Society for Technical Communication

A 13-year veteran of the Business Services field, Beth Tompkins is a self-employed Management Consultant currently managing the adoption strategy of Merrill Lynch’s domestic rollout of Salesforce.com. Beth’s 10 years of experience developing divisions and departments within start-ups and corporations in profit and non-profit environments empowers her unique perception and entrepreneurial approach to business challenges. Beth’s wide range of entrepreneurial experience includes developing and managing departments and resources in the business services, training, documentation, internationalization, user analysis, adoption and marketing fields within technology, affiliate marketing, software, and retail sectors.

Sharon Burton has worked in the industry as a technical writer, consultant, documentation manager, teacher, and small business owner. Currently, she’s a product manager/product evangelist at MadCap Software, where she’s responsible for designing and showing technical communication tools like MadCap Blaze, MadCap Analyzer, and others.

Fred Wersan has been a technical writer since 1989. As the only writer at MAK Technologies for more than 10 years, he has full responsibility for all aspects of product documentation. He uses a variety of scripts written with Macro Express and FrameScript to automate various ad hoc and ongoing aspects of his production processes.

Cheryl Morrison: Cheryl has been a technical writer and editor for more than 25 years. She has presented to the New York Metro and Connecticut chapters of STC, to Editorial Freelancers’ Association meetings, and to the Oracle Hyperion Information Delivery department.

Susan Ledford: With 40-plus years of experience teaching reading and writing and 10-plus years of experience editing documents for Hyperion Solutions and Oracle Corporation, Susan particularly enjoys figuring out how to simultaneously reduce cost and effort (for the publisher and writer) and increase readability and usability (for the reader and user). She holds a B.A. in Letters (history, philosophy, and literature) and an M.A. in Education and has taught technical writing at San Jose State University and instructional design for science and mathematics at the University of Montana.

Nicky is a Senior Information Developer at ComponentOne. She has been a technical communicator for more than twelve years. She started her career writing books and producing them in hardcopy format, but she has since embraced online help and user assistance, Web design, single‐sourcing, usability, e-learning, and knowledge management. Nicky has experience writing for software products in a variety of industries, including media sales, industrial automation, simulation, and pharmacy. She has given talks at the STC international, local, and regional levels, and has been pleased to share her experience with other STC leaders on Leadership Day at the annual conference. She has presented at other conferences and local meetings as well. Topics have included various tools and technologies, user assistance design, single sourcing, and wikis for knowledge management. She has been published in conference proceedings and on the Web, as well as in STC’s Tieline and STC Pittsburgh’s Blue Pencil. Nicky is currently an at-large director of STC. Before that, she was on the Board of the Pittsburgh Chapter. During her term as president, the chapter was recognized as a chapter of excellence; during her vice presidency, as a chapter of distinction. She earned a B.A. in Journalism from the Pennsylvania State University.

Nicky is a Senior Information Developer at ComponentOne. She has been a technical communicator for more than twelve years. She started her career writing books and producing them in hardcopy format, but she has since embraced online help and user assistance, Web design, single‐sourcing, usability, e-learning, and knowledge management. Nicky has experience writing for software products in a variety of industries, including media sales, industrial automation, simulation, and pharmacy. She has given talks at the STC international, local, and regional levels, and has been pleased to share her experience with other STC leaders on Leadership Day at the annual conference. She has presented at other conferences and local meetings as well. Topics have included various tools and technologies, user assistance design, single sourcing, and wikis for knowledge management. She has been published in conference proceedings and on the Web, as well as in STC’s Tieline and STC Pittsburgh’s Blue Pencil. Nicky is currently an at-large director of STC. Before that, she was on the Board of the Pittsburgh Chapter. During her term as president, the chapter was recognized as a chapter of excellence; during her vice presidency, as a chapter of distinction. She earned a B.A. in Journalism from the Pennsylvania State University.

Naomi Robbins is a consultant and seminar leader who specializes in the graphical display of data. She trains employees of corporations and organizations on effective data presentation. She also reviews documents and presentations for clients, suggesting improvements or alternative presentations as appropriate. She is the author of Creating More Effective Graphs, published by John Wiley (2005). Dr. Robbins is a past officer of the Statistical Graphics Section of the American Statistical Association.