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As a follow-on for an article about return on investment for membership fees, I decided to research the costs associated with regional and national conferences for STC and see how they compare with other conferences that might interest technical communicators.
Evaluating conference costs
There are several reasons for attending a conference. You want to get ideas and
inspiration for technical publication projects. You may want to present to your peers to
get feedback and to tout your processes and express pride in your work. The networking
aspects to a conference are very important for job searching or hiring, and getting
together with previous co-workers and colleagues is a large part of the enjoyment of a
conference. For some, traveling to conference sites is an enticement. For others, travel
is not a motivating factor and in fact, the closer the conference to home, the better.
All these factors also sway your decision on how much to pay for both registration and
travel and lodging. You want the benefits to outweigh the costs. This table shows some of
the registration costs – your mileage will vary, literally, for lodging and travel
costs associated with conferences. I suppose that’s where a regional conference
opportunity affords less travel for some than others, and that cost savings is also an
advantage beyond registration savings.
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Association name
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Dates and Locations
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Registration cost for annual conference
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Who attends
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American Society for Training and Development (ASTD)
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May 7-10, 2006
Dallas, TX
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US$1,125, with a corporate team rate of $750
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Human performance specialists, classroom trainers, writers of
training materials, training application developers
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Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Communications
Society (IEEE) Infocom
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April 23-29, 2006
Barcelona, Spain
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US$930
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People interested in communications science such as network
engineering, wireless communications, but not necessarily in written or other
communications, more engineering-oriented
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International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI)
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April 8-11, 2006
Dallas, TX
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US$899
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Typical attendees include performance technologists, training
directors, human resources managers, instructional technologists, human factors
practitioners, and organizational consultants
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Association of Computing Machinery Special Interest Group for
Documentation (ACM SIGDOC)
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October 18-20, 2006
Myrtle Beach, SC
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US$375, early registration
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Writers with computer focus only, software engineers.
Note that a Bachelor’s degree is a requirement of
membership.
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Society for Technical Communication (STC)
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May 7-10, 2006
Las Vegas, NV
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US$620
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Technical writers, educators, researchers, Web designers, technical
publications managers from all fields and specialties
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All the other conferences that aren’t listed
It seems like spring is the time of year for professional conferences. Perhaps I
should have written this article in the fall/winter when you can still get decent
registration discounts.
I know I’m missing many of the tools-based conferences from this list, such as
the FrameMaker Chautauqua
(coming to Austin next year!), Writers User Assistance, Adobe’s conferences for PDF tools, the DITA Conference recently held, and so on.
Generally, do you agree there is a different feel for a professional conference than a
tool-based conference?
Perhaps my next research task should be looking at the tools-based conferences that
make sense for the technical publications profession. I’m sure there’s a wide
range of interests, though. For example, I attended South by Southwest (www.sxsw.com) this year since I’m a corporate blogger
for my employer at talk.bmc.com, which is a distinct
specialty not common for other technical writers (although I’d encourage you to
explore blogging, it’s great writing practice.)
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