I am considering myself extremely fortunate. I was able to work out attending the LavaCon conference, despite being out of work for 6 months (and counting), where I hope and expect to learn about the latest in content development, management, and strategy tools, techniques, and trends.
This blog is intended to share what I'm learning at LavaCon in real time. I will literally be taking notes on session content in real time and posting updates all day long. The hope is to share a little bit about what's currently happening in the technical communication world--and also inspire some of my peers to attend in comping years.
I've been TechComm conferencing for decades. It began before I even graduated from college. I was in my senior year of getting my Technical Communication degree from the University of Washington, and I was also working part time for Joe Welinske, whose business at the time was names WinWriters. He, along with one of my professors, Dave Farkas, and on of his friends in the industry, Scott Boggan, decided to try and offer a conference focused on online help, which was booming in the years following the release of Windows 3.0. In a small conference room just north of downtown Seattle in the spring of 1993, a dozen content professionals listened to Joe, Dave, and Scott talk abotu online help and related topics.
That ballooned into an annual conference that once hit 1400 attendees. One of the regular vendors at that conference was Jack Molisani and his ProSpring business. He started his own conference, LavaCon, initially in Hawaii, not long after. My impression at the time was that the conference seemed to focus largely on TechComm management, so my interest wasn't as high, even if that would have meant a trip to Hawaii.
LavaCon evolved over the years, and became very much about content strategy and management, attracting some of the top speakers on the subjects to speak each year. This year will be no exception.
Conference activities actually start Sunday with pre-conference workshops. Monday morning brings the start of 2 1/2 jam-packed days of sessions along 5 tracks:
- Content Marketing and Content Strategy
- Customer Experience and Governance
- Content Development and Content Ops
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
- Tools and Technology
The "problem" with this, and to be fair, this has always been a "problem" with LavaCon, is that in each time block throughout every day, there are at least two, and sometimes three or four sessions I want to attend.
There needs to be a track on cloning.
I fully expect sessions in the AI track to be immensely popular, because every CEO everywhere is expecting every job to use and infuse AI, and so all of us are going to be wanting to find out how we all can do that best. And also, as some speakers asserted last year, how not to use AI.
In addition to conference sessions, there will be a large vendor room on Monday and Tuesday. But perhaps the most anticipated event will be Tuesday, when LavaCon turns into LlamaCon. You really have to be here to find out.
Meanwhile, don't forget to bookmark this blog's home page and check back daily to get just a bit of a peek at what's going on at this year's LavaCon.
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