Antonio, TX.

Somebody’s Watching Me: Make Presenting on Zoom Not-So-Scary with Rogue Rachel Eichen

Rachel Eichen has a varied career history across multiple fields of communication, technology, and training. She has over 10 years of in-person and remote teaching experience in a variety of industries including: casinos, financial institutions, restaurants, hospitals, libraries. She even taught computer classes on a cruise ship! She has experience training all sorts of software applications including Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, and web applications such as Google Apps and Facebook. In a former life, she was a technical writer where she learned about the software lifecycle and documented instructions. She also has a variety of technical skills, including a mix of programming, networking, and web-design. Rachel holds a Master’s degree in Library & Information Science and a bachelor’s degree in Technical Writing.

Are your presentations frightfully ineffective? Let’s do better with Terrifying Traci Nathans-Kelly, Ph.D.

Currently serving as the Robert N. Noyce Director of the Engineering Communication Program in the College of Engineering, Cornell University. Nathans-Kelly has a special interest in social justice and techquity issues, along with online teaching modalities. She interacts daily to help engineers and pre-professional engineers to hone their technical messaging, whether it be via presentations, on paper, in meetings and teams, or online channels. Read more and connect with her on LinkedIn.

We need new blood: Creating video content with Murderous Maralee Sautter

IDL’s own co-manager will talk us through her latest challenge: making a recruiting video for volunteers. Sautter has been a technical writer and instructional designer in the industries of high-tech/software, health, science, transportation, education, and government (Intel, Xerox, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Cambia, Regency/Blue Cross, City of Vancouver (WA), and more). Her favorite title is educator since she was an adjunct instructor at Portland State University for over 12 years. Currently, she is the manager of the Instructional Design & Learning SIG. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Supercharge your Documentation through Storytelling Superpowers with Alarming Alex Hales

Alex Michael Hales will take us on a wild ride, using Marvel and DC characters (and their powers) as metaphors for different writing techniques and tools practitioners can use day to day. Hales is a Technical Writer based in Mesa, Arizona. He loves researching, brainstorming, conceptualizing, and drafting content.

Find out more and connect with Hales on his website.

Horrifying Hosting by Villainous Viqui Dill

Viqui Dill is an STC Associate Fellow who loves connecting people to communities and giving everyone a voice. Dill loves a good story. She can’t remember a time when she did not want to grab a guitar and start a sing along. As worship arts pastor for the exchange church in Winchester, VA, she gets to live the dream every other week. The Dills have a family band, the Dill Pickers, and Dill sometimes plays in a mostly girl band of mammas, Hot Flash. She describes herself as “Technical writer, wife and mom, bass player, worship leader, I’m happiest when folks sing along with me.” Connect on LinkedIn or just google her unusually spelled name to connect.

March 31, 2021April 28, 2021

Getting the Most from my IDL SIG Student Membership

By Anita Matechuk

I made the scary decision to volunteer for the IDL SIG last fall. Because I was only half-way through my schooling in technical communication, I didn’t feel qualified to volunteer. I was unsure what most of the roles did and did not have the skills to help with the rest. The email offering to volunteer was sent with one goal: learn one new skill before they realized I was not a qualified volunteer.

My first IDL SIG meeting was not as terrifying as expected. I did not understand the majority of the topics, but the friendly nature of the meeting was encouraging. The impact of meeting professional technical communicators was surprising. Working in this field requires constant learning and even though I had the most to learn, it was less daunting to know I was learning with others.

I joined my second management meeting expecting to be told my invitation was a mistake. Once I got over my shyness, they not only tolerated my student input; they valued it. After the meeting was over, I read the entire website and signed up on social media.

A notice for a free webinar showed up on Facebook, so I signed up even though I knew nothing about the topic. Since then, I have attended every free webinar that fit into my schedule. I learned a lot during some webinars while others were above my comprehension level. Each webinar expanded my technical communication vocabulary.

I looked forward to my third management meeting, but felt a little guilty because I hadn’t contributed any value. That was solved when I happily agreed to join the student outreach planning meeting when it was offered.

The student outreach planning meeting uncovered another benefit of volunteering: The more I volunteered, the more people offered mentoring. Mentors don’t force you to take on a task you aren’t comfortable doing. They encourage you to try new tasks while supporting you in your learning.

I still find some aspects of volunteering scary. Okay, I admit writing my first article is terrifying and I have no idea how to create a webinar. These are both opportunities I volunteered for, and I am excited to learn.

I plan to try everything I can as a student. This includes continuing to volunteer and signing up for webinars. I registered to become an STC mentee. My one last goal for myself is to enter the IDL SIG student article writing competition. I am not planning on writing articles for a career, but this is a great learning opportunity.

March 31, 2021May 4, 2021

Student Volunteers: Do you have FONBQ?

By Melissa Ruryk

Forget FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)… if you’re a student, or a new member of the IDL SIG, you might have Fear Of Not Being Qualified. Not being qualified to volunteer, that is.

Hey, don’t worry about it! The SIG leadership wants to see more students and members stepping up and learning about the SIG and making our SIG the best community in STC. We understand you might not want to throw yourself into a body of water that might be way over your head. So here’s the perfect way to dip your toe in the volunteer pool… before diving in:

Short term tasks available now

What do you want to learn about? How about thinking of 3 new webinar topics and sourcing presenters for us?
Which podcast or article did you find fascinating last month? Will you track down the podcaster/author and ask if we can reprint the item?
Setting up an Instagram account for the SIG that’s aligned with our Facebook page.
Gather attendance records from SIG events (mostly webinars) during the year, for reporting on the Community Achievement Award (CAA) application.
Are you growing fonder of the spoken word rather than all this reading? Can you make short informational videos on the IDL website about how to join, what the IDL does, job roles? Or any other ideas?
Capture social media activities (even easier, initiate them) to report on the CAA application.
Monitor our Slack channel (#instructional-design) and bring interesting discussions to the manager for review and action if needed.
Help the Membership manager with emailing welcome letters to new members.
Are you a student? Buddy up with another new student member.
Edit an article that’s been submitted to our award-winning IDeaL newsletter for publication.
Submit your own article to IDeaL.
Help on the team that is planning a virtual members’ event at the upcoming Summit in June 2021.
Been a member for a while? Tell us what you get out of belonging in a short video or newsletter article.

New information will be added to the SIG website soon, detailing additional short-term, one-off tasks for which you can volunteer. These tasks won’t take more than 2 hours (including any training you’d need), and you can sign up for one task or more, as you like. We are especially looking for people who are comfortable with any of the various social media accounts the SIG uses. Your volunteer “task” might be to tweet about an upcoming webinar, or announce our newsletter has just been published.

See? Not hard, not onerous.

October 21, 2019October 21, 2019

Seventh Annual Virtual Open House

In November, the IDL SIG will host our seventh annual Virtual Open House.

As a virtual community with members spread out around the world, it can be challenging for us to cultivate a sense of community. The Virtual Open House enables current (and future) IDL SIG members to learn more about our community and the services we offer by attending the live event, or by viewing archived events via the student database. In addition, attendees get to meet members of the SIG leadership team and chat with fellow members.

Even if you cannot attend live, you can still join the party once we release the recording.

March 26, 2019April 3, 2019

IDL SIG 2018 Membership Survey: Responses

By: Jamye Sagen

In December 2018, the IDL SIG conducted our biennial membership demographic survey. Approximately 10.75% of our membership base completed the IDL SIG 2018 membership demographic survey – 60 out of 558 members. See Membership Survey for complete results.

About the members

Years of experience in instructional design

More than half of our survey respondents have been in the instructional design field for 10 or fewer years. In fact, 20% have zero years’ experience, but are currently learning about the field.

Level of education

Over 78% of our survey respondents have bachelor’s or master’s degrees, while over 16% have earned doctorates.

Employment status

According to the survey, over half of our members are permanent, full-time employees.

Job responsibilities

More than half of our survey respondents indicated instructional design as their job responsibility, while over 90% indicated technical writing. Our surveyed members assume a variety of job responsibilities, from project management to course development.

Other jobs listed were:

Librarian
Editing, desktop publishing, file management
Online Development and I work closely with Instructional Designers and Trainers
Clerk
Editing, user support
Scrum Master, Finance Coordinator
Management
Still in school
Capacity Development
Quality assurance

Company/client sectors served

As shown, our members work in a wide variety of industries.

Other sectors listed were:

Machinery
Aerospace science and engineering
Parking management software and hardware
My employer is a manufacturing company, but I’m in the IT department and we write about IT systems.
Oil and gas exploration and production
Pharmaceuticals

ID deliverables produced

Our members produce the following types of deliverables.

Other deliverables listed were:

Manuals used for training
One-on-one coaching; training of other coaches; template design
Documentation

Tools used

Almost 95% of those surveyed know and use PowerPoint in their work. Other popular tools include Camtasia, Captivate, Prezi, Articulate Storyline, Microsoft Word, and Madcap Flare.

Other tools listed were:

Author-it
OneNote, SharePoint
Confluence
Madcap Flare
Flare
Madcap Flare, Bluestream CCMS and KB
Word
Adobe RoboHelp
Madcap Flare
Adobe InDesign and FrameMaker
Madcap Flare
Adobe Creative Suite
Moodle, MS Word, Photoshop
oXygen
InDesign
SnagIt, Word, FSPro
SharePoint, Office 362

Influence of specific theories in instructional design

We asked respondents to rank how certain theories influence their work in developing ID curriculum and deliverables. Three out of 60 respondents did not answer. Results are shown for those who did.

