LavaCon2019
The LavaCon Conference on Content Strategy and TechComm Management Conference on Content Strategy Conference and Advanced TechComm Management
About LavaCon
About Portland
Strategy and UX
Structured Authoring
Mgmt. & Implementation
L10N and Accessibility
Track: Virtual
Virtual Track Registration
Hotel and Menus
Adria Saracino
Adria is the head of content strategy at Distilled, a digital marketing agency with offices in London, Seattle, and NYC. She has worked with brands like Staples and Rasmussen College, and is just as likely to shake up internal workflows as she is to develop data-driven strategies.
She joined Distilled in October 2011 as the head of outreach, where she started a team responsible for the development and distribution of content. In 2013, she left her team of nine to start a content strategy team and formalize her 5-year dedication to content marketing.
Finding Success After Defeat: Lessons from the Front Line
Ahava Leibtag
Ahava is passionate about content and prides herself on tackling the toughest content projects—from healthcare to higher education to hip-hop (seriously). She has more than 15 years of experience in writing, messaging, and marketing, and is a well-recognized content expert. Her first book, The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the Web, was published by Morgan Kaufmann in November 2013.
Ahava is the president and owner of Aha Media Group, LLC, a content strategy and content marketing consultancy founded in October 2005. Prior to beginning Aha Media, she was a communications strategist for a government agency. Ahava has also worked for two major advertising agencies and a commercial production company, and she served as the metro beat reporter forThe Jerusalem Post.
Ahava received her M.A. from Georgetown University and her B.A. from Stern College. She lives in the Washington, DC, metropolitan region.
The Content Charmer's Guide to Audits
Alan Porter
Alan J. Porter is an industry leading Content Strategist specializing in helping companies and organizations recognize and leverage their largest hidden asset, their content. Currently engaged as the Content Marketing Manager for Caterpillar Inc. leading the team to develop and implement an enterprise-wide Content Marketing Strategy for one of the World's Top 100 brands.
He has 20+ years experience in corporate communications, marketing, and content development in both the UK and the USA. Often seen as a catalyst for change with a strong track record in developing new ideas, embracing emerging technologies, and introducing operational improvements. He has also been involved in the development and adoption of various industry standards, and am a regular speaker at industry conferences. He is the author of The Content Pool: Leveraging Your Company's Greatest Hidden Asset from XML Press.
Find him on twitter (@alanjporter or @thecontentpool) or read his blog (thecontentpool.com).
Freefalling Towards a Content Strategy
Alyssa Fox
Alyssa Fox is Director of Information Development and Program Management at NetIQ Corporation in Houston, Texas. She has been involved in technical communication for over 15 years. Her interests and skills include technical communication, user experience, process improvement, project management, and agile development practices. Alyssa is a member of User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA), a senior member of Society for Technical Communication (STC), and is currently serving as the STC Secretary. Find Alyssa on Twitter (@afox98).
Politics Is Not a Dirty Word!
Amber Hunt
Amber is a Detroit-area content strategist, writer, improviser and self-proclaimed karaoke queen. She currently leads enterprise content initiatives for Quicken Loans, the nation's #1 online mortgage lender.
Make Better Friends: How Improv Can Help You Promote Content Strategy at Your Organization
Amber Swope and Joan Lasselle
Amber is an internationally-recognized expert on the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) who specializes in helping teams design and implement unified content development environments for XML content. These environments provide custom, integrated support for authoring, storing, publishing, and localizing content. With over 20 years of experience in the information development field and 10 years of DITA expertise, Amber helps teams develop and optimize their environments to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
In addition to co-authoring the "DITA Maturity Model", Amber has authored numerous papers and articles on information design, development, and architecture and presented at leading industry conferences. Amber holds a Masters in Technical and Professional Writing and a Certificate in Computer Technical Writing from Northeastern University.
Joan has over 25 years of experience designing and developing new product content and training for high tech, healthcare, finance and insurance industries. Since 2000, Lasselle-Ramsay has worked with their clients to help them move to the use of XML/structured content to help streamline the development of content and customize output in multiple forms and formats. She is a past board member of Content Management Professionals (CMPros), and a regular contributor at industry conferences. Joan holds a M.Ed. from the University of Oregon.
Changing the Conversation: Gaining Buy-in for Sharing Content Across Functional Areas
Andrea Ames
Andrea L. Ames, M.S., is a Senior Technical Staff Member and Content Experience Strategist, Architect, and Designer on IBM's corporate information strategy team where she is responsible for driving broad initiatives to improve the total information experience (TIE). Prior to IBM, Andrea was an information strategy, architecture, and usability consultant, helping large and small businesses to engineer their product development processes to design and create information in ways that enhance product usability, increase and accelerate user productivity, increase product adoption and customer loyalty, and support business and marketing goals.
Andrea has 30 years of experience in technical communication. She is a Fellow and past President (2004-2005) of STC, a Distinguished Engineer of the ACM (the first technical communicator to achieve this distinction), a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a member of SWE, ASIS&T, IAI, UPA, and ATTW. Andrea designed, coordinates, and teaches in the UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley certificate program in Technical Writing and Communication for the University of California, Santa Cruz; she has published two award-winning technical books and more than 50 papers and articles; and she speaks regularly at conferences and professional organization meetings around the world. She also co-authors with Alyson Riley the regular column, "The Strategic IA," featured in STC's Intercom magazine. Get all of her social connections, blog links, and more at about.me/andrealames.
Forget "Predict" the Future—Create the Future!
Creating a Content Strategy Ecosystem
Andrea Goulet Ford
Andrea Goulet Ford, the human voice behind some of the world's largest brands, is on a mission to rid the world of corporate babble. Her firm, BrandVox™, helps business leaders document their visions, train their teams to speak in a cohesive voice, and create content systems that scale their brands. Andrea has personally worked with many Fortune 500 and government organizations, including Capital One, Verizon, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nTelos and Virginia Commonwealth University. You can also find Andrea working on her first book, Culture of Content: How to Win in Business Through Prose, People, and Process
Culture of Content: Bridging the Gap Between Content Leadership and Creative Execution
Anthony Piwarun
Anthony manages the content strategy and traffic acquisition team at Zeon Solutions, a web development and online marketing company specializing in e-ommerce web solutions. In this role, Anthony oversees a 16 person team of experience content and search engine marketing professionals delivering results to clients like Johnson Controls, Samsung Security, the American Society for Quality and many more.
