Software User Assistance Conference 2005

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Sign

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Train & truck

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My car

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Desert 2

Road sign

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Paris at dusk

Bellagio & water show

Wooden chopper

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Bellagio lobby lion

Bellagio lobby ceiling

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A whole buncha conference and trip photos (finally!).

William Horton

I have to admit I was disappointed to see the conference schedule come out with no closing session by Jared Spool. I had a sneaking suspicion that it might have been because someone complained in the feedback evaluations about Jared's use of the word "witch" last year (which I cringed at myself) during his presentation. I know Joe is very sensitive about negative feedback (it's why Dave Gash doesn't get to entertain us with his fun pre-session photos anymore), so the guess made sense, even if it had no basis in reality.

But I'd not heard Horton speak for a loooong time, and by the time he was done, I was wishing I had been hearing him a lot more often. He's not just an I-speak-you-listen speaker; he gets the audience involved and engaged. And he made me think. Think about possible user assistance solutions for current and future projects. Think about challenging what's useful in user assistance and what's not, and why.

Then just like that, it was over. I wonder who Joe will get next year......

The usual Wednesday

I don't think I've been to a WinWriters conference yet where I've not missed Wednesday morning. The daytimes of sitting in chairs and drinking up all sorts of new information, plus the evenings/nights of publishing the newsletter make for some tiring days. I know it doesn't compare to Joe and Sharon and those who have worked for many weeks and months to make the whole thing happen, but stilll....

Of course I didn't help my cause by deciding to go across the street Tuesday night to play a little poker. As usual this year, the newsletter production work took longer than it should have because of production problems. The first was when I had written up an interview with Mike Hamilton, and then Joe decided that it wasn't the right content for the Wednesday newsletter, so I replaced it (almost two full columns of text) with a few shorter pieces and some more photos. But that wasn't the big problem.

The big problem was the printer. Joe had gotten a new black ink cartridge for the inkjet printer in the conference office. I installed it easily, but for some reason, all of a sudden everything I was printing came out faded, about half the saturation that it should be. I cleaned the print heads, but there was no improvement. A printer test page came out fine. I hand' changed my printer settings, and I gave up after several fruitless tries.

So it was off to Kinkos much later than I had planned, and then I had to have them print me a copy from my USB key before I could hit the copy machine.

The good news was twofold:

First, by taking the time to adjust the brightness and contrast of the photos in ImageReady (making them brighter), the copied version looked a l t more normal. (Previously, they'd been a bit dark.)

Second, the photo essay I did of the badge flags turned out really well.

I stopped at Subway on my way back and paid way too much for a smallish 6-inch sub, then caught up on email once I dropped off the newsletters. Then I decided to go play a bit of poker. I hit Excalibur, and had some success, but I stayed a bit late. When I got in, I reviewed the Wednesday conference program. There were a couple of 8:30 sessions that I thought would be interesting/useful, but when I reviewed the slides, I kinda thought that I could get the fundamentals of the sessions from there. The 10:00 sessions held nothing of interest for me, a rarity. So I decided not to set a wake up call and sleep in. And I did.

Catching up...

Well, Wednesday was a wash as far as posting here, then I was AWIA (Absent Without Internet Access), so I'm going to catch up with posts over the next few days.....

It's Tuesday already

After last night's experience, I really didn't want to post. I just grabbed a few dollars and sat mindlessly at a couple of different slot machines here at the Tropicana.

I was done with the newsletter by about 9. Joe has an inkjet printer. When I went to print out the newsletter (so I could take the printouts to Kinkos for copying), the black ink ran out. On the last two pieces of paper in the printer.

But Kinkos has printers and computer stations now. So my notebook came with me on the drive over (and that drive was a lot easier now that I knew where I was going and the best way to get there). The Kinkos has two notebook stations. With two parallel port connections (to the two printers, one B&W, one color). My notebook, a svelte 4 lb. Sony Vaio, has no parallel port.

Fortunately, there was also a network cable.

Printing here also required the installation of the Kinkos printer driver. This turned out to be easy, especially as the staff there actually knew where the driver installation CD was. I had to change the settings of the driver once it was installed to point to an IP address rather than a parallel port, but that part's simple.

Except that printing didn't happen. At either station. I double- and triple-checked the IP address and found that I was typing it in correctly. So I asked for help. They suggested that I take my PDF file (because they don't have InDesign CS installed on their computers) , put in on my USB key, and connect to the Mac and print from there. (Of course, even if they did have InDesign CS, there probably would be font issues.)

Only problem was, the Macs also cost: 20 cents per minute. That was the final straw, and I complained to the manager about being forced to pay computer time because their network stations didn't work properly (at all , actually). He finally took my USB key behind the counter and found a computer there and made a printout. I was grateful, and he didn't charge me (printouts from the "public" printers are 49 cents per sheet.)

Once that was done, the actual copying takes about 20 minutes, but all the problems meant that I didn't get back to the Tropicana until 10:30, rather later than I had planned.

