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Subject:40th Conference in Dallas From:Eric Ray <ejray -at- OKWAY -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU> Date:Mon, 2 Aug 1993 16:21:01 CDT
Ann Balaban said:
>Also, many of the attendees I talked with were dissatisfied with the
>level of expertise offered at this year's conf. We feel that the true
>technical writers are left out. Most of the sessions addressed commercial
>software user doc writers and financial/banking inst. writers. Most of
>it sounded more like business writing than technical writing.
I know this is a little old, but I have to respond. I was at
the conference in Dallas, and I thought it was outstanding! I
only saw one presentation that was poor, all the rest ranged from
good to great. I will admit that I am very eclectic in my
interests and went to presentations on research, on computer
documentation, on management, and a number of other things, so I
wasn't really aware of or bothered by any bias to or against
specific areas. I certainly felt that the conference met my
needs, and I am a "true" technical writer, or at least I was the
last time I looked.
Sorry for bringing this back up, but I had to say that I enjoyed
the conference and that it helped me in my job, my studies,
and--not coincidentally--my contacts with other technical
communicators.
I will say that I got more out of the conference than some of the
people I talked with in Dallas, but I also think that
conferences, like most other "enrichment activities" tend to be
as useful as the participants make them.