In his free time, he works as a contributing author for both Search Engine Journal and Search News Central. He has also written for or been featured on sites like MarketingProfs, Moz, Social Media Explorer, Search and the Bruce Clay Inc. Blog. Follow him on Twitter (@apiwarun) or visit his website (anthonypiwarun.com) for more information.
Aligning the Enterprise for Omnichannel Success: Content Strategy & ASQ
Ben Rubenstein
Ben Rubenstein is currently managing social media and online community efforts for TechTarget, a technology media company in Newton, Massachusetts. Previously, he held content management and marketing roles with Northwestern University, the Chicago Sun-Times and wikiHow. He also works as a freelance writer and consultant (when he's not too busy cooking)
From Comments to Content: Building Real Value from Community Participation
Bernard Aschwanden
Bernard works with clients to generate revenue from documentation. To do so, he helps improve content creation, management and distribution workflows to improve quality and increase productivity. He is the founder of Publishing Smarter, an Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication, and the Vice President of the STC, Bernard has helped hundreds of companies implement successful publishing solutions. Bernard is focused on publishing better, publishing faster and publishing smarter.
10 Tips to Reducing Content Complexity
Beth Thomerson
Beth Thomerson is a senior leader in Innovatia's technical documentation practice. Information design and development has been her passion for over 20 years. She has 10 years of experience with Agile-based writing teams and is a certified Scrum Master. Beth and her teams have worked with clients to create standards and templates, plan and implement task and topic-oriented user information deliverables, manage and deliver quality programs, and continually research information architecture, design, and delivery to support innovation, structured authoring/DITA, single-sourcing, and "just in time" content. A highly-motivated practitioner, Beth is devoted to developing employees' skill sets, enabling and cultivating innovative thinking in content design and implementation, and delivering products that exceed client priorities and objectives.
She attended both North Carolina State University and Mississippi State University, where she earned a Bachelor's degree in Communication. Beth and her husband reside in beautiful southern New Hampshire.
User-Centric Content Models: A Case Study
Bill Swallow
Bill is a Technical Consultant with Scriptorium Publishing Services where he helps clients with content strategy, localization readiness, and technology implementation. He has worn many hats in his 18 years in technical communication, from writer to thought leader. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and resides in upstate New York.
Content Strategy vs. The Undead
Bram Wessel and Gary Carlson
Bram has delivered successful digital experience designs and strategies for high-impact brands such as Amazon, City of Seattle, Crate & Barrel, Disney, Expedia, Group Health, Intel, MasterCard, Microsoft, Nordstrom, Safeco, Sony, Starbucks, Volvo, UW Medicine, and many others.
Bram balances his practice with advocacy for the discipline through frequent authorship of articles on user-centered design and workshop teaching at conferences and schools, including the University of Washington's MCDM and MLIS programs and Seattle's School of Visual Concepts.
Gary helps organizations from small local businesses to Fortune 100 companies boost revenue, customer satisfaction and efficiency via well executed information and knowledge management initiatives. Bringing over 20 years of experience as a taxonomist, consultant, and information strategist to every project, Gary's current focus is helping companies develop their information infrastructure to deliver business success and satisfy customer goals.
Gary has worked extensively on major information and knowledge management projects and products spanning taxonomy tools, search, auto-categorization, SharePoint 2010, content management, governance and overall information infrastructure. He has delivered solutions for some of the world's most recognizable brands, including Disney, Group Health, IBM, Microsoft, Pearson Publishing, REI, Crate & Barrell, and Sears Holdings Corporation.
Gary has lectured and taught classes at the University of Washington, University of Toronto, University of Wisconsin, and University of North Carolina. He is also a frequent speaker at conferences and workshops.
Modeling in the Real World: How to Use UX Techniques to Strategize Content Infrastructures Grounded in Business and User Goals
Brenda Huettner
Brenda is an independent technical communication consultant who has worked for the past 25 as a writer, editor, trainer, and manager, for both software and hardware companies. She's a principal of Microwaves101.com, an online encyclopedia of microwave engineering knowledge. Brenda is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication, and a Senior Member of IEEE, active in the Professional Communication Society, the Engineering Management council, and the Tucson section. She's also a member of the Usability Professionals Association.
In addition to supporting the documentation needs of her clients, Brenda has published several books and articles, and presented half-day, full-day, and multi-day courses on writing, project management, usability, and career management. She also gives emergency preparedness and disaster recovery classes through the Red Cross, and participates in NASA's volunteer Solar System and OSIRIS-ReX Ambassador programs.
The High Cost of "Free"
Brian Trombley and Robert Wheeler
Robert has 20+ years of STM/STEM publishing experience ranging from the front end of production, working with authors, to online publishing and archiving, and almost everything in between. Currently the Director of Publishing Technologies at ASME, he worked previously at AIP as the Product Manager and Operations Manager of the online publishing platform, Scitation, and the Production Operations Support Manager for their in-house typesetting division. He also worked at Springer/Kluwer Academic as part of a small team devoted to the planning, design, and implementation of electronic initiatives across the enterprise, spearheading a number of projects focused on XML content and digital workflows.
Brian Trombley has over 30 years experience in helping clients implement content oriented processes and technologies for all aspects of publishing across a wide range of industry verticals. An early practitioner of structured content methodologies, Mr. Trombley was at the forefront of the SGML and XML revolutions and has helped clients successfully manage change and convert and leverage content for maximum business value.
ASME's Digital Path Initiative: Don't Make a Molehill Out of a Mountain!
Christopher Ward, Director of Sales at WebWorks, specializes in helping small teams accomplish big things by better aligning departmental processes with overall company strategies. Christopher's experience in strategy development began as an Analyst for U.S. Army Intelligence and then later moved in to the corporate world when working for Dell computers.
For over the last 4 years he has been working for WebWorks and enjoying getting to know the Technical Communications Industry. His diverse experiences allow Christopher to recognize untapped potential in a company's overall business strategy and help them achieve that potential.
Creating TechComm Nirvana
How to Measure Revenue Through Content
Christopher Ward and Jennifer Fell
Jennifer A. Fell is a technical content strategy and architecture consultant, with over 20 years of experience translating business and user requirements into large-scale content solutions. Throughout her career, Jennifer has explored the interconnectedness between content and business at companies ranging from ten people to 400,000, and in roles ranging from technical writer to V.P. of Engineering.
During her 8 years at IBM, Jennifer drove portfolio-wide technical content strategy from within the development organization, and then leveraged that content from "the other side" as a client technical specialist in the sales organization. Jennifer's passion is helping content professionals step outside their comfort zones to find new ways to help customers and influence business.
