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It’s the climb…

If you are on social media–specifically Facebook, you know that Facebook will show you “memories” from past posts on a given day. Recently, it’s been showing me posts and photos from what I think was very much a breakthrough day in the start of my career–spending 36 hours in Portland, OR at LavaCon 2012. I had done a webinar in about four months prior for Adobe, as someone who used to be in their marketing team discovered me, and had me participate in their webinar series at the time. But it was Adobe’s invitation to “cover” Adobe Day the day before the big start of LavaCon for this blog that was my first real introduction into the tech comm universe–I guess you can say my “debut to” tech comm society (like a debutante of sorts). There, I met many people that I had only known through social media, and remain friends with them to this day. Seven months or so from this writing will mark the 10th anniversary of the first STC Summit that I attended in Atlanta (which ironically will be in Atlanta again this year), and met a whole bunch more people similarly.

What’s hanging on in my mind is the journey I’ve had to take from that point at LavaCon 2012 to now…how many job changes I’ve had, how many dry spells of unemployment I’ve had, how many jobs that were good or bad, my adventures with STC and other tech comm outlets, and finally, all the people. I mean, some people that I met at LavaCon in that very short spell there are still friends who I rely on, and who I consider mentors. Same with those I met at my first Summit. Some of them gave me exposure and breaks to help me find jobs along the way and foster my writing. Sometimes, I’ve learned things that were not tech comm related that have either been set by example or were a good life skill. I think the point is that–WOW! Over the last 10 years, I’ve met SO many people in the tech comm field that have supported me along the rough road I’ve had to take along the way to get to where I am now, who didn’t give up on me when I had given up on myself. Hence, to get to where I am now, it’s been “a climb”.

These days, I’m in a good place professionally. For the moment, I like being a full-time employee, which I really haven’t been for more than 22 years (since before my son was born). I’m fortunate in that I get to work remotely, as this has always been important so I could be flexible and available for my family. I get to flex my tech comm muscles, and I feel like I do my job well, and have gained the trust of those I work with. I reflect on both the good contracts and not-so-good contracts I had, and how they’ve all helped me focus on what I do best, learn skills along the way, and figure out what I really want from my career. I’ve also advanced to being elected as a board director for the STC with some hard work, a lot of support, and some luck thrown in there, too. All the tech comm friends I’ve had along the way have supported me both professionally and with my STC endeavors, and that’s been a big help.

The one area that is suffering right now, however, is my sanity as a parent. I’ve written often about my son over the years. You would think that as a young adult with Asperger’s Syndrome who’s had so much support over many years, he’d be in a good spot. However, we’ve hit a big snag. He’s SO close to being done with his degree, but his program requires working at FOUR internships (basically, working for about 18 months as an apprentice) during his participation in the program. He’s made two attempts at working, and he never gets past working a full week. For him, working three eight-hour days plus two days of classes is just too much. He’s also putting a lot of pressure on himself because he feels he needs to be “perfect” or at least better than any other newbies there so that he can stand out, but he can’t keep up with the pace. He’s spent more time in a dealership bathroom crying than I think most people ever have! He’s just not ready for that. So far, the director of the program is allowing him to continue to take classes, but he’s not so flexible with this internship thing. He’s also not helpful, as it’s obvious that my son needs to be in an environment where accuracy of the work supersedes speed, which is not the environment of your average car dealership. The program director insists that the students need to find jobs on their own–which my son has done twice now, but he won’t help give us any leads for someone who might be a better fit for my kid so that he can gain some confidence and experience. We’re expected to figure out how to do this on our own. We’re all frustrated with this situation, to say the least. It’s actually giving me PTSD.

My husband and I have been looking for alternative programs where my son could transfer his credits. We’re also at a point where we’re trying to find alternative majors or training for my son, because his interest and confidence in his current major is waning. With his very, VERY narrow set of interests and a huge lack of motivation, this is proving very difficult.

