There’s a new content management conference coming up this March called “Content Convergence and Integration 2008“. I’m pretty excited because it looks like a terrific program, it is co-sponsored by someone whose work I really admire (Rahel Bailie) and it is on the West coast (Vancouver) making travel just a tiny bit easier from Tucson. It also looks like it has lots of really high-level, strategic type of topics, and not quite as many intro-level presentations as some other conferences.

I’m particularly looking forward to hearing Darren Barefoot, blogger extraordinaire. He’s another one of these people who seem to have a dozen projects going successfully at any one time. He is one of the organizers for Northern Voices, a conference on blogging and social media; he’s got a new e-book out about social media and marketing; and he’s also got a lot to say about living in different cultures, movies, books, and hockey.

Another one of my favorite speakers will also be at this conference: Micheal Priestley, IBM DITA architect and all-around fun guy, will be talking about bringing DITA content to Web 2.0 applications. Jim Romano from Prisma will be there as well, talking about global audiences.

The other nice thing about this event is that they’ve assigned a theme to each day, so if my schedule gets tight (as it does every Spring!) and I have to limit the days I can attend, I can still see all the sessions in one category (Day 1 is content, day 2 is technology, day 3 is user relationships).

I recently did a short podcast on accessibility for IEEE/PCS, and it is now posted and available at the PCS web site. Because one of the important concepts in accessibility is ensure that content can be accessed by people of all abilities, there is also a text version of the podcast on that site.

I just notice that my proposal has been accepted for the IEEE/PCS IPCC conference this summer in Montreal. The theme is “Opening the Information Economy” and keynote speaker will be Saul Carliner. Though smaller than other events (like STC’s annual conference) this one usually has a very intimate feel to it, and I always get so much more from each topic when I have the chance to spend time talking to the presenters. Plus there’s lots going on in Montreal - it should be lots of fun!

Oh, and in case anyone’s interested, my topic will be “Ready for Anything: Writing Business Continuity Plans and Conducting Awareness Training.”

I’ve been working on Engineers Week projects here in Tucson for a while now and they’re starting to shape up. I’m officially the IEEE representative, and expect to be helping to staff the IEEE table at “Mall Day” on February 16th. We’ll have a Jacob’s Ladder - that’s the cool-looking tall tube thing you see in almost every Frankenstein laboratory where sparks run up the two vertical wires making all kinds of sparkly and crackly noises. VERY visual (though it really serves no other purpose). The kids love it! There will also be an Engineers Week banquet with a speaker and door prizes. All this is just our tiny local efforts as part of the larger, National Engineers Week (see www.eweek.org).

The funny thing is that one of the trade mags I get is also called eWeek (at www.eweek.COM), though as far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with Engineers Week. As part of my IEEE efforts, I’ve been doing a number of presentations on information security, emergency preparedness, and business continuity. eWeek the Magazine has recently had several articles on this topic, including a very interesting interview with Drew Martin, the CIO for Sony. He talks about the lessons learned during the wildfires in San Diego last fall. He summarizes by saying:

” When you try to draw up your business continuity plans, you deal with scenarios you think might occur. That’s an important process, but the fact is, you can’t predict how an emergency situation is going to unfold. In some respects, your time is better spent figuring out how you’re going to communicate and how you’re going to get good information to keep the business running.”

A more recent issue of eWeek has an article called “10 things you should know about business continuity.” Communications comes in right in the middle at number 6.

So what do these two things have in common besides similar web addresses? They’re both on my to-do list this month, and they both address the idea of bringing information to people who need it. And isn’t that what technical communication is all about?