She is a former instructor in the University of California Extension (Santa Cruz) certificate program in Technical Writing and Communication and a member of STC, IAI, and UXPA.
Revenue Content Strategy 101
Darin McClure
Darin motivates the motivators, instigates the instigators and helps the deciders decide.
Taming Your Social Media Sharing Strategy
Doug Gorman
Doug is the CEO of Simply XML. He brings years of relevant information industry experience to Simply XML and its customers. Throughout his career, Doug has found that honesty, hard work, and good communication lead to financial rewards and satisfaction for all who are involved. Simply XML's philosophy underlies our services offering because it works.
Doug has worked directly and indirectly for some of the world's leading technology companies. He sees XML as the enabling architecture to make content management, single source publishing, and multichannel publishing ubiquitous.
Doug has been instrumental in implementing technology and the related change management initiatives at large companies around the globe. He was responsible for major implementations at organizations as large and diverse as Marathon Oil, NSA, Abbott Labs, Nestle, the Department of Veteran's Affairs, Bank of America, and Dow Chemical.
Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks: How to Move Your Word Authors to XML
Edwina Lui
Edwina Lui is the Information Architect at Kaplan Publishing, the print and digital publishing group within Kaplan Test Prep, the world leader in test preparation. Edwina is deeply involved in Kaplan's evolving content management and digital product innovation initiatives and has played a key role in implementations of DITA XML, content management systems, and digital workflows at Kaplan.
A Goldilocks Approach to Product Innovation: Finding the Right Team and the Right Project at the Right Size
Fabrice LaCroix
Fabrice' career is intimately linked to the development of the Internet and of the Web. He began as a system developer in the telecom industry, and in 1994 he takes part in the creation of the first French ISP as CTO, developing many breakthrough technologies. Convinced that the future is in the data more than in the infrastructure, keen on innovation and entrepreneurship, Fabrice creates Antidot in 1999.
Fabrice is also board member of different companies, investors and organizations where he shares his views on innovation and the evolution of the software industry. Fabrice graduated from ENSIMAG and holds a Master in Computing from the Imperial College London.
Breaking Silos: Building a Knowledge Graph with Technical Documentation at its Core
George Bina
George Bina is one of the founders of Syncro Soft, the company that develops oXygen XML Editor. He has more than 15 years experience working with XML and related technologies. He has worked on XML-related projects, oXygen XML Editor and open source projects, of which the most notable are DITA-NG (a Relax NG implementation of DITA) and oNVDL (an open source implementation of the NVDL standard project that is now merged into Jing).
XML Authoring and Review Using Mobile Devices
Jackie Damrau
Dr. Jackie Damrau is a Sr. Business Systems Analyst at CBRE. In her role, Jackie models business processes and other department workgroup processes using BPMN modeling notation to use in gathering requirements for automating existing paper-based workflows as well as to help in improving processes. Jackie has more than 25 years of technical communication experience. She is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), member of the STC North Texas Lone Star chapter and the Instructional Design & Learning SIG, and the Book Review Editor for Technical Communication. Jackie's past international positions have been as a SIG manager for the Instructional Design & Learning SIG; assistant SIG manager of the Management SIG; elected member of the Nominations Committee; and general manager of the STC International Summit Awards (2010–2012). Jackie enjoys reading literature, sociology, linguistics, and philosophy. Find her on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/jackiedamrau) or on Twitter (@damrauja).
Streamlining Digital Content Using Structured Business Modeling
Jackie Damrau and Liz Herman
Dr. Liz Herman is an accomplished leader with 20 years of communication experience in the healthcare and education fields. She is a dedicated professional known for pioneering effective communication and presentation strategies to expand knowledge sharing, enhance business relationships, fuel productivity, and increase profits. Ms. Herman applies the disciplines of technical writing, teaching and training, knowledge management, and organizational culture to her management approach. This approach enables her to elevate team performance and transform knowledge into actionable intelligence. Ms. Herman has a PhD in Knowledge Management from Walden University, a Masters in English from Iowa State University, and a Bachelors in Journalism from the University of Iowa. She is a Project Management Professional and a Certified Professional Technical Communicator.
BPM & KM: They Converge Quite Nicely
Jennifer Fell
Technical Content in the Sales Process
Jim Tivy
Jim has been working in IT for 30 years holding mostly technical positions, often focused on database system internals. He encountered XML in 1999 and designed the first commercial XML database, XStreamDb. As part of this initiative, Jim was a member of the W3C XQuery working group and wrote a chapter in the book XQuery From the Experts. In 2005 Jim became involved with DITA as Bluestream added support for DITA to the XDocs XML CMS. Since then, Jim has taken a lead role on further features of the XDocs XML CMS. He is currently a member of the OASIS DITA TC.
Is DITA Simple, Complex, or Complicated?
Joe Gollner
Joe is the Managing Director of Gnostyx Research Inc. (www.gnostyx.com), a company he founded to help organizations come to grips with their content in ways that are sustainable and scalable. His particular specialty revolves around leveraging open standards and applied content technologies to build content solutions that connect the myriad of sources and processes that underlie how an enterprise performs and what it publishes. Along this line, he has led over 100 content management initiatives during the last twenty-five years, with several of these representing the high-water mark in the industry for sophistication and scale. Among these projects are some of the first business applications of the web, starting in 1992. Over the years, he has had the privilege to work closely with the leading innovators in the field of content technologies including Boeing, the Department of Defense, InContext Systems, NATO Headquarters, HP, Xerox, Nokia, Samsung and the Russian Academy of Science. A former artillery officer in the Canadian army and a graduate from the University of Oxford (Masters of Philosophy), he blogs on the nature of content as the Content Philosopher (www.gollner.ca) and is still working on his book about "engineering content".
Content Strategy, Technology, Engineering and Management: A Practical Introduction
Ten Secrets to Successful Content Initiatives
Joe Lopata
Joe Lopata loves Detroit, mortgages and content strategy, but not necessarily in this order. When he's not crafting messages and experiences with the client top of mind, he's an aspiring singer/songwriter and great dad and husband. He is currently the content strategist for the product development team for Quicken Loans, the nation's #1 online mortgage lender.
Let's Get It On: Relationship Marketing Is Content Strategy
Joe Welinske
Joe specializes in helping improve software development effort through crafted communication. The best user experience features quality words and images in the user interface. The UX of a robust product is also enhanced through comprehensive user assistance. This includes Help, wizards, FAQs, videos and much more.