I’ve been suffering from burnout syndrome for a long time, and I’m just so used to it that I truly don’t know how to full relax. I recently read that parents of special needs children that are higher functioning often have more stress than those who are much more dependent. So right now, my stress is so bad that I’m starting to not only do the usual of losing sleep and being grumpy and have the occasional eye twitching, but now my body is throwing in the occasional heart palpitations when I’m not even doing anything that stresses me out. That can’t be good.

So, while I’ve come so far because of the professional support I’ve gotten towards an important part of my life–establishing a solid career, now I have to figure out how to find the support to keep parenting and help my kid so that he can find some success himself.

It’s still a climb to balance this work/life thing. I’ve got the work thing down now, thankfully, and hopefully it stays this way for a long while. But this life thing…UGH.

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Adobe Day @ Lavacon 2013 – Rich Media in Framemaker with Matt Sullivan

photo from www.portlandoregon.gov/parks
Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden
photo from http://www.portlandoregon.gov/parks

Matt Sullivan presented the last individual presentation for Adobe Day at Lavacon 2013, and it was a little different than what I had seen before. To me, it was like Portland’s Crystal Spring Rhododendron Gardens, because while Portland is known for its rose gardens, here’s something that’s different, but not out of place either.

MattSullivan
Matt Sullivan doing his presentation.

Matt recently co-authored the book, Unstructured Framemaker 11 with Sarah O’Keefe, and took the time to show us some of the more special features of Framemaker 11, specifically in reference to the use of rich media and XML. What made this a different presentation from what I had seen before was two-fold. First, Adobe prides itself in presenting these Adobe Day Thought Leadership events as the antithesis of a long commercial for the Adobe Technical Communications Suite applications, so having this presentation about Framemaker specifically seemed to go against that. But the deeper the presentation went, it was obvious that it wasn’t as much about how to include rich media in Framemaker (although that was certainly presented), it was about opening up minds to the idea of using rich media in digital documentation, and Framemaker happened to be the tool used to demonstrate this. Matt Sullivan is one of the foremost experts out there on the use of Framemaker (he did co-author a book, after all, and I’ve seen the book–it’s a hefty tome), so this made a lot of sense. The second part that seemed different was that it was a demonstration at all. As mentioned before, I was a little confused that an aspect of Framemaker was being demonstrated.  For those who were familiar with the product, it was easier to follow along. For those who weren’t as familiar with the product, they could keep up, but it didn’t necessarily have the same impact, but opened eyes to possibilities.

All that aside, Matt gave a lively demonstration of how one can produce rich media output from DITA/XML. Because this was a live demo, it was hard to track all the nuances of the presentation, so there weren’t a lot of notes taken as it would be difficult to describe the processes step-by-step as he was doing them. The audience went along for the journey through these processes, and we could see how Matt used Framemaker to include of rich media. Matt showed us how one can place videos, flash components, and other multimedia into Framemaker docs. He also showed us how to integrate these into the DITA map, and how a PDF document can be produced for both print and interactive versions. One of the best examples Matt showed us was  how 3D models can be used in Framemaker documents in addition to control tables. Matt explained that the beauty of the ability to add rich media to documentation is that it’s all about the single-sourcing features to be able to integrate the rich media.  The other part of what makes it optimal is that rich media can be saved to online formats. He stressed that rich media can be used in unstructured Framemaker as well as structured Framemaker.

Matt has also done several Adobe webinars covering much of the information presented in this presentation and more. As a refresher, he offered a 45-minute demo with the details found at http://wp.me/p1KX8V-4P, which is also available on his blog at http://mattrsullivan.com.

While it was a little difficult to cover and summarize this presentation (no fault of Matt’s–he did an excellent job), as I said before, this was something new for me to experience at an Adobe Day.  I learned not only about how to include multimedia objects in Framemaker specifically, but Matt was also showing how valuable rich media can be when used correctly and methodically in almost any kind of documentation and content out there, which is really the more important part of the bigger picture. As technical communicators, we need to remember that we don’t have to be limited by text and stand-alone images.

