Re: Well, I Sure Won't Be in Chicago

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- progeny -dot- com>]

Andrew Plato wrote:
 
> How on earth can a society of -->TECHNICAL<-- writers and communicators
> have an entire annual conference and not offer a single workshop on
> technical issues? 

At first, I thought Andrew had to be exaggerating. Then I went and
scrolled through the list of presentations. If he's exaggerating,
it's not by much.

I may have overlooked a presentation or two, since I didn't want to
waste a lot of time. However, I failed to find any definite mention
of:

- PIDs, embedded systems, wireless communication, clusters,
Microsoft's .NET technology or any other hot technology. Even XML,
which can hardly be called new any more, are barely featured - and,
even then, technical aspects like writing a DTD or style sheet don't
seem to be featured.

- potentially important legal trends, such as the Microsoft
anti-trust case, the Napster decision, or DeCSS.s

- Linux, BSD, or even the Mac's OS X. For that matter, there's
nothing obviously about UNIX.

- The open source development model, the writer's role in it, and
the tools available.

Possibly, all these topics will be covered in the panel on Current
Trends. However, so far as I can see, none of these things - many of
which are important concerns in my daily working day - even rate a
mention. Granted I work in a specialized area, but I would have
thought that some of these concerns would interest technical
writers, if only because such things might potentially affect the
way they earn their livings. But apparently not.

Sad. Very sad.

-- 
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- progeny -dot- com

"Rain and hard religion, the gift of a northern youth,
We make a mess of tenderness, we hit you with the truth,
There are days when we're almost human, days when it's shout or
bust,
The roughest kind of tenderness - we sing because we must."
-OysterBand, "No Reason to Cry"

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