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Subject:Conference Impressions From:"THOMAS A. JOHNSON" <am312 -at- TRAVERSE -dot- LIB -dot- MI -dot- US> Date:Sun, 18 May 1997 08:42:27 -0400
In a word, I thought the conference was "great." It was also on the verge
of being overwhelming. For the most part, the sessions I attended were
excellent, especially the one by Edward Tufte (pronounced tuff-tee).
I did leave one session early. I was really tired and had trouble keeping
awake during an exercise that didn't seem too-well thought out.
I think the best part was the networking. Having opportunities to hear
what other people are doing is invaluable to me as a lone writer for our
company. I have some new ideas to put into practice and found out I am
doing a lot of things right.
The job booth was also interesting. It looked to me like most of the
job postings were for experienced writers and a lot of the resumes (region
4) were from recent college grads. For any of you who are still in
school, I would highly recommend an internship or co-op experience if at
all possible. That foot in the door will probably be a big first step
into a fascinating, growing field.
Without starting the typo in resume thread again, let me just say one
thing. Seeing a resume with "University" and "Technical" both spelled
incorrectly in the education section was sad. Spell checkers catch those
things. Not using a spell checker says one thing, "I don't pay attention
to detail."
While I'm on the resume topic: I saw several resumes that were on multiple
pages. At the job booth, each person's stack of resumes were placed in a
plastic sleeve. Many times I saw where someone had pulled out the first
page of a resume and left the second sheet behind. Several of the
multipage resumes did not even have the job seeker's name on anything but
the first page. I can just imagine a recruiter with dozens of resumes on
his desk, trying to keep everything straight. In this context, resumes
printed front and back (with "continued" at the bottom) seemed to be very
effective.
It was great to meet so many other technical communicators and bump into
some old friends. See you all next time.
Tom Johnson
am312 -at- traverse -dot- lib -dot- mi -dot- us
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