ConVEx Tempe Presentations
The ConVEx Tempe program offers career-empowering knowledge, practical solutions, best practices, and the best networking in the industry.
The 3-day program includes 72 presentations in 13 topics, 12 Candid Conversations, and 12 Test Kitchen sessions.
Simply click on any session’s title for complete details.
IMPORTANT PROGRAMMING NOTE
The Conference activities begin on Sunday with the Welcome Reception at 6:30pm (local time) and the first session begins on Monday at 8:30am.
The final session ends on Wednesday at 5:30pm.
ConVEx Tempe Topics
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| COLLABORATION |
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Achieving Greatness Through Multi-Directional Collaboration
Pat Burrows, Rocket Software
Early Collaboration Between Design and Content
Barbara Neumann, IBM
Reveal Your Value by Building Partnerships
Miriana Nedeva, VMware
Collaborative Review and Approval Workflows: A challenge in regulated industries
Dipo Ajose-Coker, Componize Software
| TAXONOMY |
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Towards Social and Semantic Technical Documentation
Fabrice Lacroix, Antidot Fluid Topics
The Semantic Content Hub
Andreas Blumauer, Semantic Web Company Inc.
Harness the Power of Semantic Tagging
Maura Moran, Mekon Ltd
Automatically Categorize and Tag Content Using Semantic AI
Florian Bauer, Semantic Web Company Inc. and Chip Gettinger, RWS
| INNOVATION |
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Are You Ready for Content-as-a-Service?
Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium
Content Evolution: Past, present, and future
Tom Comerford, Supratext
Innovative Documentation
Rik Page, Bluestream
From Information Wars to Knowledge Wars
Michael Iantosca , Avalara
The World of Dynamic Content
Anu Singh, Fiserv
| MANAGEMENT |
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Change Management: Lessons from the Herd
Regina Lynn Preciado, Content Rules, Inc.
Great Resignation: Keeping your team successful
Vlad Khanin, NextGen Healthcare
Right Track to DITA Long-Term Success
Brian Trombley, Ariza Content Solutions
and Sabine Ocker, Omnicell
You Only Have Three Minutes
Brad Heidemann, Tahzoo
| QUALITY |
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Mind the Gap!
Michael Mannhardt & Torsten Machert, Congree Language Technologies Inc.
Content Efficacy: Quality begins upstream
Sarah Leritz-Higgins, Siemens Industry Software
Content as an Asset in the Enterprise
Shane Cumming, Acrolinx
Documentation Quality and the F-Word
Yoel Strimling, CEVA, Inc.
| PERSONALIZATION |
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Personalize your Product Answers
Amy Bowman, Zoomin Software
Personalized Content: Steps to success
Gretyl Kinsey, Scriptorium
Curated Tools for Enterprise Content Personalisation
Fatema Adnan Zaveri & Venkata Subbaraju, VMware
Personalizing Content via Semantic AI
Sara Pawlowic, RWS, Inc.
| USE CASES |
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HERE BE DRAGONS: A Customer’s Journey
Randee Napp, Almon, Inc.
Defining cCMS Requirements, Meeting Business Objectives
Roberta Werner & Sarah Rowe, Baxter
Auto-generating complex, customer-specific publications
Clara Allan, Dematic
Microcontent Architecture in Action NCCI
Rob Hanna & Josh Anderson, Precision Content
Juggling Plates and Not Spinning Plates
Frank Miller, Ryffine and Pat Burrows, Rocket Software
How Metso-Outotec Migrated to Structured Content
Jouni Lehtelä, Metso-Outotec
Modernized Content, Intelligent Context, Navigable Process
Joonas Frösén & Jack Downey Edwards, Qualcomm
Boiling the Ocean
Phyllis Sharon & Margot Miksis, Rocket Software
| USER FOCUS |
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Unconscious Bias Creep in Technical Writing
Anita Chaudhari & Vidya Vasudevan, VMware India
Designing for Performance
William Finn, Fiserv
Intersection Between Customer Loyalty & Experience
Cheryl James, CL James Consulting
Bringing Users’ Mental Models to Life
Julie Phaviseth & Kristine Chang, ServiceNow
Winning with User Centered Experiences
Jarod Sickler, Heretto
| WRITING/CONTENT STRATEGY |
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Writing Microcontent for Omnichannel
Peihong Zhu & Kathryn Torriano, Precision Content
Structured Content is Like Your Closet
Val Swisher, Content Rules
Minimalism with Miffy
Mugdha Bapat, Rocket Software
Papyrus to Virtual Elephants in Rooms
Joyce Lam & Keith Schengili-Roberts, AMD
Can Technical Communication use Advertising Concepts?
