The Conference for
Software User Assistance Professionals
Produced by:
in association with:
Conference Speakers
 Karin Dahlgren |
 Cecilia Dobner |
 Matthew Ellison |
 Ray Gallon |
 Dave Gash |
 Leah Guren |
 Colum McAndrew |
|
 Ines Milewski |
 Julian Murfitt |
 Sarah O'Keefe |
 Keren Okman |
 Ulrike Parson |
 Ellis Pratt |
 Dr Tony Self |
 Dominic Smith |
Karin Dahlgren (QlikTech)
For more than 10 years, Karin worked at Beijer Electronics where she was in charge of documentation for a range of automation products developed in Sweden, Germany and Taiwan. There she led the migration to a major new XML-based system that published to a range of formats and that made it easy to add new products and brands.
In 2011 Karin joined QlikTech, a fast-growing company in the business discovery area, where she is part of QlikTech R&D, based in Lund, Sweden. At QlikTech, Karin's main authoring tool is MadCap Flare, and large parts of QlikTech's software documentation are included in a single source project.
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Cecilia Dobner (Autodesk)
Cecilia has been working in the localization industry for more than 12 years. She is currently leading the Autodesk Publishing Technologies Process Analysts group, with focus on the collaboration with the User Assistance development teams, aiming to guarantee an optimum customer experience at global levels. In her role Cecilia provides globalization guidance to help design new learning strategies based on tools and processes to ensure that the content source is localization ready, and that the publication technologies are localization enabled.
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Matthew Ellison
Matthew has 25 years of experience as a user assistance professional in the software industry. Much of this time was spent managing a team of writers and trainers at a UK-based consultancy company, before enjoying a period in the US as Director of the WinWriters (now WritersUA) Conference.
Matthew has been a highly rated and respected speaker at conferences and training events throughout the world since 1997, and has covered a diverse range of topics from context-sensitive Help, to the Spice Girls! He now runs UA Europe, an independent UK-based training and consulting company that specialises in user assistance design and technology.
Matthew holds a B.Sc. in Electronic Engineering and a Post-Graduate Certificate of Education from Bristol University in the UK. In 2009 he was the winner of the prestigious Horace Hockley award that is presented annually by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC). In addition to his various consulting assignments for UA Europe, Matthew is currently a visiting lecturer on the MA Technical Communication course at Portsmouth University. He also a certified instructor for Captivate, Flare, Help & Manual, RoboHelp, and WebWorks ePublisher.
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Ray Gallon (Culturecom)
Ray has been working in communications in one form or another for an entire lifetime. He is currently an independent consultant, specializing in the convergence of user guidance and usability. Ray began his communications career as a radio producer and journalist.
As a technical communicator he has worked with companies such as General Electric Medical Systems, Alcatel, and Ilog-IBM. Ray is currently president of the France chapter of the Society for Technical Communications (STC). He is a frequent speaker on technical communications themes, as well as topics related to media and to new technologies. He shares his life between the Languedoc region of France and the city of Barcelona, Spain.
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Dave Gash (HyperTrain dot Com)
Dave Gash is the owner of HyperTrain dot Com, a Southern California firm specialising in training and consulting for hypertext developers. A veteran software professional with over thirty years of development, documentation, and training experience, Dave holds degrees in Business and Computer Science, and is well known in the technical publications community as an interesting and engaging technical instructor. Dave is a popular speaker at User Assistance seminars and conferences in the US and around the world.
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Leah Guren (Cow TC)
Leah Guren is the owner/operator of Cow TC. She has been active in the field of technical communication since 1980 as a writer, manager, Help author, and consultant. She now devotes her time to consulting and teaching courses and seminars in technical communication, primarily in Israel and Europe. Her clients include some of the top hi-tech companies internationally, including Intel, IBM, and Microsoft. Her usability work focuses heavily on cultural and linguistic issues, including her research on BDBL (bidirectional bilingual) web site content. Leah is an internationally-recognized speaker in the field of technical communication and is currently serving on the board of directors of STC (Society for Technical Communication).
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Colum McAndrew (IDBS)
Colum is a Senior Technical Writer for IDBS based in Guildford, UK. A user of Adobe RoboHelp since 1999, he can frequently be found on that product’s support forums offering advice to other users. He also writes the RoboColum(n) technical authoring blog which focuses largely on RoboHelp, RoboHelp Server and other Adobe Technical Communications Suite products. Twitter: @robocolumn.