For over 25 years, Joe has been providing training, contracting, and consulting services for the software industry. Joe is the Program Manager for the ConveyUX conference—any event produced by Seattle-based design firm Blink UX. Joe also teaches courses in usability testing and content development at Bellevue College. He recently published the book Developing User Assistance for Mobile Apps.
Highlights from the ConveyUX Conference
Julian Murfitt
Julian is CEO and co-founder of Systems Integration and Content Strategy Consultants 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 interest in the S1000D and DITA communities, until recently sat on the council of the ISTC (Institute for Scientific and Technical Communicators) and was Keynote presenter at DITA Europe 2007, and the 2010 ISTC conference.
Conference Room Prototyping: A low-cost, High-value Approach to Selecting the Solution You Really Need
Kane Jamison
Kane is the founder of Content Harmony, a Seattle-based content marketing agency. Content Harmony is focused on full-cycle content marketing initiatives, covering marketing strategy, content creation, outreach and promotion, analytics, and content management.
Kane first learned HTML in 1996, and started managing websites and content creation in 2005. Since 2012, Kane and the Content Harmony team have been focused on planning, producing, and promoting great content.
Risk Management for Content Creation
Kathy Wagner and Melissa Breker
Melissa has a background in marketing communications where she created systems to support targeted, goal-oriented content. She currently teaches content strategy at Langara College and has recently designed an online course for the Content Marketing Institute. She's passionate about connecting people and making a difference through content strategy.
Kathy is the co-founder of Content Strategy Inc, a Vancouver agency that helps large companies to meet their business and customer-experience goals by changing how they think about content. Recent clients include Wells Fargo, Samsung, BC Hydro, and the City of Nanaimo.
Kathy has a background in technical communication and user-experience research and regularly speaks (to anyone who will listen) on a variety of content and customer-experience topics. She's a co-organizer of the Vancouver IA/CS meetup group and a contributor to a new book on the language of content strategy.
Integrating Content into Customer Journeys
Keith Boyd
Keith Boyd is a 14-year veteran of Microsoft Corporation, where he's managed technical documentation projects for the developer audience his entire career. He recently left the Windows division, where he managed technical documentation for Windows 8 and 8.1 to join the Cloud & Enterprise division as the Principal Director of developer content for Azure, Visual Studio, SQL Server, and Windows Server technologies.
Need to Reboot Your Content Creation Strategy? Start with "No"
Kevin Potts
A long-standing member of the web and creative leadership community, Kevin has been working online since the days of Netscape Navigator Gold. Formally trained as a designer, he often found himself the only one in the room worried about content and it wasn't long before the siren-song of writing and content strategy lured him in.
Kevin has worked with hundreds of clients, from Fortune 50 hyperglobalmegacorps to corner delis. In the corporate world, he's served as a design grunt, creative director, brand strategist and more. He currently leads a team of 100+ writers, designers and developers as Lexmark's Senior Director of Brand and Web. At one point he even blogged regularly.
At Lexmark, Kevin oversees the strategy, creation, publishing, and governance of content, design and web applications on a global scale.
Kevin grew up in New Jersey and brags about it. Currently, he lives in Philadelphia.
Going Global Without Going Insane
Kimberlee Adam and Peyton Bentley
Kimberlee is the DITA Systems Manager for Kaplan Professional Education, a premier provider of licensing exam prep and continuing education for businesses and individuals in a variety of financial and professional business sectors. Kimberlee brings to this role a wealth of professional background in project management and performance training, and is currently completing her Masters of Science in Human-Computer Interaction from DePaul University.
As an experienced project manager and professional educator, Kimberlee is passionate about building high-performing partnerships with cross-functional groups and leading complex change initiatives that can ultimately help Kaplan students better achieve their education goals.
Peyton Bentley is an Information Architect at Kaplan Professional Education who has worked in printing and publishing for almost twenty years. He has been involved with numerous aspects of the industry, from editing to layout to printing. His interest in emerging technologies drew him to eBook development and then to DITA.
As the primary Information Architect for Kaplan Professional Education, he has been involved with developing Information Architecture-related roles and responsibilities, designing the KPE content model, and converting legacy content to DITA-based framework.
Building Effective Relationships for a Cross-Organizational Project
Kit Brown-Hoekstra and Terena Bell
Terena s CEO of In Every Language, a language services provider offering translation, interpreting and localization. Terena is on the board of the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) and formerly served on the Association of Language Companies leadership council. She also sits on the Obama Administration's White House Business Roundtable, which has taken calls with both the President and the Vice President as well as senior advisors and members of Cabinet.
Terena writes the popular column "Micro/Macro" for MultiLingual Magazine and has been quoted by Inc, Forbes and CNN Money. She has lived in France and the United States.
Katherine (Kit) Brown-Hoekstra is an STC Fellow and STC international society VP, an experienced professional, and a small business owner with over 23 years of experience in technical communication, much of it working with localization teams (sometimes on the client side and sometimes on the vendor side). As Principal of Comgenesis, LLC, Kit provides consulting and training to her clients on a variety of topics, including localization, content strategy, and content management.
The Space Between Us: Managing Expectations Between Tech Comm and Localization
Kristina Halvorson
Kristina is widely recognized as one of the most important voices in content strategy. She was instrumental in establishing content strategy as an essential practice in UX design, communications strategy and organizational design. Her book, Content Strategy for the Web, is considered the gold standard for content strategy literature and is credited with laying the foundation for a now rapidly evolving industry.
In 2002, Kristina founded Brain Traffic, a content strategy consultancy where strategists and writers work with corporate, higher education, government and nonprofit organizations on both project- and company-wide content strategy initiatives. Recent clients include Angie's List, Autodesk, Dell, Etsy, Marriott, Merck, Mutual of Omaha, the University of Ohio Wexner Medical Center, Raytheon and TIAA-CREF.
Kristina is the founder of Confab: The Content Strategy Conference (confabevents.com). She also regularly conducts online seminars about content strategy and works closely with Fortune 500 companies as both a speaker and consultant.
Onstage, Kristina is a celebrated speaker, well-known for her humorous, practical, and inspiring talks. She has appeared at over 50 conferences all over the United States, Canada, and Europe. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with her two children.
Content / Communication
Les Burnham and Patrick Baker
As the CEO and joint-founder of Stilo International, Les has overseen the development and marketing of SGML/XML content processing technologies and solutions for many years, across industry sectors including publishing, aerospace and defence, high-tech, engineering and government. He initiated the development of the Migrate cloud content conversion service to address the conversion requirements of small and medium enterprises through to large corporations including IBM, Cisco, TIBCO and Varian Medical Systems.
