STC Berkeley's Next Monthly Meeting


			Next Meetings: Wednesday April 14, 2004 Developing Your Own Professional Web Site Susan Becker and Gwaltney Mountford Do you have a web site? For independent contractors, it's important to have a web site so that old clients can find us after they lose our card, new clients can occasionally happen upon us, and, generally, we can proclaim our existence and expertise to the world. Staff employees need to proclaim their existence to the world, too. A professional web site can provide a place to develop new skills and show them off to current or potential employees. And it can be fun! In this presentation, Susan Becker and Gwaltney Mountford will lead us through a series of questions that can provide a jump-start for developing our own professional web sites. We will also consider the positive points of other tech writer sites, including those of Berkeley STC members. Join us if you want to create your own web site, to update your existing site, or to add your two cents worth on how to develop a professional web presence. Beau Cain is a technical communication consultant ("I troubleshoot documentation projects") as well as an instructor at San Jose State University's Professional Development Center. His growing list of presentations reveals his colorful background in marketing, healthcare, petroleum, career management, and computer technology. Beau diligently served STC members in the Silicon Valley chapter as Public Relations Manager (three years), President, and Employment Information Manager. During its initial year of operation, he served the six chapters of STC NorCal by helping produce two very well received Leadership Events. For this Region 8 conference, Beau served as stem manager (Captain's Mast), Sponsorship Committee manager, and seminar moderator. Currently, he serves as a member of the Society's Communication Support Committee. He is the current Director for Region 8. Beau Cain created his "Book Building With Microsoft Word" class for San Jose State University in 2003, and after one presentation it became part of the technical communication certificate program's core curriculum. Since then, he's been creating courses for SJSU in PowerPoint presentation skills, designing and presenting animated instruction, using Microsoft Office drawing tools, and editing English for machine translation. He's also taught "Writing White Papers" from which he extracted his highly-evaluated "White Papers In Your Future" at STC's conference in Baltimore. As well, he was a volunteer workshop presenter and the publicity coordinator for the Houston chapter, and served the Silicon Valley chapter for the past five years as Public Relations Manager, Employment Information Manager, and President. Wednesday March 10, 2004 CVS for Technical Communicators Jerry Franklin , Member, STC Berkeley The Concurrent Versioning System (CVs) is a free program that's often used by teams of developers who are simultaneously coding the same application. Technical Communicators who work closely with software engineers may be required to know CVs, but they can also use it in almost any situation to manage files in a project, share files among team members, and prepare different releases at the same time. CVs is one of several similar tools, such as Perforce or MS Visual Source Safe, that allows Technical Communicators to accomplish similar tasks. CVs has a command line interface, and thus presents Technical Communicators with a good opportunity to increase their marketability by becoming comfortable, if not proficient, with its basic commands. There are also a few CVs GUIs out there Technical Communicators should know about, as well. After reviewing CVs basic purpose and functionality, Jerry Franklin will demonstrate how CVs is used to develop large enterprise application software (and the documentation that accompanies it.) He'll then suggest additional resources for further enlightenment and good clean fun, before opening up the floor for questions and a rollicking discussion. Jerry Franklin is a member of STC Berkeley, and has more than two decades of content-providing experience in print, broadcast, corporate television, and new media. Jerry is currently the lone technical writer at ZANTAZ, a software company in Pleasanton. As a member of the engineering team, he's had to struggle not only with learning the command line interface of the CVs system, the VI text editor, and UNIX, but also with the processes and gestalt of version control as an integral part of the software development process. Jerry has also written about some of PeopleSoft's integration technologies, as well as performed a variety of more marketing-oriented activities for PeopleSoft, including writing, producing, and managing content for PeopleSoft's intranets, extranets, and corporate Web site. Jerry's most recent claim to fame is that he went to high school with newly-minted Academy Award winner Tim Robbins, and he usually got bigger parts than Tim did. Sure, Tim may have an Oscar now--but he doesn't know CVs! We hope to see you at the Hotel Shattuck on Wednesday, March 10, 2004.
			STC-Berkeley Chapter Meeting Details Continuing in March 2004 and for April 2004, we will meet at the Hotel Shattuck in downtown Berkeley. We meet in the Town Room on the second floor. Networking and conversation start at 6:00 p.m., and dinner at 6:30 p.m. If you want to eat dinner, reservations are required and must be received no later than 12:00 noon the Monday before the meeting. Reservations are necessary so that we can order the right amount of food. Do not contact the restaurant. RSVP Online Use your credit card to order meeting reservations via the chapter website. The meeting fee with dinner for those with advance reservations is: $18 for members with prepaid reservation $15 for student members with prepaid reservation $21 for nonmembers with prepaid reservation If you come for the program only, starting at 7:30 p.m., the fee is $12 for members and nonmembers, and $10 for students. If you are not eating, payments may be made at the door. RSVP by Mail Send checks to Treasurer, Berkeley STC, P.O. Box 1007, Berkeley, 94701.
	All material ©2004 Berkeley STC/Ragged Left. The Ragged Left is published six times a year. For reprint or submission information visit our editorial section. For any questions, comments, or technical problems, please contact the editor.