Nibu Thomas, Whatfix
Decoding IA for Mystified Stakeholders
Edwina Lui, College Board & Amber Swope, DITA Strategies
Teaching Technical Writers and SMEs
Berry Braster, Etteplan
Effectively documenting APIs/SDKs
Girish Sankaran, VMware
Revisiting Content Reuse Calculations
Eric Kuhnen, TransPerfect, Inc.
Informed Content & Data Driven Strategy
Aditi Kashikar, Automation Anywhere
| DITA |
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AMD: 16 years of DITA content
Keith Schengili-Roberts, AMD
From MS Word to Really Useful DITA
Helen St Denis, Stilo
Refactoring DITA Links at Scale
Scott Hudson & Eliot Kimber, ServiceNow
Let’s Talk About DITA Maps
Liz Fraley, Single-Sourcing Solutions
Rebranding with DITA and Super Bookmaps
Michael McGinnis, Tridium
DITA-OT: Time to break things again
Robert Anderson, Oracle
Untangling the Spaghetti: Successful reuse strategies
Robert Johnson, Tahzoo
A Cautionary Tale of DITA Specializations
Heather Eisenbraun, NI
Integrating Markdown into a DITA Workflow
Mark Giffin, Mark Giffin Consulting
Incremental DITA Publishing using a Web Application
George Bina, oXygen XML Editor
DITA 2.0 Support for Practitioners
Radu Coravu, oXygen XML Editor
Lightweight DITA: Introduction and applications
Frank Wegmann, Software AG
| TECHNOLOGY TEST KITCHEN |
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Pat Burrows’ career spans the full arc of our industry from Writer to Consultant to Director. Working in both high tech and scientific industries, Pat has led global teams in content development and information architecture. She has helped multiple organizations “think inside the box” about the creation and delivery of their content, and motivated global teams to deliver future-state results.
Barbara Neumann is a Senior Content Developer and technical editor in IBM Systems. She is a graduate of Vassar College in mathematics, holds an MBA from the University of Rochester. As a Distinguished Toastmaster, Barbara presents on careers, STEM topics and team building at ConVEx, Union College, Vassar College, Marist College, RPI, SUNY New Paltz, and the University of Rochester.
My name is Miriana Nedeva and I am a Senior Technical Writer at VMware with over seven years of experience. I graduated from Westminster University, London with a Master’s Degree in International Relations and European Politics and I believe that effective communication is key in every aspect of our lives.
With over 16 years combining languages and IT as a technical writer and editor working in regulated industries (high-end medical devices and finance), Dipo blends his experience of authoring in structured and unstructured environments; migrating technical publications to DITA; and content strategy to help develop a best in class CCMS. Dipo holds an MA in Multimedia and Multilingual Document Design.
Fabrice Lacroix is a serial entrepreneur and a web pioneer. He has been working for 25 years on the development of innovative solutions around search technology, content enrichment, and AI. He is the founder of Fluid Topics, the leading Content Delivery Platform that reinvents how users search, read, and interact with technical documentation.
Maura is a Senior Content Consultant at Mekon, with a focus on content strategy, transformation, and content management. She has over 25 years’ experience helping organizations drive value through improved content practices, including major clients in pharma, manufacturing and publishing sectors. She balances finding the right technical solution with practical implementation, including a solid approach to change management and governance.
Florian Bauer, Semantic Web Company Inc.
Chip Gettinger, RWS
Sowmya Jayakirthi : A Staff Technical Writer by profession with an experience of 15 years in the industry. I have worked with VMware for the last eight plus years. I have experience working with mainframe technology, hardware and cloud computing services. I am keen on learning, exploring, innovating new technology to improve user experience.
Usha Rani: I have around 13 plus years of experience in the field of Technical Communication. I am currently working as a Manager with the Information Experience team at VMware and leading a team of Technical Writers in Bangalore. My team focuses on End User Computing and Cloud Platform products. I am passionate about learning, simplification, and innovation.
Vaijayanti has a professional experience of about 20 years in Documentation and Localization. She has been working with BMC Software in the field of Technical Documentation for over 15 years. Since 5+ years she has been managing the writing teams for SaaS products. Vaijayanti plays a key role in influencing SaaS content strategies at BMC Software.
Sarah O’Keefe, Chief Executive Officer, founded Scriptorium Publishing to work at the intersection of content, technology, and publishing. Today, she leads an organization known for expertise in solving business-critical content problems with a special focus on product and technical content. Sarah identifies and assesses new trends and their effects on the industry.
