Our Technical Writer, Hope McGowen, attended the Society for Technical Communication Summit 2015 this week in Columbus, Ohio. She drove over from Indianapolis on June 21 and came back June 24 with a new energy and passion for technical communication.
Hope began her first STC Summit experience by participating in a five hour Adobe Technical Communication Suite Certification Workshop. During the workshop, instructors led participants in simplifying authoring with XML/DITA; moving beyond screenshots and enhancing documentation with Captivate videos; working with mobile publishing tools; and delivering more personalized, easily findable content. Adobe professionals shared with attendees their own tips and tricks for mastering the Adobe suite of tools quickly.
During the remainder of the conference, Hope attended sessions focused on writing effective policies and procedures, optimizing the visual presentation of data, analyzing leadership types and what makes them successful, using Adobe FrameMaker, finding great free and open source tools, learning to handle tough situations in a technical communication department, and many other great topics. There was also a great expo hall with vendors, activities, and refreshments for attendees. 
The Summit offered fun social events that Hope attended in the evenings to network with other technical communicators. The Northeast Ohio chapter, hosts of the Summit, organized a group baseball outing to see the Columbus Clippers take on the Norfolk Tides. STC also organized a pub crawl after the game as well as a karaoke event the next night. Hope was able to connect with many wonderful professionals in the field, whom she can now use as resources should she ever need them!
