So that was TCUK12

It’s been a few days since I got home after the Technical Communications Conference this year, and I’ve been digesting and mulling over some of the ideas and thoughts gathered from the speakers and conversations.

The conference was in a new location, Newcastle, and that brought a different feel to the event. Hard to put my finger on it but it felt a little more business like, or maybe just a little less social? Not sure, and as ever my experience will be different from others.

Something that hasn’t changed was the value. It remains an excellent opportunity to learn from your peers, industry experts, and if nothing else it’s great to hear that we are doing the right things or just have the same problems as everyone else.

A few standout presentations from me, Leah Guren (whose workshop I attended on the Tuesday) kicked off the conference in great style. Passionate, funny, upbeat, everything that we can occasionally seem to lack in our profession here in the UK. Ray Gallon and Scott Abelย backed that up with some excellent presentations that expanded the scope of what we can, and should, be doing.

It took me a while to realise it but the one thing I didn’t get this year was an overall theme. Not an official one, but typically there is one stream of thought that seems to be prevalent. I think the closest to that would be ‘Structure’ (as a strategy) and I wonder if, perhaps, that that particular stream of thought hasn’t yet hit a tipping point?

Still pondering that, and many other, things, one of which is that I really need to be blogging here more! Time will tell if I can stick to that.

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Long time blogger, Father of Jack, geek of many things, random photographer and writer of nonsense.

Doing my best to find a balance.

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3 comments

Hi, Gordon, thanks for sharing your thoughts and impressions. (My own wrap-up at http://kaiweber.wordpress.com/ is scheduled for Monday, 8 October.)

My personal overall theme (if that’s not already a contradiction in terms right there) was progressive disclosure, so we integrate user assistance better with the (software) product, starting from better labels via popup tooltips all the way to full-fledged topics. But maybe that’s just appeared prevalent thanks to the sessions I attended.

Your theme makes sense Kai, looking at the programme there was definitely several presentations that would seem to align. Perhaps the reason I didn’t identify a strong theme is because I mixed and matched my sessions deliberately.

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