STC membership level

Almost half of our surveyed members are regular or Gold members. In fact, 20% of those surveyed are Gold members, who enjoy membership in all SIGs as part of their benefits.

STC membership designation

Over 65% of our surveyed members are Members or Senior Members of STC, while 20% are Associate Fellows or Fellows. The other members surveyed were unsure of their membership designation.

About the IDL SIG and other organizations

Reasons for joining the IDL SIG

Although our surveyed members have a variety of reasons for joining the IDL SIG, the most popular reasons include learning about ID methodology and best practices, and about the profession in general. Given that many of our members are at the beginning of their ID careers, these results make perfect sense.

Participation in other instructional design/training organizations

Since over 80% of our survey respondents belong only to STC and the IDL SIG, we have a prime opportunity to make sure we offer as many resources as possible.
Of those members who belong to other groups, the most popular responses include ATD (Association for Talent Development) and eLearning Guild.

Other organizations listed included:

Music Library Association
Music OCLC Users Group
Online Audiovisual Catalogers
International Association of Music Libraries and Documentation Centres
American Library Association
Association for Library Collections and Technical Services
Association of College and Research Libraries
Houston UXPA, Community College
Was in ATD for years, dropped membership a few years ago
New England Lectora User’s Group
Academy of HRD
SHRM L&D SIG
Project Management Institute

Value: IDL SIG vs. other professional organizations

Of those who belong to another professional training organization such as ASTD, 36.3% of those respondents thought our SIG provides equal value. The same percentage thought we provided less value. Again, we have an opportunity to make sure we provide value to our members.

How other organizations provide value

Responses to this question helps us learn what other organizations do, and what we can do to provide value to our members. Many respondents commented on how other organizations provide networking opportunities – a prime area of opportunity for our group.

As a virtual community, the only time our SIG currently offers official in-person networking events is during the annual STC Summit. With that said, we highly encourage local IDL SIG members to meet up informally – whether passing through during travels or meeting up during an STC chapter meeting.

Value in IDL SIG services and communication channels

Most of our members consider our services to be valuable, especially our webinars, emails, and newsletter.
Although we offer a wealth of valuable services, many of our members are not aware of them, especially our mentoring services, student outreach article competition, and training material evaluation program. Therefore, we can do a better job of using our communication and social media outlets to spread the word.

Desired services

This question gives us ideas on future services we can provide to our SIG members. Suggestions include:

Orientation video about our services
Instructional template library
In-person local events

In addition to these suggestions, a few respondents indicated they were unaware of some of the services we provide.

Ranking of communication channels

By far, email is our most valuable form of communication, with 83.3% of respondents ranking it most effective. Website posts and Linked-In articles are somewhat valuable as well. Facebook and Twitter were ranked the least effective.
Since our members depend heavily on email for our communications, we need to make sure our email systems work.

Free IDL SIG webinars and viewing behavior

Since we made all IDL SIG webinars free for all IDL SIG members, 44% of our members register for and view more webinars as a result. Fifty-six percent indicated no change in behavior. Since no members indicated attending fewer webinars, we can conclude that providing free webinars for our members is a sound investment.

2018 STC Summit

Attend Summit?

Of those surveyed, only 19 (or 35.19%) attended the 2018 STC Summit in Orlando, FL.

SIG Summit functions

Of those surveyed, over half attended the Communities Reception, where Summit attendees got to meet with members of participating SIGs. Thirty-six percent of those surveyed attended our annual business meeting; this past year, we decided to host a luncheon to attract more members. Interestingly enough, 31% of surveyed Summit attendees did not know about these Summit events. We should do a more thorough job of spreading the word about these events, to take advantage of the face-to-face time.

How members learned about SIG Summit functions

According to the survey, the three most effective communication channels for SIG Summit functions are:

Summit program (printed or electronic)
Email (sent by the IDL SIG)
Summit app

Although other channels of communication may not have been as effective, people still learned about the events from them.

According to the survey, no one learned of SIG events via the IDL SIG bookmark. Since we generally don’t give out the bookmarks until the Communities Reception, we may want to re-evaluate what information we place on the bookmark.

Enough instructional design/training presentations at Summit?

Of those surveyed, almost half of respondents were not quite sure if there were enough ID and training presentations offered at Summit. Thirty-seven percent did feel we had enough instructional design or training topics.

Again, we appreciate those who took the time to provide feedback for our membership survey. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, please email manager@stcidlsig.org.

Jamye Sagan currently serves as treasurer for the IDL SIG, and is a senior member of STC. She served as a co-manager of the SIG from 2010-12. At work, she uses her tech comm skills to make sense out of the seemingly senseless. At play, she uses sticks and hooks to transform yarn into pretty objects.