I love the conference held by ISTC every October: the Technical Communication UK conference, also known as TCUK. A little hop over the North Sea takes me to a gathering of really nice people whose conversations and presentations get my synapses working overtime in a very good way. From our technical communication perspective, we can discuss XML, temperature controls for showers, stationery stores, content strategy, captioning, Subject Matter Experts… oh, the list goes on and on and on. I’ve done this in 2010 and 2011. I will do it again in 2012. TCUK12 is a bit special for me This year, I was given a great honor – I was asked to be a keynote speaker for the special track on accessibility and usability. I said yes! I also have a workshop and a panel discussion scheduled. The panel discussion will be moderated by the wonderful Kai Weber a.k.a. @techwriterkai.…
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Have you ever looked up at a night sky packed with stars? My most vivid memory of a night sky was one where the “stars were so densely packed that you couldn’t make out any familiar constellations.” I had an unexpected philosophical moment during my lunch today when I took 11 well-spent minutes to watch this TEDxPhoenix video about looking up. The speaker, Lucianne Walkowicz, works on NASA’s Kepler mission. Basically, she hunts for planets. What a thing to say at cocktail parties when you introduce yourself: I hunt for planets. Wow. What is even more amazing is that we can all help her hunt for planets. There is a site called Planet Hunters where you can become a citizen scientist and help poke through the data to find planets. And while we sift through data to reveal the treasures sent back by our remote eyes (the telescopes), Lucianne Walkowicz…
Comments closedA group of us had just finished an excellent dinner and were now deciding what dessert to eat. Everyone was laughing and talking at once. Except for one person. One person who had, moments before, been joking loudly, fell silent. She sat very still. Her husband noticed and turned serious. “We need to leave now“, he said, and they left. The rest of us paid for our meal and moved to the exit on foot and on wheels. The silent woman and her husband were already farther down the sidewalk heading back to their hotel. I was shocked at what I saw. To me, it looked like the man was walking beside a stiff, wooden figure. The figure was not the sporty, active person I had met a few days previously. This was a person possessed. She was possessed by the pain of fibromyalgia right in the middle of having…
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