Les holds a BSc. Jnt. Hons degree in Mathematics and Operational Research from Leeds University, studied Computer Science and Statistics as an undergraduate, undertook a sponsored MBA programme at Cranfield School of Management, and recently completed studies in Philosophy at Oxford University.
As VP, Development and Professional Services, Patrick heads up all new product development at Stilo and is actively engaged in the successful deployment of content processing solutions for publishing clients. Major ongoing product development efforts include OmniMark 10, the leading high-performance content processing platform, and Migrate, the world's first cloud XML content conversion service. Patrick has been associated with best practices for complex content processing for over a decade, and has successfully delivered custom solutions on behalf of organizations in the automotive, airline, defence and commercial publishing sectors.
With a B.Sc. degree in Mathematics and a M.Sc. in Computer Science from McGill University, Patrick leads an expert team of highly talented content processing specialists.
DITA Authoring for Occasional Content Contributors
Lisa Pietrangeli
Lisa Pietrangeli is a managing partner and executive director at ThirtySix Software. At ThirtySix, Lisa specializes in working with clients to develop customized content development strategies. Lisa brings over 14 years of experience to ThirtySix Software, having worked extensively with companies around the world, helping them to streamline their content development and localization processes.
Before joining ThirtySix Software, Lisa was director of global client solutions at Language Intelligence, where she worked with clients to develop internationalization strategies for all stages of the content development process, from authoring through to translation. Her extensive experience has included everything from project management, resource selection and management, to business development, localization consulting and managing client relationships. Her experience, combined with her analytical skills, make Lisa an ideal partner with whom to evaluate content development and localization processes, develop proof of concept, and tailor solutions for organizations of all types and sizes.
Unifying your Content Development and Translation Strategies: What, why and how?
Liz Fraley
Before founding Single-Sourcing Solutions, Liz worked in both high-tech and government sectors, developing and delivering technical design and strategy of authoring and publishing solutions as a Single-Source/XML Architect/Programmer. For over a decade, she has architected and implemented the single-sourcing systems for government and high tech companies.
Specializing in practical development and deployment, she is a strong advocate of designing architectures that directly improve organizational efficiency, productivity, and interoperability. She presents regularly at industry and vendor conferences and is very active in the software engineering user communities: SF Bay ACM council member, SF Bay Arbortext PTC/User group charter member, and host of both a blog and a podcast that focus on strategies, skills, and resources for the user community.
She holds degrees in Computer Science and English from the University of College Park and a Masters in English from the University of Southern Mississippi.
Early Adopters of Dynamic Information Delivery: Where Are They Now?
How Do I Pick the Right Tool for Me?
Liz Herman
Jumping into a Leadership-Focused Content Strategy with Four Left Feet
Marcia Riefer Johnston
Marcia has run a tech-writing business for … a long time. The author of Word Up! How to Write Powerful Sentences and Paragraphs (And Everything You Build from Them), she taught tech writing in the Engineering School at Cornell University and studied literature and creative writing in the Syracuse University Masters program. For more, see howtowriteeverything.com.
Write Tight(er): A Time-Saving, Pain-Free Technique for Selling Yourself and Your Products Through Your words
Margaret Nicoll
Margaret's sweet spot is the confluence of SEO, creative and understanding how humans think and behave. She is the Co-Founder of MAKA, a digital consultancy that builds brands that make people happy by providing them with useful content. MAKA helps find, build and amplify the conversations that turn prospects into delighted loyalists. Margaret takes a uniquely insights driven approach in building content, firmly rooted in SEO and understanding consumer's purchase intent behaviors. Current Clients include global footwear brands including UGG Australia, Sanuk, Hoka One One and Ahnu.
Prior to MAKA, Margaret led the content strategy, SEO, PPC and retargeting channels for Deckers Outdoor, where she identified key content opportunities to drive revenue, reduce costs and enhance user experience across digital acquisition and retention channels. Margaret is also the Founder of 5 Ft Idea Machine, where she works with influential bloggers in the fashion, lifestyle and food spaces to use SEO and content strategy to help amplify brand content.
Follow Margaret @5ftIdeaMachine and follow MAKA @MAKAdigital
Using Search Insights to Create Content Strategies that Generate Revenue
Marisa Peacock and Mary Beall Adler
As an independent business owner, Mary has experience in strategic business planning and organization. As founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Georgetown Bagelry for more than 24 years, she has dedicated herself to baking the best artisan bagels. As a certified creativity coach, she has expanded her business purview to include entrepreneurs, artists and athletes, for whom she helps design and integrate effective business strategies. In the midst of managing two successful businesses, Mary is also committed to helping communities through various partnerships and philanthropic efforts.
Marisa Peacock is the principal and chief strategist for The Strategic Peacock. As a social business strategist and marketing consultant, Marisa helps organizations create and implement online strategies that appropriately target the right audience with the right information using the right media.
Additionally, Marisa is an adjunct faculty member at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) teaching Social Media Marketing as a part of the Masters in Business of Art and Design program.
Marisa holds a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Mount Holyoke College and a graduate degree in American studies from Georgetown University. She resides in Arlington, Virginia.
What a Bagel Shop Can Teach Us About the Community Experience
Mark is a quarter-century member of one company, having navigated through typesetting to desktop publishing to early adoption of XML and content management. Formerly a staff and department manager, he now focuses on identifying and implementing technical solutions to meet trending consumer needs. Before settling in "technical publications," he was in electronics sales, journalism, training, and even a little building construction. Working with a major international plumbing manufacturer with thousands of products, he sees lots of data to connect and silos to decommission. He also gets an excuse to spend time in Home Depot and to play with new computer technology.
But will it fit in my bathroom? Creating a Single Interface for Product Presale Data
Marli Mesibov
Marli is a content strategist with passion for the user experience. Her work spans websites, web applications, and mobile for enterprise companies and startups across the country. She is an editor at UX Booth, and a frequent conference speaker. Marli can also be found on Twitter, where she shares thoughts on UX Design, content strategy, and Muppets.
You can learn more about her and her work at http://marli.us.
Content Strategy and Information Architecture: What the Hell?!