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Ines Milewski
Ines joined SAP in 2005 with a strong background in programming and computer science. Since then, she has been actively supporting writers in adopting and adapting new tools to help produce better user assistance materials for the company's products. In addition, Ines has helped the company's writers across the globe improve internal knowledge-sharing processes by leveraging the power of wikis, forums, and other community tools. She is currently heading SAP's Mobile Knowledge Management workgroup, which offers SAP-wide guidance and support on authoring processes related to mobile apps.
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Julian Murfitt (Mekon)
Julian is Managing Director and co-founder of leading specialist content systems consultancy Mekon Ltd. Originally trained as a mechanical engineer, he worked as a Solutions Architect during the 1980s. Many of his clients were early adopters of Desktop Publishing at the leading edge of marketing material production.
In 1990 Julian formed Mekon to capitalise on the growing demand for technical document solutions. He led the development of the first structured (XML) standard for AIPs (Aeronautical Information Publications) used in civil aviation authorities coupled with several large Civil Aviation documentation projects. Julian takes an active roll in the S1000D community, and until recently sat on the council of the ISTC (Institute for Scientific and Technical Communicators). At Mekon, Julian focuses on strategic management and can be found presenting at conferences on content management and XML publishing.
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Sarah O'Keefe (Scriptorium)
Sarah O’Keefe, President, is the chocoholic founder of Scriptorium Publishing. The company is based in Durham, North Carolina, USA. As a speaker, Sarah strives to balance entertainment and information.
Scriptorium specializes in streamlining publishing processes for clients in telecommunications, defence, technology, and other content-rich industries. Typical projects are content strategy for technical communication, XML implementation, and build automation for publishing systems.
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Keren Okman (SAP)
Based in Israel, Keren has 16 years of experience as a user assistance professional. She has worked on CRM, Billing, and SCM products, writing and editing technical and end-user documentation as well as producing training and marketing materials. She took her first steps in the world of UA for mobile devices when she joined SAP Labs Israel in 2001, working with WAP 2.0 technologies and such handheld devices as the HP iPAQ. Keren is currently leading the company’s Mobile UA Guidelines Project and designing the UA for a number of the company’s innovative business apps.
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Ulrike Parson
Ulrike is the owner of parson communication, a documentation service provider specialized in software and process documentation. She looks back on more than 15 years of professional experience in technical writing.
The clients of parson communication include international and regional companies from various branches, such as software development, logistics, education, or healthcare. They profit from the extensive know-how of parson communication in structured authoring, implementing XML-based documentation solutions, agile project management, and training.
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Ellis Pratt (Cherryleaf)
Ellis is Sales and Marketing Director at Cherryleaf, a technical writing training, recruitment and consultancy company. He has over fifteen years experience working in the field of documentation, having worked for TMS, Digitext and Cherryleaf. His regular articles on technical communication have resulted him in being ranked by MindTouch as the most the influential blogger on technical communication in Europe. Ellis is a regular speaker at conferences, and he brings humour, real life stories and practical applications to his keynote talks and seminars. He is the author of Tech Writing 2.0 — The application of Web 2.0 technologies to technical documentation, So you want to become a technical author, and Network to Get Work. Ellis has a BA in Business Studies and is an Associate of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
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Dr Tony Self (HyperWrite)
Based in Melbourne, Australia, Dr Tony Self has over 30 years of experience as a technical communicator. For over 20 years, Tony has worked in the areas of online help systems, computer-based training, and electronic documents. In 1993, he founded HyperWrite, a company providing training and consultancy in structured authoring, Help systems, DITA, and technology strategy. Tony completed his PhD in semantic mark-up languages in 2011, and his book The DITA Style Guide was published in the same year. He is a member of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee (and chair of the DITA Help Subcommittee), and is an adjunct teaching fellow at Swinburne University. Tony won the ISTC Horace Hockley award in 2011. A fhios ag Antaine cúpla focal na Gaeilge.
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Dominic Smith (Red Gate Software)
Dominic is a Technical Author who found himself turned into a Project Manager in Red Gate’s .NET Developer Tools division, which develops productivity tools for other software developers. His main interest is working with User Experience professionals to provide requisite knowledge within products, before users realise they need it.
Dominic has a PhD in Hispanic Studies and an MPhil in Corpus Linguistics, both from the University of Birmingham. He tweets about a wide range of topics as @dnas2, and feels distinctly uncomfortable writing about himself in the third-person.
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