Home again!

I've just returned from a 7-week trip to the USA, during which I attended two conferences (at which I was a speaker) and two science fiction conventions, spent a day acting as a judge in the Society for Technical Communcation's International Online Communication Competition, visited my mother and various friends, and racked up what felt like a zillion miles on airplanes. I enjoyed the individual bits of the trip, but collectively it was long and tiring, and I sure am glad to be home again! The trip started with the OpenOffice.org RegiCon North America, part of the Desktop Summit, held in Del Mar, just north of San Diego, California. I spoke on "Technical Writing using OpenOffice.org" and spent most of my time staffing the OpenOffice.org booth, along with Daniel Carrera, Ian Lynch, Ryan Singer, Jason Faulkner, Adam Moore, and some other volunteers whose names I failed to write down. We answered many questions, passed out CDs, displayed the draft user guides for OOo2.0, and sold some third-party books on OOo1.x. Some photos are here. The trip ended with the WritersUA Conference (UA = User Assistance) in Las Vegas, Nevada, at which I spoke on "Strategies for Editing and Reviewing Online Help".

After a day to recover from the trip home (36 hours door-to-door from the hotel in Las Vegas to my place in Airlie Beach, Australia), I immediately got busy again with OOoAuthors, editing and writing parts of the OOo2.0 user guides. This is a really exciting project, about which I'll have more to say later.