Ed Marsh, Keynote
Ed Marsh, an associate fellow of the STC, has put the technical in technical communicator since 1994. He is currently an information architect at Goldman Sachs in Jersey City, NJ. Five years ago, he created the Content Content podcast, featuring interviews with technical communicators, content strategists, and other content professionals. He also created http://contentcontent.info, a news aggregator for technical communicators.
Bernard Aschwanden
Bernard Aschwanden, CEO at Publishing Smarter, solves documentation-based problems and helps companies generate more revenue. A recognized Adobe product expert, he guides clients through the best processes to create, manage, and deliver content. Once content is delivered, he helps socialize the message, understand and act on feedback, and improve the process and workflow. He is the founder of Publishing Smarter (www.publishingsmarter.com), an Associate Fellow of STC, and a Past President of STC. Bernard has helped hundreds of companies implement successful solutions. He is focused on publishing better, publishing faster, and publishing smarter.
Velizar Demirev
Velizar is a Customer Success Manager at Jorsek Inc, makers of easyDITA. He spends his time supporting customers and learning about DITA. Any remaining time is focused on growing the startup ecosystem in western New York.
Viqui Dill
Viqui Dill is the STC Washington, DC – Metro Baltimore Chapter’s Social Media manager and uses various social media channels to spread good news about Technical Communications in our area.
The #TechComm Leader for American Woodmark in Winchester, VA, Viqui is passionate about continued education and lifelong learning for those in our field. She loves sharing the tips and tricks she has learned in her 20+ years as a writer, and is actively promoting networking with other writers to help us all learn and stay connected.
An engineering graduate from Virginia Tech, Viqui switched to Technical Writing in the 90s for the flexibility and interpersonal connection that our field offers. She has worked for IBM Federal Systems in Manassas and BMC Software in the Dulles Technology corridor before moving to the Shenandoah Valley in 2002.
In her free time, Viqui plays bass in several bands including Hot Flash, a band of mothers who rock out in clubs throughout the DC area. Viqui and her husband Keith have a bluegrass band called the Dill Pickers and are sometimes joined on drums by their son Jim, another grad of Virginia Tech. The Dills have been married for 30 years and live on five acres just outside Winchester, VA. Viqui describes herself as “Technical writer, wife and mom, bass player, worship leader, I’m happiest when folks sing along with me.”
Stanley Doherty, Ph.D.
Stan Doherty lives in the Boston area and works as a consulting user assistance developer at Oracle Corporation. He serves as a founding member of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee, secretary for the OASIS DITA Adoption Technical Committee, and co-coordinator of the Boston DITA Users Group. Feel free to contact Stan if you are considering DITA, DITA tools, and DITA-aware CCMSs.
Liz Fraley
Liz Fraley, Single-Sourcing Solutions, is a serial entrepreneur. She’s founded two companies, sits on the boards of three non-profits, and is constantly coming up with new ways to share knowledge in the technical communications and content industries. She has worked in high-tech and government sectors, at companies of all different sizes (from startups to huge enterprises). She advocates approaches that directly improve organizational efficiency, productivity, and interoperability. If you ask her, she’ll say she’s happiest when those around her are successful.
Patty Gale
I’m a content strategist, information architect, and technical writer. If you need to share complex information with users in a simple way to help them get work done, I can help! I’ve been providing learning content for professional software products for decades, and I’m invigorated by the challenge of making complex information easy to understand and absorb. I love to dive into new problems and find the best path forward. My favorite question: “How can we make it better?”
Liz Herman
As a long-time technical communicator and an Expert-Level Certified Professional Technical Communicator, Liz is currently building a knowledge management practice at Senture, LLC and is concluding a knowledge management project with the United States Department of Agriculture. As a senior member of STC, Liz has served on its Board of Directors, chaired the Community Affairs Committee, the Technical Communication Book of Knowledge Committee, and the Intercom Editorial Advisory Board. She has also served in various leadership roles in the Eastern Iowa and Washington DC Baltimore chapters.
Neil Perlin
Neil has 41 years of experience in technical communication, 33 in development, training, and consulting in online formats and tools ranging from leading edge to dead. In 1987, he created the world’s second and third commercial hypertext products – online user guides for MS-DOS 2.1 and 1-2-3 2.01.
Neil founded Hyper/Word Services in 1990. The company provides training, consulting, and development for Flare, RoboHelp, Mimic, single sourcing, structured authoring, and apps. Neil is Madcap Certified for Flare and Mimic, Adobe-Certified for RoboHelp, and ViziApps-certified for the ViziApps Studio Rapid Mobile App Development platform.
Neil has been a columnist for various professional societies and is a popular conference speaker, recently at TCUK’17 in England and MadWorld ’18. He founded and ran the Bleeding Edge at the STC Summit and represented STC at the W3C from 2002 to 2006. He is an STC Fellow.
Neil is the author of eight books, most recently Writing Effective Online Content Project Specifications. He also authored classes on RoboHelp and Flare for Lynda.com.
In his spare time, Neil builds telescopes, uses simulators to recreate a lost career as a Navy pilot, and cooks southern barbecue. Contact him at nperlin@nperlin.digitalspacemail8.net or on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (at NeilEric).
Brett Peruzzi
Brett Peruzzi has worked in the technical communication field for over 30 years as a technical writer, editor, documentation manager, and independent consultant. He is currently the principal of Peruzzi Communications. Brett is also an adjunct lecturer in Northeastern University’s master of science in technical communication program.
Lou Prosperi
Lou Prosperi is a Senior Documentation and Curriculum Manager for Oracle’s Utility Global Business Unit. Following a career in game design, Lou went to work as a technical writer and instructional designer and has been in that role for the last 20 years, providing user and technical documentation and training materials for enterprise applications used in the utilities industry. A self-described “Student of Imagineering,” Lou’s current area of interest is how to apply the principles and practices employed by Walt Disney Imagineering to other fields, including technical communication, instructional design, and leadership & management.
Matt Reiner
Matt is a Customer Advocate at K15t, the team behind Scroll Versions for Confluence. Throughout his time as a technical communicator, Matt has branched out to marketing and UX writing projects with multiple teams. Matt believes users have the best experience when information presented by Sales, Marketing, the product, Documentation, and Support uses a unified voice.
Deborah Sauer
Deborah is a Principal Content Strategy Writer in the User Experience-Content Strategy group at Sonos, Inc. She is responsible for writing copy for the app as well as product guides and online Help. Her days are filled with collaborating with UX designers, program managers, and developers, refining user interface text, pushing authoring tools to their limits, tinkering in code, managing projects, and most importantly, making sure the experience comes first.