Marta Rauch
Marta Rauch is a Senior Principal Information Developer at Oracle, where she develops content for mobile and cloud products, including API docs. She enjoys sharing content strategy best practices with worldwide audiences, and contributed to The Language of Content Strategy, by Rahel Bailie and Scott Abel. Marta has received 15 STC awards at the regional and international level, and is an STC Associate Fellow and Vice President of the Silicon Valley Chapter. With over 111,000 social media connections, she is ranked by CircleCount in the top 170 U.S. women and top 450 worldwide on Google+.
Delighting Mobile Customers with Content for Apps, Videos, and a Social Media Campaign
Martin Jones
Martin is a Marketing Manager with the corporate Cox Communications social media team where he leads the social and content marketing strategy for Cox Business. He is also the editor of CoxBLUE.com and is a featured contributor on several business and marketing websites. He is a frequent guest speaker on the topic of social media and content marketing and was recently named one of the top 50 content Marketers on Twitter by EContent Magazine.
Path to Purchase: The Three-Step Content Strategy That Will Transform your Business
Maxwell Hoffmann
Maxwell Hoffmann, Adobe's product evangelist for tech comm, has 15 years' experience in localization, over 25 years of technical documentation experience, and has worked for a variety of software vendors and translation agencies. He is based from a home office in Portland, Oregon. You may reach him at mhoffman@adobe.com and follow him on Twitter at @maxwellhoffmann (yes, two N's).
Ditching Your Comfort Zone: How to Thrive in a Cycle of Change
Michael Maxey
Michael Maxey is the director of content solutions at AirWatch by VMware, the leading enterprise mobility management (EMM) provider. In this role, Maxey is responsible for the largest and most strategic enterprise accounts, helping customers and prospects to choose the best solutions to increase productivity and enable their clients.
Maxey brings nine years of technology and software industry knowledge to AirWatch. Most recently, he worked for more than three years as a senior retail account executive to Fortune 500 clients at Accruent, a business process automation software company, where he initiated business development of target accounts. At Accruent, he earned President's Club status two years in a row.
Before joining Accruent, Maxey was the director of business development at Circle Technologies, where he built the managed services division within the organization, targeted prospects for managed IT projects, and contracted professional services. In 2006, he co-founded Mikai Technology, a software company focused on video analytics technology. Maxey began his career in the document management industry at Ricoh.
Maxey earned his Bachelor of Business Administration degree in marketing from The Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia.
VITAS Innovative Hospice Care Prescribes Mobility Management to Provide Seamless Patient Care
Mike Hamilton
Prior to joining MadCap Software, Michael served as the Product Manager for the RoboHelp product line supporting the software documentation industry. In 2005 Mike became one of the founders of MadCap Software where he has been instrumental in the design and development of the next generation of authoring and publishing tools for the technical communication industry.
Mike has over 20 years of experience in training, technical communication, multimedia development, and software development at several organizations including Blue Sky Software/eHelp/Macromedia, Cymer, a leading supplier of laser illumination sources to the semiconductor industry, National Steel & Shipbuilding and the US Navy where Mike worked as a Nuclear Powerplant Operator and technician.
Single-Source Content Management Beyond Text: Dealing with Graphics and Multimedia
So, You Want to be in the Movies?
Mike Maass
Mike Maass is Managing Editor at Citrix, where he leads a rock star team of user experience writers and editors. Mike also produces the company's internal news blog, Design Matters, and was content design lead for the company's recent intranet redesign. Mike continues to drive internal content initiatives, and enjoys mentoring business stakeholders and development teams on design and user experience best practices. Mike has spoken at AWP, CIDM, and IA Summit, and has published articles in UX Magazine and CIDM Information Management News.
Bringing User Experience Into the Enterprise
Misty Weaver
Misty Weaver is a content strategist specializing in social media, community management and multi-channel communication for nonprofits and startups.
She teaches Content Strategy in Information Architecture at the University of Washington Information School, manages social media channels as Community Manager for Content Insight and leads monthly professional networking events for Information Architects and Content professionals in Seattle, WA. Her areas of expertise include content inventories and audits and content development planning.
Working the Content System: Building Empathy in Editorial Strategy
Neil Perlin
Neil is an internationally known consultant, strategist, trainer, and developer for online content in all forms from online help to mobile. Neil helps clients design content, select outputs, understand coding, and select and learn authoring tools. To do this, he brings 35 years of experience in tech comm, with 29 online in a wide range of formats and tools. He is Adobe Certified in RoboHelp, MadCap Certified in Flare and Mimic, and Viziapps Certified for the Viziapps Studio mobile app development platform. He is the author of several books on help authoring tools and a book about mobile app development for non-programmers, so-called Do-It-Yourself Apps.
Neil writes columns and articles for STC's Intercom and is a popular speaker at various industry conferences, including LavaCon. He is the founder and manager of the Bleeding Edge session at the STC summit.
Contact him at nperlin@nperlin.cnc.net.
Responsive Design in Your HAT
Nick is co-founder of the social curation platform Listly, which combines crowdsourcing, content curation and embedable lists to drive high-level community engagement, live inside your blog posts.
Nick sold his visual segmentation startup to Business Objects (now SAP) in '99. The tool exploited our love of venn diagrams to discover and express the business questions people needed to ask.
Nick, a passionate innovator, self-published a board game instead of the predictable book. His game, GiftTRAP, gamifies the act of gift exchange, went on to win 20+ awards globally including a Spiel des Jahres prize (a gamer's Oscar) and is translated into 12 languages.
The Infosnacker's Guide to the Galaxy Embracing Short Form, Ephemeral and Realtime Content Strategies
Noz Urbina
Noz Urbina is a globally recognized leader in the field of content strategy and customer experience consultancy. He is someone that can effectively bridge corporate, technical and user needs and priorities. Speaking the language of all three has been a key asset during a diverse project background covering multi- and omni-channel strategies.
He has designed interfaces and processes that have saved organisations hundreds of thousands per year, recommended solutions that have avoided headcount increases, and delivered dozens of budget-winning internal presentations in a language to which executives can relate.
Above all, he has a passion for helping people communicate.
This is Your Brain on Content: Cognitive Science Lessons for Content Strategy
Multi-Dimensional Content Strategy: A Plan for Dodging the Oncoming Train
Integrating our Online and Offline worlds
Pamela Noreault
Pam Noreault has 21 years of experience in technical communications, education, and management. She specializes in content strategy, content conversions, SEO, and social networking strategies. Pam has a big interest in user assistance and customer involvement in content creation. She has an undergraduate degree in education from The Ohio State University and a master's degree in English and Professional Writing from Wright State University. When not researching, trying out new technology, or trying to innovate in the business world, she's hiking with her two dogs.