And I was accosted by Char almost as soon as I got off the elevator this morning.. She was very adamant about that I had misidentified a speaker, and that I had to get it corrected right away. So I put off breakfast and corrected it here.

And then once I got to breakfast, they had run out. By the time they finally brought out more, I had missed 20 minutes of the first session.

Too much

As usual at a WinWriters/WritersUA conference, I have to make tough choices. At each of the 3 session time slots today where there were multiple sessions, I had to choose from 2 that I wanted to go to. Tomorrow it gets worse. First thing in the morning, there are 4 sessions that I want to got to:

RoboHelp and XML, Neil Perlin
Content Management in a Single-Writer Environment, John Barrow
How We Can Structure Informatin So People GAIN, Thom Hallen
User-centered Design for Help Systems.

Now the last one is core to my heart. But I've been in way too many single-writer situations, and don't expact that to change, so that content management program woudl be useful. An having heard Thom Hallen today, I want to hear him again.

I have no idea how I'm going to choose, and will probably wait until the last moment to make the final decision. I can take consolation in the fact that I pretty much prefer this to the alternative, which woul dbe to have none (out of 6) that I wnat/need to attend. Thus is what makes this conference so useful.

Flying food

An interesting component of a Tony Self session is the food that goes flying about, formthe podium. This time (a session on XML), it's these alligator thingies that began sailing into waiting hands right from the start.

Another great presenter

I've never heard Thom Haller speak before. After spending anhour and a half listening, I know I want to again.

Goal-driven, user-centerd design is a topic that I'm passionate about. And he's on it. And he's developped a structure, called GECKO, that can help in that process. GECKO stands for Gather, Evaluate, Chunk, Know, and Optimize.

He's speaking again tomorrow morning. I'm not sure of the exact topic yet, but I'm sure it'll be a top choice when I review which session to attend first thing in the moring.

Monday lunch

Why, oh why, to hotels and restaurants have to put mushrooms on everything? Fortunately, they were easy to pick off and left just a few crumbs, but I've been served dishes where this was difficult, if not impossible.

And then, if you don't drink coffee (hot) or tea (iced), you were SOL, except for water. Me, I wanted the fuel of Coke, and it was nowhere to be found.

Picking a random table (although near the MadCap booth), I found myself talking to Tony Self, Paula Berger, and Mike Hamiltion. Also got to chat with a fellow who came all the way from Denmark; it was not only his first WritersUA conference, it was his first time in the U.S.

Madcap is live

It was put live last night. The web site for the newest star in the user assistance development universe is here: www.madcapsoftware.com.

The site looks very polished. I'm looking forward to see if the software lives up to the promises made.

The end of RoboHelp?

Joe Welinske, President of WritersUA, claimed today in the Conference for User Assistance opening session that RoboHelp will likely no longer be "in common use" within 2 years.

Welinske claimed that the product has been "sunset" by Macromedia, that there are no members of the RoboHelp team left on staff (including no one to staff the paid-for vendor booth at the conference), and that it is "highly likely" that no further development will take place.

More to come....

Here he is!

Is this the fisrst photo released of Mike in his new duds?

The Mike Hamiltion sighting.

The end of help authoring?

The opening session at the WritersUA conference is titled "User Assistance Trends: What's Ripe, Hype, and Out-of-sight," with Paulr Berger, Matthew Ellison, Char James-Tanny, Tony Self, and Joe Welinske.. Paula's first prediction was quite bold. Although she didn't come right out and say it, the implication was clear: that companies are working to put us all out of business.

Basically, she predicted that live, interactive help where you're communicating directly with a customer service rep will replace staic documentation. She pointed out that *very* cheap customer service reps, mostly overseas, can answer calls for just pennies. Those reps also record their answers, which become a large user assistance database.

This *very* cheap help (which Paula noted sometimes used better English than others) is probably quite attractive to the bean counters who make decisions on who to hire.

Tony, OTOH, disagreed with this, suggesting that this was a false economy.

Mike Hamilton and William Meisheid strike a pose.

Day One winding down

Well, it's the end of Day One. It's not thought of as such by many, who think the conference begins on Monday. But the supplemental sessions on Sunday are important and I have to get the first newsletter published as well. I wrapped that up at about 9:30, although I had a bit of trouble finding the copy place.

But then, I had trouble getting there. I tried taking Las Vegas Blvd., which was packed with traffic. So I turned off and doubled back, hit the freeway and it was clean sailing to Flamingo Blvd. Once I got to Kinkos, the actual copying (of 400 pieces) takes only about 20 minutes.

I spent time in all 3 sessions this afternoon, althogh I wish I'd started with and spent more time in the "Implementing Stuctured Authoring" session. Tht more advanced topic looks like it's in many ways the future of technical authoring (or at least a future, and a potentially very significant one). As it turns out, I began in Dave Gash's session. Dave's always enjoyable; it's obvious he loves sharing his knowledge and his enthusiasm for even the most basic of topics--such as today's--is boundless.

