Do you ever feel like not much is going on for you professionally? If you are the only tech writer in a
team, or a freelancer you might as well feel a lack of communication with peers. Are you hoping to revolutionize and improve your technical writing processes? Or, maybe, you are just looking for some inspiration. We've got a solution for you!
We are in the middle of 2019 and many conferences and meetups for this year are already over, but there are some major events to look forward to. We believe that attending techcomm conferences is a great way to get to know many like-minded people, create useful business connections, learn about what's going on in the industry and take some particularly interesting insights home.
Here are some of the techcomm-related events you should consider attending world-wide.
tcworld Conference
The tcworld conference is taking place in Stuttgart, Germany on November 12-14, 2019.
This is the event most technical writers are waiting for. The tcworld conference and the tekom fair with about 140 exhibitors from all over the world is a huge event for the whole techcomm community.
If you've never been to tcworld conferences, the amount of stuff to do there looks hard to believe - over 240 workshops, meetups and lectures.
The main topics of the conference are: technical writers career development, mobile documentation, language technology, software documentation, AI in technical writing and more.
Overall, this is a major point of interest for techcomm people.
Write the Docs 2019
Write the Docs 2019 is going to happen in Prague, Czech Republic on September 15-17. Another significant venue to visit.
We can even share a bit of our personal experience. The ClickHelp team participated in the Write the Docs conference in 2018. And we are genuinely glad that we did it, that event was extremely content-rich and a lot of fun at the same time.
This conference can be interesting for experienced technical writers and for those at the start of their career. Also, people from other teams and occupations like support, devs, testers, designers, teachers, etc. can benefit greatly from listening to some speakers at this conference, they are going to be giving advice about how to improve writing skills.
So, yes, would recommend attending this conference for sure!
TCUK 2019
A UK-based conference for technical communicators TCUK 2019. It will be held at the Chesford Grange hotel near Kenilworth in Warwickshire. The event starts on September 10 and ends on September 12.
The theme of the conference this year is '10' because is a ten year anniversary for TCUK, so prepare to witness a lot of lists containing ten items presented by the speakers :)
The topics are varied and exciting, like: micro content, chatbots, DITA, localization of docs, content strategy…
To sum it up - it is a great conference with serious history.
ASTC 2019 Conference
ASTC 2019 Conference is going to be held in Melbourne, October 11 through October 12. TCUK 2019 might be slightly nostalgic and retrospective because of its theme. It kind of suggests revising the past experience and analyzing it. ASTC 2019 goes a different way.
On October 11, the Rydges Melbourne will open its doors for technical communicators who are thirsty for new knowledge and excited to mingle with like-minded people.
The main focus is placed on learning new trends and tools. Techcomm experts from Australia and overseas have been invited to share their insights.
Some of the main topics: AI, GitHub, intellectual property, CSS, docs-as-code.
This looks like a really promising event!
Conclusion
Techcomm conferences are available all year round, and, of course, it is important to plan visiting them beforehand to be sure the necessary expense item is added to your company budget.
But, it is not too late to hop on the conference train yet! So, if you feel like you personally and your company would benefit from sending you to a technical writing event, make sure to get this message across to your manager. And, if you are a manager, consider giving your team this amazing opportunity to feel like they are part of the big international help writing community and learn tons of useful information.
Good luck with your technical writing!
ClickHelp Team
Author, host and deliver documentation across platforms and devices