The Convergence of User Experience (UX) and Technical Communication
Patrick Neeman
Patrick Neeman lives (mostly) in Seattle, Washington and is currently the Director of Product Design at Apptio, a IT Spend Management platform. Prior to that he was Director of Product Design at nPARIO, a marketing analytics platform, and Director of User Experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting and applicant tracking platform. After a complete redesign of the application, Jobvite received a Webby award for employment, and the Deloitte What Works award.
Previous experience includes working as a Social Media and User Experience consultant for Microsoft, building a User Experience team from 1 to 25 at a consultancy, worked on the prelaunch team at Orbitz, and the successful launch of several startup sites. And yes, he has been a Product Manager.
He has self published several mobile applications, including the UX Drinking Game and Perks Locator, a travel application.
Hunting Unicorns: What Makes an Effective UX Professional
PG Bartlett and Tom Aldous
As a decades-long veteran of the TechPubs industry, Tom utilizes his vast knowledge of content development and management to guide Acrolinx's vision and accelerate its growth as a champion of content optimization. Tom has a keen gift for anticipating trends and fully leveraging new opportunities that appear on the horizon. Working in his capacity as a leader of global operations, Tom's focus is on driving sales and demand generation. He previously served as the Director of TechCom Business Development and Evangelism at Adobe Systems, Inc. Before that, he was the President of Integrated Technologies, Inc. for over 20 years.
As Acrolinx's SVP of Product Management, PG brings almost 20 years of experience helping companies use technology to improve how they communicate. As a marketing writer and technical writer, PG takes pride in producing clear, compelling, and actionable material. He joined Acrolinx because he wanted to be part of a team that loves helping their customers create compelling language.
Acrolinx Content Optimization Thought Leadership Event
Ray Gallon
A communicator for over 40 years, Ray is the owner of Culturecom, a consultantancy specialised in business process improvement through communication, and a principal in The Transformation Society research group, Barcelona. He has over 20 years' experience in the technical content industries, with startups and major companies alike.
Previously, Ray was an award-winning radio producer and journalist, with broadcasters such as CBC, NPR, France Culture, Radio Netherlands International, Deutsche Welle, WDR Cologne. In the late 80's, he was program manager of WNYC-FM, New York Public Radio.
He is a member of the international board of directors of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), and past president of STC France. He speaks frequently on communications topics throughout the world, and has been a teacher and trainer in professional communications programmes in five countries on three continents.
Ray shares his life between the Languedoc region of France and Barcelona, Spain.
Low-cost Embedded UA Using DITA
Rhyne Armstrong
Rhyne is Director of Documentation at RouteMatch Software. He has 19 years of experience in the technical communication field; often moving from the core discipline of technical writing to the outlying roles of corporate communication, product marketing, and user experience design.
Over the last several years, Rhyne has consulted on social media and social networking strategies for several organizations and individuals, and often dives head-first into emerging technologies and communication trends. He is a senior member of the Society for Technical Communication, serving on the Community Affairs Committee and on the leadership council of the Atlanta Chapter. Rhyne resides in Alpharetta, Georgia, where he spends most of his time shuttling any of his four kids to soccer, ballet, or gymnastics.
Content Project Horror Show
Robert Kennedy has been authoring and managing content for over 25 years. He has presented at STC and KM World and many internal conferences and meetings at CA Technologies. He is a member of the CA Council for Technical Excellence.
Not Your Father's (Buick) Wiki
Ryan Lounsbury
Ryan is a Customer Success Specialist at MindTouch, a leading provider of cloud based customer success software. MindTouch is transforming how all businesses drive customer success by empowering them to capture and serve knowledge to their customers in new ways and by creating insight from customers' behavior. MindTouch creates shorter sales cycles, increases organic site traffic, and turns new users into experts and brand advocates.
"My dedication to clients and technology has allowed for me to deliver exceptional experiences throughout my career. Whether it is increasing product adoption through best practices, being a trusted advisor to clients during an implementation or exceeding sales quota year after year I consistently deliver above expectation for my company and customers."
Customer Success: Focusing On Customers' Needs, Not Topics
Scott Carothers
Scott Carothers, Senior Globalization Executive is with Kinetic.theTechnologyAgency, the leading global provider of enterprise brand and asset management software solutions. He is a 30-year veteran in Corporate Marketing with a focus on technical solutions, new product introductions and software. His start was on a genesis team introducing one of the first DOS PC based graphics software; successfully placing the product into 300 of the Fortune 500s. He has since evolved into channel development for enterprise brand and asset management, global Print-On-Demand and Translation Process Management System software. He is based in Louisville, Kentucky.
Managing the Translation Process: A Peek Behind the Curtain
Scott Youngblom
Scott Youngblom is a co-founder of Oberon Technologies, a leading provider of automated publishing IT solutions based on XML and SGML. With a degree in Communications and Business, Scott has an information technology career spanning over 25 years, with over 18 of them specifically involved with automated publishing solutions, including 12 years with Arbortext (now PTC). Having started out as a programmer in his early career, Scott has taken his technical background (along with his knowledge of various "best-of-breed" software publishing technologies) and applied them to Fortune 2000 organizations in support of meeting specific business requirements such as increasing company revenue, decreasing expenses to improve company margins, or meeting regulatory compliance and quality standards. He has worked with several organizations over the course of his career such as John Deere, Pearson Publishing, Abbott Laboratories, Eli Lilly, Johnson Controls, Department of Defense, Northwestern Life, Social Security Administration, General Motors, and many other companies from all industries.
DITA and The Content Delivery Management Imperative
Shaun Tinney
Shaun is a partner and director of research and strategy at The Good (thegood.com), a digital firm that helps brands grow lasting relationships with active lifestyle consumers through rewarding digital experiences on the web, on mobile and in stores.
Since joining The Good as a partner in 2010, Shaun has helped lead the firm to become one of Oregon's 100 fastest-growing private companies. In addition to leading the research and strategy for The Good, Shaun also writes and speaks frequently on how active lifestyle brands can use digital to reach their sales and service potential.
The Numbers Are People Too
Suzanne Mescan
Suzanne Mescan is Vasont Systems' Director of Marketing, with responsibility for the Company's overall marketing and public relations efforts. For more than 25 years, she has worked in all aspects of the information management and publishing industry, including content management, editorial, art and design, project management, prepress production, printing and binding.