Most of the day I manages on a breakfast burrito I had picked up at Carl's Jr, plus the occasional pieve of chocolate or licorice. Unfortunately, the Tropicana buffet closes at 10, so I went to the hotel's 24 hour restaurant. The wiat staff was friendly, but it was more than $10 for a cheesburger, fries, and soda. And the little piece of charred meat (so much for "medium well") was able half the size of the bun. Yikes.

One very interesting person made an appearance today. One of the sessions (I havnen't found it's actual title yet) apparently deals with accessibility issues, and the speaker is blind. I overheard a couple of people talking about not being sure how to approach a blind person, and I have to admit I have the same feelings, largely from pretty much no experience. I don't know if I shoudl approach and ask if he needs assistance or just do something else. This may be an opportunity for me to learn.

Dave Gash being greeted by Char James-Tanny and Rhonda Bracey, who is from Australia .

It's begun!

I'm sitting here in one of the supplemental conference sessons. This one is called "Implementing Structured Authoring" and it's about just what the title says. Structured authoring includes, among other things, congtent management. And content management systems are more complcated (and expensive) to implement and maintain than, say, Microsoft Word. But then, we're not talking Microsoft Word here, and the cost savings can be tremendous.

It's a nice day here in Vegas, warm and sunny in the moring, with a few clouds rolling in this afternoon. The familiar faces are beginning to arrive as well; during the break I ran into Mike Hamilton, Shane McRoberts, and Char James-Tanny.

Even though I was feeling tired, I decided to go find a poker game. The Tropicana doesn't have a poker room, so I went across the street to the Excalibur. I ended up in a 2 to 6 game, which is different from the structured limit games I'd been playing. It took only about 15 minutes to sit down, I won my first hand (luckily), and ended up with nealry a $50 profit after about 2 hours.

When I got back, it was right to bed. The mirrors notwithstanding, I was out within 30 seconds ofl lights off, despite that the bed isn't all that comfortableor plush.

One thing I'd have never seen if I hadn't driven is one of the more unusual road names I've ever come across. Somewhere along I-15 is Zzyxz Road.

The best laid plans......

The past 30 hours have been absolutely frenetic, as little that I planned out came to fruitiion. The good news is that I'm in Vegas and ready for tomorrow'c conference start. Or, at least I will be ready once I get the good night's sleep I didn't get last night. And therin lies the tale...

The very brginnings of this trip went wrong. I left worj shortly after 2:00pm, figuring that it should be early enough to avoid the getaway traffic. Wrong. THe city streets were jammed getting to the freeway, the Bay Bridge was crowded (but moving), and 580 was more stop than go all the way out to the 205 split. What usually takes about an hour to get to that point took 2.

So I was alrady later than planned whn I hit the gas and food stop along I-5. There I made the mistake of choosing Red Robin over a fast food place. There was a short wait for a table, and then service was horribly slow. It was an hour before I got out of there.

The weather wasn't the best for travel either. It was spitting rain off and on all the wasy down I-5. Once I left I-5, the Yahoo directions were quite good. But I rolled into Barstow at about 11:00, nearly 2 hours later than planned, and there I got another jolt.

Just before I left, I almost reserved a room online. But I figured that with the coupon books I had, I should be able to get a room once I got there even cheaper. Didn't happen. In fact, every hotel along the main strip there was booked. On a Fridya night in the middle of the Mojave desert in March.. With seemingly little choice, I decided to truck on.

I had to stop for gas again, just over the Nevada border, and considered trying to fins a room there (by then nearly 1:00am, but I figured that I was about an hour from Vegas and so I'd just go the rest of the way. Another mistake. Once I got to Vegas, every hotel that I checked was also full. Seems it was the last day of a big convention. Even the sheap little dives were full.

So I seemed to be about out of options. It was now after 3:00am. So what I finally did was to use the restroom at the Tropicana to take out my contact lenses, then went back to my car, found a place to park that was mostly out of the lights, put up the sun shade, dug out the blanket, cracked a couple of windows, put back the seat, and dozed off.

I awoke once at about 6 and again at 9. I figure I managed about 4 hours sleep.

I helped Joe stuff conference bags, then found that I had left the CF card for my camera at home. I know just where it is too, right on my desk.. The good news: there's a Fry's in Vegas. The bad news: there's a Fry's in Vegas.

Actually, I got a pretty good deal, a 512MB Lexar card for $40. But when I got back, I found it had been opened and yaped shut. It seemsto work though. We'll see. I'm very tempted to take it back first thing in the morning and get a pristine package. Frys: some things never change.....

And the rooms here. I got into mine at about 1 and when I walked in I found something very interesting,somethign I've never seen in my years of sporadic travel: a mirror over the bed. It seems that this is a common feature at this hotel too, as I'm not the only one. Another mirrow is at the head of the bed with still another on the wall alongside. Mirrors notwithstanding, I think I'll still get a good night's sleep tonight.