During the session, a couple of short-time presentations will be given to cover a range of vital problems in nowadays technical communication industry in Russia:

• Professional standards for the technical communication industry in Russia.
• Technical communicators training (experience of the ProText company).

• The best in the world technical documents samples.

  Questions to be discussed:

  1. User documentation quality assessment (by GOST and by IEEE)
  2. Do the recognized “masterpieces” of user documentation exist, and how they are written in accordance with the GOST and IEEE?
  3. The components of a modern “masterpiece” are: plenty of screenshots, proper structure? Anything else?
  4. An attempt to define official professional standards for the technical communication industry in the Russian Federation.
  5. Technical communicators training.
• The current state of the Russian Federation program to define professional standards for the technical communication industry.

Moderator: Inna Yakimenko

Technical writer, First Line Software

Inna Yakimenko has been working as a technical writer since 2005. She created user documentation for Ectaco Inc., Veeam Software, ScriptLogic Corp., Quest Software.

Currently Inna is earning her Technical Communication Certificate at the University of California in San Diego.

Participants

Mikhail Ostrogorskij

Mikhail Ostrogorskij is founder and director of PhiloSoft, a Russia-based company that specializes in technical communication. He has been working in technical communication since 1996.

Presentation during the discussion:

• Masterpieces and standards of technical documentation
• Technical Writer professional standard

Valery Ledovskoy

Valery graduated from the North Caucasus State Technical University and have received a specialty of a mathematician engineer. He has an academic degree of physico-mathematical science candidate. He has worked as a technical writer and a head of Educational sector in Dr.Web, the Russian antivirus company, from 2005 to 2011.

Now he works in StavropolTISIZ PC as a principal engineer in Information and Technology department. In addition Valery is an independent expert of Anti-Malware.ru, analytical portal concentrated on information security.

In autumn 2011 jointly with Alexander Mikhaylov he established a ProText company that is concentrated on development of technical documentation for a customers. In 2012 the second direction was opened in ProText. This direction is technical writers training based on own training program Technical Documentation Development. The first group of students was trained in February 2012. In ProText he holds a post of a technical director and a trainer.

Presentation during the discussion:

• New principle in education and training of technical writers and IT-analysts