Tom Comerford has worked with content technologies and markup languages for more years than he’ll admit. He has experience in many industries, including manufacturing, financial services, education, and healthcare. He draws on his background in anthropology for insights into content artifacts and the people who create them. His current focus is the automation of DITA customizations.
Rik has worked with component content and document management solutions since 2000. During this time, he has worked with custom DTDs and Schemas, S1000D, iSpec2200, and DITA. His practical experience ranges from data capture/content creation to dynamic multichannel delivery in various industries, including banking and finance, manufacturing, central government, and education. Rik has taken part in multiple global consultancy projects.
Michael Iantosca is the Senior Director of Content Platforms at Avalara Inc. Michael spent 38 of his 40 years at IBM as a content pioneer – leading the design and development of advanced content management systems and technology that began at the very dawn of the structured content revolution in the early 80s. Dual trained as a content professional and systems engineer, he led the charge building some of the earliest content platforms based on structured content. If Michael hadn’t prevailed in a pitched internal battle to develop an XML platform over a planned SGML variant called WebDoc in the mid-90s at Big Blue, DITA, and the entire industry that supports it, might not presently exist. He was responsible for forming the XML team and a member of the workgroup at IBM that developed DITA.
Creative disrupter who believes in the enormity of the human mind, its thoughts, feelings and the social paradigm it creates and coexists in.
Regina Lynn Preciado is a senior content strategist with Content Rules. She helps companies transform how they organize, manage, and leverage content. Regina works with communicators in marketing, documentation, support, and training — sometimes all at once! Her clients include tier 1 companies in high-tech, life sciences, manufacturing, and financial services. She lives a dogspotting lifestyle.
As a director of user assistance at NextGen, Vlad’s focus is on developing and implementing a content strategy designed around principles of minimalism, user-centered design, and DITA. Vlad led his team through the first year of the pandemic, losing 30% of people and then through the Great Resignation, overcoming multiple constraints, keeping the team focused and successful regardless of challenges.
Brian has over 35 years experience in helping clients implement content processes and technologies for all aspects of publishing across a wide range of industry verticals. An early practitioner of structured content methodologies, Brian was at the forefront of the SGML and XML revolutions and has helped clients successfully manage change and convert and leverage content for Maximum Business value.
As an XML practitioner, Sabine Ocker has been driving transformation of product documentation into strategic enterprise assets via metadata enabled publishing, taxonomy, and intelligent content delivery for over 20 years. As part of tsunami changes at a number of companies, she executes new experience for internal and external customers that rely on optimizing DITA content for the long-term.
Brad founded Tahzoo with a vision to create a company that exists to make millions of people a little happier every day. Serving clients is his passion, ignited by his unique combination of experiences with market-leading companies such as Nordstrom, Microsoft, and Ascentium. His focus is on architecting solutions that leverage marketing technology and information management strategies that drive personalization. 
Michael Mannhardt is President of the San Francisco based Congree US-subsidiary Congree Language Technologies Inc. Michael graduated with a degree in Business Administration and has over 15 years of experience in the language technology industry. At Congree he drives the international business activities and supports global partners. Before joining Congree in 2019, he previously worked at Acrolinx and Across Systems.
Before joining Congree, Torsten Machert was Managing Director of EasyBrowse GmbH. He specializes in the design and implementation of workflows based on SGML and XML and has industry experience in aerospace, defense, engineering and publishing. In the past few years, he has concentrated on the development of industrial processes for the production and distribution of highly effective electronic publications.
Yoel Strimling has been spinning straw into gold for over 20 years, and currently works as the Senior Technical Editor for CEVA Inc. in Herzelia, Israel. He has successfully improved the content, writing style, and look and feel of his employers’ most important and most used customer-facing documentation.
Scott Hudson is a Staff Content Engineer at ServiceNow. He is also a long-time member of the OASIS DocBook and DITA Technical Committees. He specializes in content architecture, optimizing the DITA authoring experience, creating author assistance using Schematron and Vale, and evaluating new information technologies. He is a shameless Sci-Fi geek and FIRST robotics mentor.
Leigh is a DITA author and information architect, Open Toolkit geek, and conference veteran. A DITA Specialist on the Product Conception team at IXIASOFT, she is the author of “DITA For Print: A DITA Open Toolkit Workbook” and contributor to “The Language of Content Strategy.” In her spare time, she hikes and makes wood things.
Jack Molisani is an STC Fellow, and the President of ProSpring Technical Staffing, an employment agency specializing in content professionals (both contract and perm): https://ProspringStaffing.com
Robert Johnson is co-facilitator of the Boston DITA User’s Group. He is a technical writer and DITA technology specialist, and is an advocate for accessibility in technical communication. Robert has helped several organizations transition to DITA, mature their DITA implementation, or harmonize DITA practice. He also knows content management and has been involved in several CCMS acquisitions.