Suzanne has authored numerous articles about content management for industry publications and has delivered presentations for the CM Strategies/DITA North America, AIIM, and LavaCon conferences and in numerous industry webinars. She was also a contributing author for the book, Virtual Collaborative Writing in the Workplace: Computer-Mediated Communication Technologies and Processes by Beth L. Hewett and Charlotte Robidoux (Eds.). Suzanne earned a BS in Marketing from The Pennsylvania State University.
Grapevine: How to Enhance Your Content Processes and Communications
Tanner Volz
Tanner is a technical writer, multimedia developer, and content strategist who has helped design and implement rich documentation solutions since 1998. He has led information architecture projects to meet diverse needs including single-source publishing, low-cost translation, and fully automated content delivery. His information systems have made advanced use of a variety of tools and technologies, including desktop publishing applications, centralized XML repositories, and hosted content management systems. Tanner lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
Ditching the Desktop: One SaaS Vendor's Leap to Hosted Documentation
Terena Bell
On Microbrews and Translation
Thomas Aldous
TechComm 2020: Get Ready to be Part of the Content Era
Toni Mantych
Toni is currently an Information Architect at ADP. In this role, she directs information architecture and content strategy for a department of over sixty information developers and provides training and strategic planning related to authoring tools, technologies, and processes. For the last several years, this has meant planning and implementing a gradual migration to DITA and to component content management.
Toni holds a Master's degree in English literature and has taught over thirty university courses in literature, writing, and technical communication. She has taught regularly in the graduate Professional and Technical Writing program at PSU since 2007. She is a Past President and a Senior Member of the Willamette Valley Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. She is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and an AIIM-Certified Taxonomy and Metadata Practitioner.
Gaming Your Way to Conversion Success
Troy Parke
Troy serves as Sr UX Design Manager at Big Fish Games in Seattle, Washington. He leads a team of Product UX/UI and Marketing Designers in unifying the user experience across surfaces, iterative rapid prototyping and delivering metrics-based performance.
Troy is also the Director of UX for UX How—your resource for Product UX Design Manager insights based on his 15 year project and client experience with Rolling Stone, Microsoft, Xbox, RealNetworks, Rhapsody, Nickelodeon, Disney and Marvel.
Partnering with Key Stakeholders in UX Strategy
Troy Parke and Patrick Neeman
UX for Content Strategists and Technical Writers
Vikram Verma
Vikram Verma is a Product Manager at Adobe Systems, India where he manages the Technical Communication line of products. He is responsible for product strategy and roadmap, partner ecosystem management and customer relationships.
Prior to Adobe, he worked as a strategy consultant at Religare Enterprises, where he led product management and analytics initiatives for Religare businesses. Earlier, he worked at Pramerica Mutual Fund , where he was responsible for developing quantitative stock investment models. He also worked as a software engineer at Samsung Electronics, India. He has an MBA from Indian School of Business and an Integrated M.Tech in Mathematics & Computing from IIT Delhi.
The State of Mobile Content Publishing
LavaCon News
The preliminary schedule for LavaCon 2015 is now posted.
Pre-register by April 15 and bring your boss or colleague for free.
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Previous Attendee Comments
Beth Favini
"LavaCon is by far, the best content development conference I've ever attended."
Beth Favini Senior Manager, Technical Publications HP Vertica
https://lavacon.org/2014/testimonials/beth-favini/
Tom Aldous
"Jack did another great job this year. There was a perfect mix of content, attendees and outside activities. I highly recommend you come to the 2012 event. I am looking forward to it!"
https://lavacon.org/2014/testimonials/tom-aldous/
Christi Thompson
"Bravo! The sessions were valuable, the attendees were inspiring, and the Omni was a lovely venue. What a fantastic gathering of great minds. It's an exciting time for the industry, and Lavacon brings us all together to pave the way. Thank you again, Jack!"
https://lavacon.org/2014/testimonials/christi-thompson/
"Great conference! The sessions and people attending were truly fantastic. I love that there are so many wonderful people in our profession. It feels more like visiting friends/family than it does going off to a conference! I have to say, the Omni was outstanding. They were incredibly courteous and helpful."
https://lavacon.org/2014/testimonials/bill-swallow/
Lois Patterson
"For LavaCon 2011, I really loved the choice of Austin and Omni Hotel. What a great city, a great venue, and great food. As I said in the video clip, I really appreciated the emphasis on metrics, increasing value, cutting costs, and revenue generation. Without an emphasis on such practical points, we will never get a chance to put the arcane points into practice."
https://lavacon.org/2014/testimonials/lois-patterson/
Michael Hovan
"Wow. I'm SO glad I was "made aware" of this conference. I'll certainly be planning on attending next year's LavaCon; I was only able to attend one day of this conference and I still learned a ton. Kudos to the planners and presenters alike. (I'm especially pleased with the practical takeaways gained regarding multi-sourcing to create ebooks.)"
https://lavacon.org/2014/testimonials/michael-hovan/
Connie Sheldon
"This was one of the best conferences I have ever been able to attend. I particularly like the forward thinking topics on social media, video and mobile devices. These are areas that I would love to pursue and I got such great ideas. ow to socialize them in a large organization. In addition, I liked that the focus was on content strategy and not just on document strategy. My role is document strategy, but I plan on pushing for the broader view of content strategy. Thanks so much for having this in my "backyard" (Austin) so that I could attend."
https://lavacon.org/2014/testimonials/connie-sheldon/
Kelly Shortt
"Technical Communication professionals who are planning their training schedules for 2012 should put LavaCon at the top of their list. This conference consistently gathers expert speakers who love to share their passion for technology and help to move the profession toward the future. Whether you are a newbie or a seasoned professional, you will walk away with valuable ideas that you can implement immediately. In addition, you can learn about fabulous products and services from the vendors who attend LavaCon. You may just find the solution that you need! I hope to see you at LavaCon on 2012!"
https://lavacon.org/2014/testimonials/kelly-shortt/
Emmelyn Wang
"Lavacon in Austin was an excellent learning and networking opportunity from many viewpoints: as a tech comm professional, as an educator, and as someone who loves the synergistic flow of real-time face-to-face interaction that lit up the social media sphere. The Omni Hotel was an excellent location/venue for folks experiencing Austin for the first time. The panels were the pulse of our field validating the need for continue growth and development through a conference like this one. Jack, thank you for championing a conference like this one and congratulations on the upcoming 10 year celebration!"
https://lavacon.org/2014/testimonials/emmelyn-wang/
© 2020 The LavaCon Conference on Content Strategy and TechComm Management. All Rights Reserved.
For more information, send an e-mail to jack@lavacon.org