(Matt, if you need to correct anything I’ve said here or would like to add anything, please feel free to add in the Comments section!)

Next in the Adobe Day -Lavacon 2013 coverage: Val Swisher’s presentation.

(Yes, I’m going backwards with how everything was presented. Why? Because I can. 🙂 )

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Everything’s Coming Up Roses! : Why I’ll be going to Adobe Day at Lavacon 2013

Ethel Merman can't wait to go to Adobe Day at Lavacon 2013--and she's been gone almost 30 years!
Ethel Merman can’t wait to go to Adobe Day at Lavacon 2013–and she’s been gone almost 30 years!

A little more than a month from this writing, Adobe will be hosting an Adobe Day event at the 2013 LavaCon Conference on Social Media and Content Strategies. It will feel a little sentimental for me, because I felt like I had come into my own when attending the same event last year. I remember my excitement at hearing all the speakers and learning so much information from them as a newly-minted technical communicator. All the information that I soaked in during last year’s Lavacon Adobe Day was put to good use, as I was able to use the information when speaking at interviews when I was job searching. I’m confident that the information I learned at the event helped me get the job I have right now.

Now, I’m excited that Adobe is bringing the event back to Lavacon this year.  I think I’m just as excited as last year, to be honest! Having now attended two Adobe Day events (the other being the one at the 2013 STC Summit), I know I’m in for a great time.

AdobeDayLavacon2013AdAdobe has adopted a theme around the location of the Lavacon Adobe Day, namely around Portland, Oregon’s nickname of “The City of Roses.”  I got to thinking about this, and it seems totally appropriate.  If you think about it, technical communicators are the gardeners and landscapers of content and technical communication. We need to sow and care for our documentation as if they are our gardens and plants.  I know that I grow with each event with my own knowledge, and that’s why I like attending them.

And how is it that we describe growing roses? I believe the expression is that roses are “cultivated”, which implies to me that they aren’t just grown, but they are carefully tended to, bad stuff weeded out, and they are pruned until they are just right, much like technical communication should be.  If these steps are done correctly, diligently, and thoughtfully, rose plants should bloom in full.  The same applies to our documentation–our gardens! The speakers at Adobe Day will be helping us learn the tools and methods we need to make our “gardens” grow!

I’ve seen many of the speakers listed for the event before, speaking about different topics. They always have fantastic insights. I’m also looking forward to seeing some other presenters that I haven’t heard from before.  The great thing about Adobe Day events is that isn’t never the same thing twice.  Topics change and shift with the times, and the talks reflect of that reality.  World-class experts helping us all learn how to make our “gardens” grow on a global scale? Priceless.  The fact that the event is FREE and that it’s not a big info-mercial for Adobe is an added bonus. Adobe makes a very concerted effort to make sure that the event is topic-centric, not software endorsement-centric.  Their goal is to help technical communicators grow in knowledge, and the thought leadership they gather for each of these events are top notch.  Who wouldn’t want to go to something like that?

As I said earlier, I feel that I grow each time that I attend an Adobe Day event.  I’ve already seen how it has helped open my mind, and that knowledge has given me a boost both in job interviews and in the workplace.  I bring back the best ideas to help me not only grow my own career, but to also help the company I work for grow with the times as well.  The last thing any company needs is to be in the weeds, and these talks definitely help with the weeding process of what best practices are to be used. The best ideas are cultivated and presented to us!

So, if you are going to Lavacon this year, or if you are going to be in the Portland, Oregon area on the morning of October 20th, I strongly encourage you to attend this great event. I’ll definitely be there in full force, and I’ll be covering the event live through my Twitter feed as well.

If you do decide to go, be sure to register at the link below, so they know you are coming. They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but that’s included in the event, too, so sign up here:
http://adobedayatlavacon2013.campaignsandevents.com/

See you there!