Saturday, 16 April, 2011, 9:00am–4:30pm (CDT)
Auburn University Student Center, Room 2227
Auburn, AL
Proposal deadline: Monday, 28 February, 2011

“The Value of Technical Communication”—the theme for our upcoming April in Auburn conference—aims to invoke multiple meanings of the term “value” in relation to what we as technical communicators practice and study. When you think of your value as a technical communicator, do you:

  • Consider how your research or work informs the lives of those around you?
  • Struggle with how to define yourself, or your profession, to others?
  • Consider the impact your work or your research has on society as a whole?
  • Wonder how you can become a stronger communicator?

Auburn University’s Master in Technical and Professional Communication (MTPC) Program cordially invites you to submit a 300-word proposal for either a 10-minute presentation or a poster showing your work related to, broadly, the value of technical communication. We invite you to propose presentations and posters that both will show others the work with which you are currently engaged and will help other members of our field work through the often complicated issues related to the mediation and communication of information. The deadline for submitting a proposal is Monday, 28 February, 2011.

Presentation time is limited, but poster-presentation space is not. As we make our decisions for the 10-minute presentation slots, we may request that you present your proposed presentation as a poster during one of the poster sessions instead.

Possible Topics

Following are some possible lines of inquiry you may wish to use to shape your presentation or poster proposal:

  • Multicultural and Global Issues in Technical Communication: How does the work you do consider issues related to outsourcing, translation, cultural issues, plain language, or other important aspects of multiculturalism?
  • Ethical Considerations in Technical Communication: Do you see ethics as a major component of what we do as communicators? Why or why not?
  • Action and Agency in Technical Communication: While our field has been defining itself for quite a while now, new technologies and discourses require us to reform who we are and what we do. How does your research or your work address this issue?
  • Other issues that you may have encountered.

To submit your proposal, email it as a Word or RTF attachment to aprilinauburn@gmail.com by 28 February, 2011.

To register, email aprilinauburn@gmail.com by Monday, 21 March, 2011. There is no registration fee for April in Auburn.

Questions? Email Isabelle Thompson at thompis@auburn.edu.

Beautiful azaleas courtesy of Hatsuki Maruyama and used in accordance with Creative Commons licensing.

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