The February 8, 2012 Chapter Meeting

Louise Galindo is a senior technical editor in the VMware Technical Publications department. VMware is a software company that specializes in virtualization and cloud computing. For the majority of her editing, Louise works in the files, using DITA in XMetal, and works in the content management system. She also works in FrameMaker and edits PDFs using Acrobat Pro. Louise has produced and presented training for Developing Quality Technical Information (based on the IBM book), minimalist writing, topic-based writing, and indexing. She is also the chair of the Tech Pubs Editorial Advisory Group (EAG). Her interests include controlled vocabularies, glossaries, and terminology management. She teaches Technical Communications I and II at UC Berkeley Extension.

Jeff Gardiner is a senior editor in the Content Development group at VMware. Previously, he managed the editorial group at Sun Microsystems. While at Sun, he supervised and contributed to the publication of Read Me First!: A Style Guide for the Computer Industry. Following his work at Sun, he converted eMeter's product documentation from Word to the Confluence wiki and then edited and maintained the content. He also teaches English composition classes at City College of San Francisco.

Deirdre Greene has been in publishing for almost 30 years, starting out by staffing the front desk for a start-up political magazine while in college. She went on to work at Little, Brown, but has eschewed big publishers for smaller companies and the freelance life ever since. She is a founder and the president of Roaring Forties Press, a publishing company that specializes in travel books with a unique perspective, and freelances as a copyeditor, developmental editor, and project manager for clients ranging from the United Nations and Sage Publications to Cisco and Adobe.

Daniel Milne has worked as a technical editor since 2000, first at Siebel University and now at Oracle University (OU). Most of his time these days is devoted to editing training materials in PowerPoint and Word, but he finds time for other supporting work within Oracle University. He maintains and publishes the OU Style Guide, and he created and maintains several internal wikis, online forums, and workspaces related to editing, OU style, and templates. He participates in training for new curriculum developers, and in committees for templates and authoring tools. Daniel has a BA from SF State University in Technical and Professional Writing, with a minor in Economics. The most important lesson he learned in the (very wonderful) TPW program is to always keep your audience in mind in everything you write or edit.

Facilitator: Linda Urban will facilitate the panel. She has more than 25 years of experience in designing and developing technical information and instruction. A consultant, she is available to work on projects (needs assessment, user and workplace research, and design and development of content and instruction), deliver workshops, and consult with and coach writers and teams to clarify their content strategy and improve the quality of their documentation. Linda also teaches in the Technical Communication program at UC Berkeley Extension. She can be found on twitter @lindaurban.