Current events

What? Title

Who? Speaker

When?  Date

Composing with Generative AI in TechComm: Insights from Digital Marketing

Digital advertising platforms for search engine and social media marketing have embraced and integrated machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) ubiquitously into their ad creation workflows. The result for marketing communicators is that composing digital advertisements on these platforms combines the efforts of human communicators and AI. Few opt-out options are available for marketing communicators to compose their own ads without AI intervention. This presentation envisions a similar possible future for technical communicators, who will be asked to compose support docs and technical specifications in platforms that incorporate ML and AI. From summarizing content or documenting APIs to creating and publishing scripts, technical writers are integrating AI into their daily work. As digital platforms seek to incorporate AI into their products, this presentation wonders about the possibility of that ML and AI are (or will soon be) built into platforms like component content management systems (CCMS) and team-based documentation tools, then offers insights from marketing communication for composing with AI.

Daniel L. Hocutt serves as web manager and adjunct professor at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia, USA, in its School of Professional and Continuing Studies. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from the University of Richmond. 21 years after earning his master’s degree, he earned a PhD in English with a technical communication dissertation from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. He’s worked as a secondary English teacher, a residential gifted education program director, and a freelance web developer, and he has nearly 25 years of experience as a higher education web content strategist and marketer. He brings to technical communication his experience as a marketing communicator, identifying areas where the two fields intersect and complement each other. Recent contributions to special issues in Computers and Composition and Technical Communication share research and insights from his marcom experience to a techcomm audience. His research focuses on the intersection of technology, data, and human rhetorical agency, seeking to prepare techcomm students and professionals for AI-augmented workplaces of the present and the future.

Enhancing Health Literacy through Controlled Natural Languages

This talk will explore the use of controlled natural languages and plain language techniques to enhance health literacy in the medical domain, with a focus on Type 1 Diabetes patient brochures. By simplifying medical terminology and ensuring clarity in communication, these approaches improve accessibility and empower patients to better understand and manage their condition. The discussion highlights the synergy between technical communication and effective terminology management in advancing patient-centered healthcare.

Federica Vezzani, University of Padova (Italy), holds a PhD in terminology and is a tenure-track assistant professor at the Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies of the University of Padova, Italy. She is a member of the ISO/TC 37 "Language and Terminology”. Her main research interests are terminology, specialised translation, and technical communication. In particular, she focuses on the management of multilingual terminology in the medical domain, and she has developed the FAIR terminology paradigm for the optimal organisation of findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable terminological data.

Highlights of the Census of North American Technical Communicators

A Census of Technical Communicators sponsored by the Society for Technical Communication conducted just before the pandemic explored who we are and the state of our profession:

• Our educational and professional backgrounds
• Our current jobs: job titles, characteristics of the organizations in which we work, reporting relationships, types of projects on which we work, and tools and processes used in our work,
• Professional development
• Satisfaction in our careers in technical communication and current positions.
• Career plans for the next five years
• Opinions and concerns and future of technical communication

• How academics differ from practicing professionals on these issues

So who are we? And what is the state of our profession? And to what extent does this portrait—primarily representing North American technical communicators—reflect technical communicators in other continents?

This interactive webinar explores these issues. The researcher provides highlights of the results. Participants can consider how to use these results to consider how to craft their curricula, advise students on their own careers and work situations, compare to the general tendencies of the field and suggest what a follow-up census might address.   

Saul Carliner is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Education at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He has conducted censuses of technical communicators in North America, Learning and Development professionals in Canada, and 50 years alumni of the Educational Technology program at his institution. Among his other research interests are the design of materials for instruction and information in the workplace, the management of groups that produce these materials, and related issues of professionalism. His research has led to over 200 publications including 10 books and over 600 presentations. Also an industry consultant, he has advised a variety of corporations, government agencies, and nonprofits in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America on management, design, and evaluation issues. He is a Fellow of the Institute for Performance and Learning and a Fellow and past international president of the Society for Technical Communication, past editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, and the current chair of the Publications Advisory Board for the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. He holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, University of Minnesota, and Georgia State University.

Tuesday, April 15 at 5 pm CET