Hyperviews Online

Of course, wouldn’t you know project managers at work managed to finagle the projects I was working on to all hit a major milestone this week, even though they’ve known for months I was headed out this Friday. Sigh.

Thanks to everyone who has volunteered to help out at the Welcome Reception and the Online SIG meeting. All I need now are 4 table hosts at the SIG Networking Luncheon on Tuesday.

Table host duties are light: start introductions and keep the talk flowing. In the past, table hosts have gotten into the room a few minutes early, so they can find their table and get settled. Then you just introduce yourself to table attendees, and facilitate introductions between table members as they arrive. Basic networking skills are all that is needed. :)

If you are attending the SIG networking luncheon, don’t forget to bring your business cards and a pen. It always helps to write down on the business cards you receive exactly where you met the person whose card you have in a pile at the bottom of your conference bag. So, for the SIG luncheon, I just write “at Online SIG table on Tuesday” so that I have an idea of the context of the meeting.

Don’t forget to stop by the Welcome Reception table in Hall C of the Minneapolis Convention Center and meet other Online SIG members. If you see someone taking pictures of the SIG table, it’s probably me!

Only one week until I leave for the STC conference in Minneapolis, MN. As Ann mentioned in the last post, I am the Online SIG conference activities coordinator. In addition to coordinating the activities, I’ve been asked to blog about my conference activities. This is something I did last year, but it was only posted on the STC Forum. You can look forward to observations and photos, as I wander around the conference and my many activities with my camera.

Some of the places you’ll find me (and the Online SIG) at the conference:

Sunday, May 13:

• Leadership Day, 7:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.
• Welcome Reception, 7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Monday, May 14:

• SIG Managers’ Meeting, 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. (as a SIG representative for John Wilcox, current Online SIG Interim Manager)

Tuesday, May 15:

• Networking Luncheon, Online SIG tables, 12:15 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Wednesday, May 16:

• Online SIG Meeting, 7:00 a.m. - 8:15 a.m.
• Online SIG Progression, “Topics in Online Tools and Technologies,” 8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

I still need volunteers who will be attending the conference!

Here are some volunteer opportunities:

• Take a 30 minute shift at the Welcome Reception table
• Be a table host at one of the 5 Online SIG tables at the Networking Luncheon (need 4 table hosts who are already attending the luncheon)
• Someone to be “secretary” at the Online SIG meeting on Wed morning

If you have any interest in volunteering to help me out as a volunteer, please email me at rachelh @ rhoughton.com.

Rachel Houghton 

Welcome to our 87 new and returning members who joined in March, 2007. We hope our non-renewing members will stay with STC and wish our departing members well in their affiliation with other STC SIGs. 

As of March 31, 2007 the Online SIG has 1316 members and STC has 12,768 members.

Congratulations to Destry Wion and Rachel Houghton, recipients of the Distinguished SIG Service Award from the STC Board for the Online SIG this year. Destry is honored for his work on the STC Forum (http://stcforum.org) and the STC Wiki (http://stc-on.org) and Rachel for ongoing support of the Online SIG including organzing the Online SIG events at the annual conference this year.

If you’re responsible for building an online community in a company or organization, you may find Online Community Report a useful resource: http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/ as well as this page by Amy Jo Kim: http://www.naima.com/community/

Additional resources include Nancy White’s site: http://www.fullcirc.com and Howard Rheingold’s Cooperation Commons: http://www.cooperationcommons.org/

There is also an email list: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/onlinefacilitation/

Flock (http://flock.com) is a social browser, built on Firefox with all of the Firefox extensions. A bookmark in Flock is instantly mirrored on Del.icio.us. Photos and blogs dragged to Flock are uploaded to Flickr or Photo Bucket. It’s not necessary to log into a blog such as WordPress or Moveable Type to blog text that is selected from a web page; Flock does the blogging.

As of February 28, the Online SIG had 1867 members and STC had 16,802 members.

During the renewal cycle, 99 members made other selections in December, as did 165 in January and 97 in February. We wish our departing members well.

Welcome to our 60 new members who joined in December, and to the 82 who joined in January and the 97 who joined in February.

Online SIG member Marian Grace Stone of the Phoenix chapter was elected a Fellow of STC by the Board in Feburary. Online SIG members Beth Najberg (Chicago chapter) and Frank Tagader (Aloha and Rocky Mountain chapters) were elected Associate Fellows. Congratulations Marian, Beth, and Frank!

There are two discussion lists useful to members with an interest in indexing.

INDEX-L is a mailing list created to promote good indexing practices.  For information on how to subscribe visit http://indexpup.com/index-list/faq.html.

Indexers’ Discussion List is open to all who are interested in indexing regardless of skill level. Subscribe through Yahoo Groups at indexersdiscussionlist-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. 

On January 5, CM Professionals announced that Scott Abel will become its new Executive Director, starting February 9, 2007. Scott Abel is Content Management Lead in the STC Online SIG. (more…)

On December 1, the Online SIG was asked for help recruiting participants for a survey. The request cam from the Product Planner for the UA team at Microsoft that produces the Windows Help System and platform.

Microsoft was looking for help in planning the next generation of tools for user assistance, and seeking feedback about what’s needed in next-generation of Help and user assistance platforms, both online and client-based.

The Online SIG announced Microsoft’s survey on the SIG email list and the SIG announcement list, and encouraged a member at Microsoft to post the link on the STC Forum. (more…)

IEEEPCS conference. Seattle, Washington. October 1-3 2007. Call for papers deadline January 24, 2007. http://www.ieeepcs.org/ipcc2007/cfp.htm

IEEEPCS conference. Seattle, Washington. October 1-3 2007. Call for papers deadline January 24, 2007. http://www.ieeepcs.org/ipcc2007/cfp.htm

Part of the charter of the Online SIG is using content management to organize and present STC information. Hyperviews Online is published using an open source content management system, WordPress. We have published and linked to articles on content management, and we continually gather resources on the subject. Web resources are listed here, including web sites and web glossaries, magazines, and resource lists. (more…)

We have renewed 342 more members than last year at this time, and we are at 12% of members renewed, whereas last year at this time we were at 10%. We have 48 more members than at this time last year. We also have four Corporate Value Program (CVP) members now.

Our next email renewal notice is scheduled to go out on January 9, and the next postal mail notice goes out on January 29.

The Corporate Value Program (CVP) offers a variety of options, tailored to meet organizations’ technical communication needs. Companies can choose between memberships for all the staff or just a few.

The benefits include: E-memberships for company employees; transferable membership, if employees leave the company; special CVP rates on select STC goods and services (not available to employees directly); special CVP rates on training and education offerings; eligibility to introduce the organization’s products/services/events to STC members; recognition on STC’s CVP web page and on STC’s homepage – and more. More information on the Corporate Value Program is available on STC’s website.

These tools are said to be able to represent, graphically, the nesting of levels of elements and sub-elements within a DTD file:

TIBCO’s TurboXML shows the structure tree and can ceate example XML files

XML Spy, but you may have to turn the DTD into a schema first.

LiveDTD provides easy navigation among the various DTD components via hyperlink. but not visualization

The founder of Wikipedia has launched a service offering free tools for community websites, it was reported in the BBC news December 12, 2006.