Great news! Thanks to some superhuman efforts by my publisher (thanks Tim) and the Breakpoint Books (thanks Doug), we managed to have hot-off-the-press copies of “Adobe Captivate 3: The Definitive Guide” at the STC bookstore for the big Annual Summit. I was particularly relieved, because I hadn’t even seen my own copies yet, and wasn’t sure until that day whether I’d have any available for sale or not.

Looks like they did just fine!

I just got back from a family trip to Lake Havasu, Arizona, where we surprised my Mom by having all her daughters, their husbands, and their children show up in the same place. This was actually much harder than it sounds, since we live in five different states and have children ages 6 to 18, with a variety of jobs and clubs and classes and every other thing.

One of the coolest things about it was the birthday present we made using the Picaboo publishing service. It’s a pretty standard on-demand service with a focus on photographs. We spent about a year where all four of us girls wrote down the stories of our childhoods and gathered up and scanned old photos, then my sister Arlene went through and added custom backgrounds (like Lake Wentworth or our family’s classic “gold curtain” backdrop) to the various spreads. We ended up with a large, gorgeous, full-color book that was as successful as we could have hoped (that is, Mom not only cried, but to my knowledge didn’t put the book down for more than a few minutes the entire time).

Another great thing about this particular approach (rather than taking it to a standard print shop) is that the proofs are online, and any of us can order additional copies through the Picaboo online service whenever we like. So we got the deluxe version for Mom, but I will probably need to order a smaller one for my own library.

As if it isn’t enough to prepare for the spring season of conferences (I leave on Saturday for STC’s Annual Summit in Philadelphia), this is also the time that the fall conferences are developing their programs. This year, I’m doing a very cool session with Alison Huettner (my sister-in-law) at DocTrain East in Boston. We’ll be talking about controlled languages like Simplified Technical English. Her doctorate is in linguistics, and she actually helped develop a couple of controlled languages.

There’s a couple of other items in the works, too… but more on that when it is all official!

A recent story in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle talks about the challenges of managing virtual teams, and mentions recommends the book that I co-wrote with Kit Brown and Char James-Tanny last year, “Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools”. It’s great to know that this book is staying useful and current!

I was lucky enough to get some great old family photos the other day from the Huettner of Mobridge Studio (South Dakota, 1911 - 1950 or so). This one is my favorite! Notice the wheel cover advertising - it says “Kodak As You Go” followed by the “Huettner of Mobridge” name.

Apparently, they were encouraging people to use the word “Kodak” as a verb.

Photographer Oscar Huettner spent almost 40 years taking photos of the people of the prairies. Some came to his studio, but he’d just as often go out on the road. He was well known for his portraits, including some of the local Lakota tribal elders. The studio is long gone now - even the building has been sold. But the pictures are still around - many on display at the Klein Museum in Mobridge, South Dakota.

And many still in the family collections! These are where we get the formal portraits along with the more casual, day-to-day stuff. And, like any proud father, Oscar took tons of pictures of his kids. These two are from the mid-1920s, a time when most people saved photography for special occasions.

I’ll be visiting Mobridge this summer, and look forward to seeing more of the artistry that came out of the “Hu-Mo” studio.

Newsweek had an interesting story last week about the recent increasing importance of fonts - it turns out that lots of people from Beyonce to Obama have commissioned custom fonts. The article also has a cool video interview with it.

Aside from the obvious connection of communication to the visual impact of published text, I think it’s interesting to see people devoting time and energy to this level of detail.

It’s a long one this year! I’ve already written about how disappointed I was to miss out on the Content Convergence event in Vancouver and the WritersUA event in Seattle. Looks like I’m going to miss the IEEE RFID conference in Las Vegas and DocTrain West (Vancouver again!) as well. I’m also going to miss out on the IEEE MTT microwave conference - this is the biggie, with attendance measured in the tens of thousands. I hope to go next year, maybe even conduct a short course for them.

But then, boy! I will be THERE at two events. First up is STC Summit in Philadelphia. I’m still trying to work out the details here, but I really don’t want to miss this one! I’ve been to almost every STC annual conference since Minneapolis in 1994, and credit these events with the contacts and visibility that have helped me get to where I am today in the tc field.

I’ll also be speaking at the IEEE PCS conference (IPCC 2008) in Montreal. This is more intimate than STC and somewhat more academically-oriented, but always fun.

It’s tough this year because of other commitments - my daughter is graduating from high school (Congratulations, Heidi!) and I’m heading back East for my own 30-year high school reunion.

With all this going on, it’s also important not to forget about the upcoming Fall conference season! I’m working now on proposals for both DocTrain East in Boston and LavaCon in Hawaii.

One of my favorite things at the local IEEE section is the annual student paper competition. This is my third year of participation. Students may submit any kind of engineering paper, as long as it follows the posted rules (essentially, under 15 pages with an abstract, intro, body, and references). The topics vary widely - this year we had one on a difference amplifier, one on nanotechnology, and one about a new type of spectrometer.

The students also have to present their findings in an oral presentation. We have a pretty detailed judging criteria for both the written and oral components, and the winner gets not only a cash prize but also the opportunity to bring their paper up to the next level (which offers more cash prizes!)

The whole thing is a great combination of the engineering and communication skills, both in the efforts of the students and in the challenge to me as judge and judge recruiter. By the way, I’m thrilled that my colleagues Bob and Richard were able to participate again - it’s always fun working with them! - and we had a new judge this year as well.

But the most exciting part for me is that the area competition will be coming here to Tucson in a couple of weeks, so I get to do it again! The competitors will be the local winners from other universities around the southwest. The meeting will also be host to the micromouse competition.

Note that they have this competition all over the US, so any one who’s interested could probably help out at the local level. All you really need is an IEEE student chapter and a corresponding section willing to kick in the prize money.

Another great conference that I’m missing this year is WritersUA, going on this week in Portland OR. They’ve got almost 500 attendees this year, a really interesting-looking slate of knowledgable speakers. I’m also hearing a number of announcements coming out of this event, mostly from the folks at Madcap, and I would have liked to talk to them about this a bit more. Perhaps I’ll connect with them at the STC Summit in Philadelphia.

As for WritersUA, Char James-Tanny is blogging about it, and at least one of her posts includes links to other people’s conference blogs or posts. Thanks, Char!

Well, it’s St. Patrick’s Day… or more accurately, Lá Fhéile Pádraig Here’s a fun site called Irish Sayings that includes audio clips for important phrases like “Tabhair póg dom, táim Éireannach” (Kiss Me, I’m Irish) and “Pionta Guinness, le do thoil.”

Personally, I’ll be celebrating by watching “Murder She Wrote” by a roaring fire - hopefully, they’ll play the episode that’s set in Ireland!