tekom Romania onsite-event in Cluj-Napoca, 23rd of November 2023 Topic: Content at the cross-roads of soft skills, tech skills, and AI

tekom Romania onsite-event in Cluj-Napoca, 23rd of November 2023 
Topic: Content at the cross-roads of soft skills, tech skills, and AI

16:30 – 20:30
Speakers and presentations
1.    Welcome by Voichiţa Alexandra Ghenghea, tekom Romania delegate, University “Politehnica” Bucharest

Key takeaways:
-    tekom.eu and tekom.ro is always looking out for new members, as it believes that a strong community of practice is the foundation of lasting professional relations;
-    tekom.eu is the largest organization of Technical Communicators in Europe;
-    tekom.eu provides learning and professional development opportunities;
-    People are at the heart of tekom.eu, so Technical Communicators are encouraged to actively get involved in the community;
-    tekom Romania organized 2 onsite events in Cluj-Napoca this year (15th of June and 23rd of November) and would like to extend the invitation of getting involved in tekom Romania to all who believe that sharing is caring.

2.    Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and AI by Melania Duma (Senior Technical Writer @RWS) & Sonia Pavlenko (Technical Writer @Ascom)

Summary: Technical Writers have a mandate to clarify information, and curate knowledge. But what happens if documentation contains ambiguous or vague turns of phrases? A human SME could spot them, but can AI rise to the occasion?

Key takeways:
-    Structure is a mechanism that trumps uncertainty.
-    The importance of structure was exemplified with the disastrous effects a PPT slide had on a Columbia space mission.
-    Knowledge of linguistic rules trumps ambiguity.
-    Lack of structure and structural ambiguity lead to content which AI tools cannot work with.
-    Human intervention is required either at the beginning of the process (before feeding content to the AI) or after the process (after AI produces the results).
-    Technical Writers are SMEs who can assess the validity of AI results and who can ensure that AI is trained on content/data which is accurate and logical.
-    Technical Writers still perform THE most important task in the Technical Communication world, namely extracting information from various sources and clarifying it.

3.    Practical LLM - The Basics by Dan Magheruşanu (Data Engineer @ Globant) 

Summary: LLMs and AI have showed us that machines can not only parse and poll on large amounts of data, but also produce text, code, applications in a seemingly human-like fashion. But how are LLMs created in the first place? How do they work? How can we best use LLMs?

Key takeaways:
-    LLMs can be used as such or can be integrated in applications.
-    LLMs require curated data and training.
-    LLMs are based on tokens, vectors, embeddings, and algorithms.
-    LLMs are biased and need training and retraining all the time.
-    Azure OpenAI (and not only) provides a sandbox for experimenting with prompting and training.

4.    Artificial intelligence Adoption in Software Development and its Impact on Software Documentation by Monica Chiş (Freelancer IT Software Consultant & Trainer)

Summary: A large amount of documentation is generated for different reasons during the software development process. Adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in software development can significantly enhance the process of software documentation in several ways. Let's discuss how AI adoption in software development will affect software documentation.

Key takeaways:
-    Quality can be improved and benchmarked against historical data.
-    Historical data, documents, and information must be curated before adopting an AI tool.
-    AI tools will not solve our problems.
-    AI tools need human guidance to ensure productivity.
-    AI tools require trained personnel.

5.    Workshop:  The Perfect Documentation doesn't exi... by Radu Bazavan (Senior Technical Writer @Connatix)

Summary: Hands-on, interactive workshop on the best way to describe procedures. Sharpen your utensils and prepare your cheat sheets, we're about to get some chalk dust on our precious little hands!
Key takeaways:
-    There is no recipe for how to write the perfect documentation.
-    Audience rules.
-    Content must be divided by task types.
-    The ways we word and sequence information is dictated by the delivery channel.
-    Formatting and structure play a key role in delivery and information reuse.

Promoting tekom
Voichiţa Alexandra Ghenghea presented the benefits of becoming a tekom member, and encouraged those present to get involved in meetup events as speakers. Emphasis was given to the available certification paths, the free tekom membership for students, and to the conference discounts.
Melania Duma talked about her experience as a tekom Expert student and encouraged her colleagues to become tekom members in order to be part of a community of practice which can ensure quality professional development.
Thoughts from the audience
1.    Organize more onsite events.
2.    The meetup was a pleasant learning experience for both beginner and advanced Technical Communicators.
3.    The evening was a relaxed one. Snacks gave people an opportunity to share their challenges in an informal setting.
4.    The presentations were interesting, diverse, and completed each other (3 Technical Writers, 1 Consultant & Quality Assurance Specialist, 1 Developer).
5.    AI will not take our jobs. AI is a tool!