"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Albert Einstein
2009-02-13 11:17:38 TCPIP Krakow - 1st Community Meeting Minutes
This time, content developers from Motorola, information developers from IBM, graduates and students of English at the Jagiellonian University and a teacher of Technical Writing course at Tischner European University met on premises of IBM Software Lab.
On 11 February 2009, Technical Communication Professionals in Poland gathered in Krakow for the first time to discuss various aspects of their work and collect feedback from colleagues working in other companies, students interested in the profession and university teachers.
To the sounds of apple pie and pizza bites, Krzysiek B±k, a team lead at Motorola, welcomed everyone and provided the crowd of approximately 23 people with the exciting history of TCPIP Krakow. If we are to believe Krzysiek's memory, it all started in 2005 when he ''began his tech writing adventure.'' In February 2007, TCPIP organization was registered in the city town hall. The next historic date for him was the meeting with Edi, a writer from IBM. It was the time when the group decided to hold regular meetings devoted to technical communication. After only 1 year and 3 months, the first gathering took actual place. At the moment, TCPIP comprises about 40 registered members, plus a number of additional people helping and supporting the organization. It is not only involved in spreading the knowledge about technical writing, but also gets in touch with companies and HR agencies or takes part in related conferences. As far as plans for the future are concerned, TCPIP wants to promote the profession on the Polish market, unite professionals involved in technical writing in Poland and organize regular meetings of the community (get-to-know parties, lectures sharing experience and ideas).
Next, Erin Heximer, an ID team manager at IBM, introduced herself and talked briefly about her 15-years' experience as a technical writer and a manager. She also gave an account of numerous conferences she had taken part in, and draw the participants' attention to the TransAlpine Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.
Then, the floor was given to Kasia Kostorz, a technical writer at IBM, who gave a presentation about the every-day work of a writer. She started with an explanation of what is actually produced by technical writers - online help, context sensitive help, .pdf's, multimedia help (viewlets), and later described two work processes present at IBM, namely agile and waterfall. She also commented on the test work that some writers are involved in and her favorite part of the job - designing the UI's. The presentation was very thought-provoking, and lead to an interesting discussion.
The end of the meeting was reserved for questions. Everyone wanted to learn what their colleagues do, what programs they use or how they test the documentation. The Technical Writing teacher, Magdalena Buchta, described what her classes look like and why she decided to lead such a course. She was also interested in internship possibilities for her students. After nearly two hours, the group decided to meet regularly and suggested topics they would be keen on discussing next time, like: DITA, documentation testing, XML and information architecture, agile process, converting documents, multimedia, writing processes, metrics, documenting hardware, phones, building team's morale, style guides, and conferences for technical writers. Ela, an IBM team member, suggested going for beer more often! All in all, it was a pleasurable and professional meeting - we all hope to see you next time!
Source: Asia Kusiak
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