I went to Anaheim for a week or so to attend the 63rd annual conference for the Society for Technical Communication.  Anaheim was a bit overwhelming to me – there were huge roads with dozens of lanes and thousands of cars and the Disney omnipresence.  But everything was beautiful and sunny, and (as always for STC Summits) I had a great time!

Though it may seem oddly self-serving since I was on the program committee, I do think we had a very strong roster of old and new speakers covering a nice range of topics, from the opening talk about the internet of things from David Rose through our closing talk “Publish or Perish: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Wallets of Next Generation Consumers with Content Marketing” by David Beebe of Marriott International.  We also had some networking opportunities, and some social events, and some downtime to just reconnect with old friends.  Here’s the motley crew from one dinner:

I was thrilled to run into Barbara Giammona at one of the early breakfasts – we haven’t seen each other in <mumbledy mumble> years.

This next pair of shots shows the difference between a professional-grade photographer like Rick Lippincott (the one of me and Rachel Houghton) and a quick pic with my cell phone (the one of me and Micheal Opsteegh, with friendly photobombers Todd DeLuca and Kit Brown-Hoeskstra.  Want to see more of Rick’s photoset?  Just click the picture to go to his Flickr account.

All in all, it was a fun, if exhausting, week.  I’m already looking forward to next year!