Gretyl Kinsey is a technical consultant at Scriptorium, where she has been deploying content strategies since 2011. She develops enterprise content systems for companies in a variety of industries, including education, life sciences, finance, and high tech. An experienced interviewer and researcher, she identifies content problems, recommends solutions, and builds business cases to support them.
Fatema Zaveri is an Information Experience manager with about 15 years of experience in the field of technical communications. She manages technical content delivery for a suite of products at VMware.
Venkata Subbaraju is as Lead Developer at VMware. He has more than a decade of experience as an engineer, out of which 6 have been with VMware. He is passionate about solving challenges faced by customers and partners when they use enterprise products. He currently is working on developing tools for the information experience, sales, and marketing teams across VMware.
Rob Hanna co-founded Precision Content in 2015 to pursue his goals to produce tools, training, and methods that will help organizations make their high-value content instantly available to all that need it including customers, staff, partners, and even other information systems that need to consume that content. Today Rob leads his highly-skilled team serving the needs for digital transformation worldwide.
Josh Anderson is an American-Canadian Associate Information Architect at Precision Content. He analyzes and structures content to reveal the insights that come from the creative organization of information. Josh was an English teacher in Japan and an SEO Specialist in the Chicagoland area before earning a Master of Information at the University of Toronto.
Frank is an industry thought-leader whose career has focused on leading enterprise client engagements and building an information development community, He has been involved in dozens of successful DITA implementations and enjoys sharing his insights on trends and facilitating the adoption of best practices throughout the community.
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Joonas Frösén is a Staff Technical Writer at Qualcomm. He has been working in technical communications since 2001 as a Technical Writer and Information Architect focusing on content analysis and documentation taxonomy in a DITA environment.
Jack Downey Edwards is a Senior Technical Writer at Qualcomm. He specializes in placing modernized UX at the heart of document design and delivery. 
Phyllis Sharon is a Content Strategist at Rocket Software. In her role, she defines corporate content standards, curates content, and minimizes huge documentation sets. Phyllis previously spent over 25 years at IBM, where as a writer and editor, she was an early adopter of DITA. Learning Italian, hunting for treasures at flea markets, and gardening fill her spare time.
Anita Chaudhari is a Senior Technical Writer at VMware India since 2018. She holds a postgraduate degree in Computer Applications. Prior to VMware, she was employed with Huawei Technologies and has a total experience of 14 years in content development. She lives in Bangalore, India and loves to read, paint, and explore travel destinations.
Bill leads digital transformation with an expert focus on content strategy, deeply experienced in guiding corporations to activate content to achieve their goals. Bill is currently Director of Content Development at Fiserv, supporting more than 800 products. His team of 56 technical writers and instructional designers is redesigning how “documentation” becomes a predictive information eco-system that “knows” each Fiserv client.
Julie Phaviseth is a content architect for the Product Content team at ServiceNow, where she focuses on efforts to improve content organization and experience for users. She leads content design jams and workshops and the development of content models and templates. Before that, she was the lead technical editor and helped grow the editing team.
Kristine Chang is a user experience researcher at ServiceNow. She graduated with degrees in cognitive science and linguistics, specializing in language processing and retrieval. Her industry research focuses on the world of product content, and she uses a variety of research methods to understand who uses content, for what reason, and how to improve the content ecosystem for users. 
Jarod oversees Heretto’s documentation site and is involved in managing complex customer implementations of Heretto. Simultaneously, he’s a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester, specializing in metaphysics and epistemology. Whether it’s in his research, documentation, or customer implementations, Jarod enjoys thinking through complex problems and finding the simplest and yet most powerful solution.
Kathryn Torriano is an Associate Information Architect for Precision Content. Kathryn’s area of expertise is in transforming content using semantic markup into clear and reusable structures for organizations. With years of experience in software, user experience research, content modelling, and content strategy, Kathryn aspires to expand and contribute to the field of Information Architecture.
Val Swisher is the Founder and CEO of Content Rules. Val enjoys helping companies solve complex content problems. She is a well-known expert in content strategy, structured authoring, global content, content development, and terminology management. Val believes content should be easy to read, cost-effective to create and translate, and efficient to manage.
An information architect and content strategist, Edwina Lui has spent more than 14 years developing strategies for content creation, management, and delivery in education and assessment. As Sr. Dir. of Content Ops & Engineering, Edwina heads a team that leverages structured content for multichannel delivery to improve the ways students, parents, and educators find and use College Board content.
