It's coming up fast - summer is slipping away and soon it will be autumn. Time to book a place at the STC Region 2 conference to be held this October in London!

This conference is going to make a huge difference to your attitude, your practice and your vision of your career. Business needs technical communications, and technical communications makes good business. It's time to focus on how the things we do improve the bottom line of businesses.

Speakers from Europe, the UK and North America discuss what industry needs from skilled communicators, ways that we can increase our value to the business types. Just to give you an idea of what's happening on each day, here's a little summary:

Friday

• Patrick Hofmann - The ROI of Usability and Information Design: How simple processes and common sense saved companies millions
• Ian Larner - DITA: (The Darwin Information Typing Architecture) Obtaining business value from information
• James Lawrence - Create a small business within your company
• Sarah O'Keefe - how to analyze the business case for XML implementation
• Nad Rosenberg - Do-It-Yourself Tools that Enhance the Quality/Cost Equation
• Stuart Mudie and Derek Torres - The Impact of Windows Vista on Technical Communications
• Silvia Cambié - Moving from tactical to strategic communications

The UK chapter of STC is organising a sightseeing event, with a meal for Friday evening, which includes the STC Board of Directors. Everyone who wants to come needs to register and the costs (unfortunately) are separate from the conference fees. See details as they become available on the website.

Saturday

• Derek Torres and Ethan McCallum - Creating a Business Model Built for Success: How to Reduce Chance of Failure in the First Year
• Geoff Hart - Improve speed and accuracy of technology transfer: a case study of process re-engineering
• Kit Brown and Char James -Tanney - managing multi-national, multi-site teams over the web
• B. Noz Urbina - ROI of usable structured content solutions across different business functions
• Panel discussion moderated by Brian Martin - the panellists include Paula Berger, Cindy Currie, Andrea Ames, Derek Torres, Patrick Hofmann, Silvia Cambié

After the panel we'll have time for a raffle and some wine and cheese.

This conference is designed to address many issues that technical communicators are facing currently, or will be facing in the near future. To keep our profession moving forward we need to think proactively. So take this incredible opportunity to visit London and make some important discoveries about your career path.

Book your spot now!

Sincerely,
Nancy Halverson,
Chair, STC R2 2006 Organizing Committee
President, STC-UK

www.stcuk.org/R2conf