I had the pleasure of attending Techshoret yesterday, the third annual conference of technical writers in Israel. The conference was held at the Jerusalem Conference Center in West Jerusalem. The four sessions I attended were all worthwhile and I had good conversation with a number of folks. I arrived about 8:40 a.m. at Binyanei HaUma, (Jerusalem Conference Center). I felt that I was in a different country than the one I live and work in—I was! Nearly all of the technical writers at the conference wore North American accents—there was a smattering of South African, Australian, and British English for good measure. I was a little apprehensive about attending the conference because my perception that some of the technical writers are Israeli settlers living on Palestinian land.
Paula Stern (WritePoint Ltd) got us started. Paula is a high-energy person who had answered my e-mail enquiry about STC Israel and then put me on to Techshoret, which was happening just a few days later (February 26). She introduced the nine (9) industry sponsors of the conference, some of whom made their own short presentations.
The first session I attended was Miriam Lottner’s (Tech Tav) Where, What, and How: The Future of Technical Documentation. We were 54 attendees in the room. Mariam made the claim that tech writers are producing products very similar to those we produced a decade ago. Not only that, but our salaries are at about the same level as well. She had one main point: Technical writers must be prepared to think outside the box and be as creative as possible in these difficult economic times. “Re-thinking re-tooling, and re-focusing”, is what we should be doing, she said. She said we should focus on content and better ROI (return on investment).
Quite a lot of discussion occurred in her session about various innovations that people in the audience had tried like a help system based on video clips that users send in and were then linked to from the company site. One idea that came up in the discussion was to use wikis instead of APIs. She concluded by saying that there is always a place in our profession for good content, that we should try to innovate at work, and that each of us should go back to work, make an appointment with our manager for a two weeks hence, and at that appointment propose an innovation at the company.
The second session I attended was Ben Goldfarb’s (WritePoint Ltd.) session with about 25 attendees, on Mindmapping and Technical Writing. Ben is a proponent of mind-mapping, a brainstorming, planning tool pioneered by Tony Buzan. Essentially mind-mappers, instead of taking written notes organized linearly, use visual representations of concepts in a radial network to take notes or plan documents or projects. The audience had a hard time at first trying to visualize brainstorming, but seemed to come around to its utility later. I and a few others came to Ben’s defense saying that mind-mapping, while not the perfect brainstorming/planning tool for everyone, is a good tool for some situations.
During the breaks I met several people who had heard my questions in previous sessions. In this way I met Aryeh Eisenberg of WebYeshiva, Eli Jacob of JBS, and a woman named Adina (sp?) who discussed the age-old question, should we teach tools or writing? I had lunch with Rich Teplitz and Andy Lewis (I think that’s him!) who discussed DITA and uses for Framemaker over lunch. After lunch I had a looked at the resume table where there were about 12 resumes of folks looking for work.
The third session (with 22 attendees), after our lunch break, was by Katriel Reichman (Kodak, Tel Aviv) Content without Borders: Working with a Global Documentation Team. Reichman made a very well-prepared presentation on the idea that cooperation across time zones and cultures can lead to difficulties in a tech pubs team, but that these difficulties can be overcome. He made the interesting observation that once the two teams, one in Vancouver, Canada and the other in Tel Aviv, had met for a F2F meeting during which they really got to know each other, they were able to function better online.
The final session (40 attendees) was put on by Jacob Richman (Maaleh Adumim), and titled Social Media Marketing: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and More. He told us that he had made aliyah (Zionist concept of Jews returning “home” to Israel from their native countries) from New York City (Brooklyn) 24 years ago, and he had the accent to prove it. His main point was that new media tools can be utilized for not only social networking, as many of us do, but also for business. He is clearly the kind of guy that is up all hours of the night publishing his blogs and trying out new tools. His presentation consisted of a series of examples of ways that new media can be adapted to making money or advertising various types of products.
Observations on Techshoret: The conference was very much on the STC conference model. ATTW (Association of Teachers of Technical Writing) is much more an academic conference whereas STC and Techshoret Israel are much more industry focused. Reichman’s presentation was the most academic-like presentation of the four I attended. What do I mean? By that I mean he made a more sophisticated analysis of his topic that the others. This does not mean that the other three were less useful, just that they were more industry focused. When I asked about the status of STC Israel, which I was told is the largest chapter outside the U.S., I was told that the fees had become too expensive for technical writers in Israel. Paula Stern, one of the main Techshoret organizers, was at one time a mainstay of STC Israel but clearly now devotes her time to her company WritePoint, Ltd. and Techshoret, an alternative to STC Israel. All in all, Techshoret was nine hours well spent.