Amber Swope is an internationally recognized DITA expert and information architect. With more than 20 years of experience in information development and 15 with DITA, Amber aids organizations in creating opportunity through IA. She helps teams build scalable IA solutions to future-enable their content and mentors team members to advance the IA as it evolves to meet new business needs.
Swapnil has over 16 years of technical documentation experience across a range of industries in Australia and globally. He currently works as Redocly’s Technical Writer Advocate, pursuing his passion for writing along with advocating for the docs-as-code approach for product content.
I’m a technology enthusiast, having 14 years’ experience in product documentation. Have experience in distributed file systems, data analytics, storage, and Cloud domains. Currently, I am with VMware, documenting the vSphere suite of products. Prior to joining VMware, I was with IBM Software Labs.
Laura writes the support documentation for Typefi products and is passionate about making complex information easier to digest. She focuses on writing help articles that are clear, concise, and comprehensive. She holds a Master of Arts in Technical Communication from Texas State University, Texas, and a Bachelor of General Studies from Fort Hays State University, Kansas.
Joyce (Jo) Lam is an ambassador of information with experience focused on content automation. She is the past president of STC Ontario, an information architect at AMD, and a member of Women in Tech, Information 4.0 Consortium, and CIDM. Jo thrives in the face of the unknown and is passionate about empowering and enabling information.
Keith Schengili-Roberts is a Technical Writer Manager at AMD, the company where he helped implement DITA. He is the former chair of OASIS DITA Adoption, an award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information, and an active member of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. He lives in London, Ontario with his partner Dhan and two noisy green-cheeked conures.
Eric Kuhnen is president of GlobalLink Vasont, a unit of TransPerfect, Inc. Mr. Kuhnen has been associated with structured content tools, particularly component content management systems, since 2006. He holds a degree in Computer Science from Brigham Young University.
Scott Hudson is a Staff Content Engineer at ServiceNow. He is also a long-time member of the OASIS DocBook and DITA Technical Committees. He specializes in content architecture, optimizing the DITA authoring experience, creating author assistance using Schematron and Vale, and evaluating new information technologies. He is a shameless Sci-Fi geek and FIRST robotics mentor.
Eliot Kimber is a founding member of the DITA Technical Committee, the W3C XML Working Group, and a long-time SGML and XML practitioner. Eliot is the primary developer of the open-source DITA For Publishers project and a contributor to DITA Open Toolkit. Eliot is a Senior Product Content Engineer for ServiceNow, Inc.
Liz Fraley, Single-Sourcing Solutions, is a serial entrepreneur. She’s founded two companies, sits on the boards of three non-profits, and is constantly coming up with new ways to share knowledge in the technical communications and content industries. If you ask her, she’ll say she loves creating connections with people and sharing knowledge. She’s happiest when those around her are successful.
Scott Hudson is a Staff Content Engineer at ServiceNow. He is also a long-time member of the OASIS DocBook and DITA Technical Committees. He specializes in content architecture, optimizing the DITA authoring experience, creating author assistance using Schematron and Vale, and evaluating new information technologies. He is a shameless Sci-Fi geek and FIRST robotics mentor.
Frank Wegmann has 20+ years of experience in the markup world. At Software AG, he has been advancing custom automated build systems for technical documentation since 2001, in recent years with more focus on DITA. He is a regular speaker at international conferences and engaged in OASIS DITA committees, now also as co-chair of the Lightweight DITA subcommittee.
Christopher Hill is the Technical Product Manager for Harmonizer at Data Conversion Laboratory. Chris is an 
Sara Pawlowic is a Solutions Architect for RWS. She has worked in component content management and automated publishing for 20+ years, and enjoys working with RWS customers to define content best practices.
Wouter Maagdenberg (1975, CEO TXTOmedia) founded his first tech company, during his BA studies at Erasmus University in 1996. Sold his former company Calamares (Enterprise Video Content Management) to SDL (now RWS) in 2011. Left SDL in 2016 in his role as VP Media worldwide to start TXTOmedia. TXTOmedia technology transforms structured content into rich media in an automated way.
covering XML editing, authoring, development, publishing, and collaboration tools.
Chris has over 20 years of experience delivering process improvement solutions to organizations. He works with both traditional and non-traditional publishers to deliver software and align resources to reduce production time and improve productivity.
Before joining Congree, Torsten Machert was Managing Director of EasyBrowse GmbH. He specializes in the design and implementation of workflows based on SGML and XML and has industry experience in aerospace, defense, engineering and publishing. In the past few years, he has concentrated on the development of industrial processes for the production and distribution of highly effective electronic publications.
A technology pioneer and entrepreneur, Fabrice Lacroix has been working for 25 years on the development of innovative