WritersUA 2009: Day 2

The sessions I attended today were:

• Keynote: Microsoft 2.0: What to expect in the post-Gates era (an interview with journalist and Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley and Matthew Ellison) (details…)
• Managing UA Projects with Spreadsheets (Michael Hughes): Mike showed us some neat ways to use filters and pivot tables in Excel to manage documentation projects. Excel experts may have found this a little basic, but for non-experts like me, it was pitched perfectly! Mike is an excellent speaker, engages the audience really well, and had some good content and an excellent take-away tutorial for us to implement in our documentation departments and for our documentation projects.
• User Assistance in Web Forms (Luke Wroblewski) (details…)
• Using Simple Pictures to Communicate Complex Ideas (Donna Safko): This was a hands-on session with Sharpies and paper, and Donna proved that anyone can draw simple diagrams and pictures to make a point and convey information. A fun session.

After the sessions were over, the vendors did product demos — I attended the Author-it product demonstration to get a glimpse of some of the new stuff coming out (or just out), such as Author-it Aspect and Author-it Assist, both pretty cool products.

Between 6 and 7pm there were nibblies and drinks and Guitar Hero for those who were into it, then ACE (the Australian Cultural Exchange evening — an unofficial event) got underway with drinks and a meal at The Blarney Stone, an Irish pub near the corner of 3rd and Stewart in Seattle.

Other networking opportunities were breakfast (part of the Conference registration) and lunch on our own. I was meant to meet up with the guys I’m on the panel with tomorrow, but we couldn’t find each other, so I wandered down to the food hall at the Westlake Center with Paul O and Paul N, and after getting our meals we spotted Chuck and sat with him.

My other conference links:

• WritersUA 2009: Day 1 (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/writersua-2009-day-1/)
• Interview with Scott McCloud (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/interview-with-scott-mccloud/)
• Interview with Mary Jo Foley (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/interview-with-mary-jo-foley/)
• User Assistance in Web Forms: Luke Wroblewski (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/user-assistance-in-web-forms/)
• WritersUA 2009: Day 3 (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/writersua-2009-day-3/)
• I just spotted a one-legged woman… (https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/i-just-spotted-a-one-legged-woman/)

Related links:

• http://ffeathers.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/writersua-2009-day-2/
• http://ffeathers.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/australian-cultural-evening-at-writersua-2009/

[Links last checked April 2009]