Call for Proposals: Practical Conference on Communication 2012

The East Tennessee Chapter of the STC (Society for Technical Communication) is hosting the 27th regional Practical Conference on Communication (PCOC) in Knoxville, TN, the evening of Friday, October 26, and all day Saturday, October 27, 2012 and has issued a call for proposals on presentations and workshops.

Technical communication professionals are invited to submit a proposal for a one-hour workshop in which to share perspectives on present and future “directions” of the profession. Conference organizers are requesting that presenters include participant activities in workshop scope.

Suggested topic areas include:

How to write proposals to win grants
Repurposing content/documentation
Tips for working with subject matter experts
Review of research on a technical communication topic
Writing about science and technology for the general public
Balancing competing obligations and expectations on the job
Methods for maintaining quality when the quality budget is $0
Why technical communicators need to develop relationships on the job
Using or selecting software to address a documentation or training need
Retooling after performing the same tasks with the same tools for too long
Answers to questions I did not know I had about life in the tech comm lane
Transferring into a tech comm position: What are the basics I need in my tool box?

Ideas for participant activity

Create a poll
Use Socratic method
Include a short exercise
Present a “before” and “after” for analysis
Ask participants to collaborate on a question
Present a problem at the beginning that participants can solve by the end of the workshop

Proposals should be emailed to pcocmanager@stc-etc.org by July 30, 2012 and should include brief responses to the following: