Here's a little bit of a preview of the October Region 2 conference Making Sense of Making Cents: Business and Technical Communications. We have an impressive list of speakers and subjects:

Derek Torres and Ethan McCallum, Directors of Standard Six, a technical communications consultancy based in Chicago and Paris, are presenting "Creating a Business Model Built for Success: How to Reduce Chance of Failure in the First Year". They will talk about their recent experience establishing the business in Paris. They will discuss precisely what steps to take in defining your business model and how to build your foundation in order to minimize or reduce the chance of your company failing within the first year.

Geoff Hart, a self-employed editor and translator, will present "Improving speed and accuracy of technology transfer: a case study of process re-engineering ". He'll describe a "Kaizen" exercise to revise the publication process in an R&D institute. The new process increased efficiency without sacrificing quality. Other communicators can adopt a similar process.

Stuart Mudie and Derek Torres are co-authors of the soon to be released Unofficial Guide to Windows Vista, published by Wiley publications. They are both experienced authors and frequent contributors to the STC magazine, Intecom. As Microsoft gets ready to launch its new operating system, Derek and Stuart will give us a first-hand view of "The Impact of Windows Vista on Technical Communications" with its large number of new features and improvements that will certainly have an impact on technical communicators and how we do our jobs working with new versions of many of the tools and applications we know.

Patrick Hofmann, of n0rmal.com, will present "The ROI of Usability and Information Design: How simple processes and common sense saved companies millions". His presentation will teach usability testing techniques and customer insight-gathering strategies that are not only affordable, but in some cases, free. There are countless ways to evaluate your products and services with little to no investment. Creating usable, visually helpful information can please your users and your company's bottom line.

Ian Larner, Information Architect and Software Engineer at IBM in the UK, will present "DITA: (The Darwin Information Typing Architecture) Obtaining business value from information". He'll examine how DITA can help companies obtain business value from information, with reference to real experiences within IBM. With DITA, companies can gain faster time to return, increased consistency, reuse, and collaboration.

James Lawrence, currently Technical Publications Manager at McAfee will show us how Tech Pubs is run as a small business within McAfee. From Business Plan and SWOT analysis, through to restructuring and promotional activities. Can his team be more than a 'necessary' cost-centre?

Sarah O'Keefe is founder and president of Scriptorium Publishing and author of several books on FrameMaker and structured authoring with XML. Her presentation will focus on how to analyze the business case (time, quality, and especially money) for XML implementation. She'll explain how to put together a compelling business justification for several typical implementation scenarios.

Nad Rosenberg, founder and president of TechWRITE, Inc. will speak on "Do-It-Yourself Tools that Enhance the Quality/Cost Equation". She'll describe how to develop tools that improve customer service, enhance product quality and monitor time-accounting metrics.

B. Noz Urbina, of Mekon Ltd., provides XML solutions consultancy services to global organisations and SMEs. His presentation will focus on the ROI of usable structured content solutions across different business functions. He discusses developing XML solutions which enable corporations to communicate with customers through a growing variety of channels, micro-customize products, operate in multiple national markets while also maintaining accurate and reliable content.

Please be aware that this is a tentative list, other speakers are still under consideration. This list is subject to change and non-contractual. The order in this list does not represent the order of the program.

Contact email for the Region 2 Conference:		conference2006@stcuk.org
		registration@stcuk.org