ffeathers — a technical writer’s blog

Last week I attended the 2009 Australasian Online Documentation and Content Conference (AODC) in Melbourne. This is the second year that I’ve been to this conference, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in technical writing or communication.

A big “thank you” to the AODC organisers, and especially to Tony Self, Penny Bradley and Mick McMahon. The conference ran without a hitch. It’s worth attending just for the social events and networking. As a bonus, the speakers and sessions were interesting too

There were 19 sessions in total. I have blogged about some of them:

• Pattern language for information architecture
• Content, standards, learning and SCORM
• Delivering enterprise software documentation on a wiki
• Design of context-sensitive help
• Translation and localisation
• Single source publishing
• Structured authoring
• Stump the panel
• Enabling feedback and collaboration in online help systems
• What if the reader can’t read?

Melbourne

Never been to Melbourne? Neither had I. It’s a fun city, and quite different in character to Sydney. The AODC conference happened at the Vibe Savoy hotel. Here’s the view from my hotel window, overlooking the Southern Cross Station out towards Docklands:

AODC 2009 wrapup

Here’s the GPO and a Melbourne tram:

AODC 2009 wrapup

Next year’s AODC

I’ve heard that AODC 2010 will be in Darwin. I haven’t been there yet either. Hope to see you there