education

IABC Business Writing Conference

Learn how to write clearly and persuasively.

Phoenix Business Writing Conference Program

Browse the program below.

Schedule at a glance

Monday, 17 September

Tuesday, 18 September

Conference Program

Monday, 17 September

7:45 a.m.
Continental Breakfast

8:30 a.m. - 12 p.m.
The Writing Workshop: Learn how to write what you mean

The Writing Workshop will give you the confidence and skills you need to communicate your ideas clearly and persuasively. You’ll learn how to define a clear objective, how to assess your reader’s perspective, and how to structure and write a logical and persuasive document.

You will also learn how to:

• Think analytically, focus your objectives and understand your reader’s expectations
• Organize your ideas and present them clearly and logically in writing
• Strengthen your writing through editing and revision

John Sturtevant has taught business people how to think clearly and write what they mean for more than twenty years. Sturtevant also taught business writing for five years at Harvard Business School and the European School of Economics.

12 – 1:30 p.m.
Keynote Luncheon:

Writing for the media: Challenges and opportunities
As the media landscape changes, so do the ways journalists and writers need and want to receive information. To meet their needs we have to change our habits, skill sets and even technologies. But, the most fundamental change is how we write for the media.

In this session, attendees will learn how to:

• Think differently, write differently
• Develop the best writing skills
• Know if you're successful

Wilma Mathews, ABC began her writing career at age 8 when her first-ever poem was printed (actually, mimeographed) in the school newsletter. From that auspicious beginning, Mathews has produced hundreds of articles for magazines, newspapers, professional and trade journals as well as co-authored and/or contributed to several communication books. Her least memorable work includes corporate jargon in annual reports, marketing materials, op-ed pieces and other easily forgettable communication products. Her writing heroes are E. B. White, William Safire, Alden Wood and Skip Boye.

1:45 – 3 p.m.
Select and attend one of three breakout sessions:

Workshop One / Create a newsletter that enables employees to choose their news
iPods. iPhones. E-clips. E-mail. Information comes at us from all directions. As communicators, we must identify ways to compete with all the channels of information streaming toward our employees every hour of every day. Before you launch or redesign your company newsletter, know what you're up against and ask yourself these questions:

• Who is your audience and how does it prefer to receive company communications?
• Does the publication meet the needs/wants of your employees? (There is a big difference.)
• Is the publication convenient, informative and easy to use, or does it contribute to employees' "information overload"?

Attend this session to learn how newsletters continue to evolve to meet the needs of today's wired workforce.

Diana Gabriel, Sr. Manager of Internal Communications at Halliburton, has learned how to think on her feet and communicate strategic messages that travel well around the world during her career managing both web and internal communications for global Fortune 200 corporations. At Halliburton, one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the energy industry, she manages an in-house team of writers, designers and programmers dedicated to all aspects of internal and executive communication. Her team currently manages over 500,000 pages of web content, a daily online newsletter distributed to nearly 50,000 employees in approximately 70 countries and 100-150 print and multimedia projects at any one time. During her tenure at KBR, a global engineering, construction and services company, Gabriel rebuilt the company's global Internet and intranet presence.

Workshop Two / Writing for the web
Do visitors to your Web site come away satisfied, quickly finding answers and frequently returning for more? Or are they frustrated, wandering from page to page, only to give up and look elsewhere? Effective web writing is one of the single most important elements in building a successful site. This session will teach you practical tips and techniques you can use right away to improve your online writing style - whether your goal is turning prospects into customers or informing and engaging employees.

You'll learn how to:

• Create pages that are easy for users to scan and find information
• Convert traditional blocks of copy into web-friendly "chunks"
• Write effective headlines, abstracts and hyperlinks
• Alter your writing style for differing goals and formats, including Web 2.0 and social media

Jerry Stevenson is a director in the global human resource technology practice of Buck Consultants, an ACS company. An early pioneer of developing company intranets, his background includes a unique combination of software engineering and corporate communication expertise. Consistently a top-ranked seminar leader at conferences around the world, Dallas/IABC named Stevenson 2004 Communicator of the Year.

Workshop Three / Writing the press release
Catching the eye of busy reporters takes a combination of luck and skill, and the news release can be a good tool for grabbing the media's attention.

This session will cover the following aspects of news release writing:

• Brevity
• Active writing
• Effective visuals and the payoff for the public

Jon Brodsky works as a Management Assistant in the City of Phoenix Public Information Office, following a two-year stint as the Phoenix City Council PIO. He previously worked as a Public Information Coordinator for the Tempe Elementary School District. Before moving to government communication, Brodsky worked as a reporter for KPHO-TV, Phoenix's CBS affiliate, winning two Emmy Awards for his reporting. He also worked in TV in Tucson, AZ, and Reading, PA, exercised his vocal cords as a radio news director in suburban Philadelphia, learned about network TV as a CNN Financial News Production Assistant, and got run over in the Super Dome as a parabolic microphone operator for the Philadelphia Eagles radio station.

3 – 3:30 p.m.
Coffee break

3:30 – 5 p.m.
Fine-tune your editing skills
Hey, all editors need some sharpening of their editing pencils from time to time, and that includes you! In this hands-on session, you'll do some micro- and macro-editing and review seven (and only seven) reasons to change copy.

In this session, you will review:

• Eight "always" rules for commas
• The relationship of sentence structure to punctuation rules
• Three steps to take to cut copy
• The fundamentals of coaching writers

Don Ranly, Ph.D. is professor emeritus of journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism where he taught for 32 years. An author of articles and books on writing and editing, he has conducted more than 950 seminars for individual newspapers and magazines, corporations, associations and organizations. He has led seminars at 24 IABC international conferences and for 36 IABC chapters, and in 2002, Ranly was named an IABC Fellow.

Tuesday, 18 September

7:45 – 9 a.m.
General Session with Continental Breakfast:

Practical tips for business blogs
Few communication tools inspire as much promise and as much fear as blogs. They offer the possibility of candid two-way communication that can inspire and motivate - and the potential of chaotic free-wheeling discussions that waste time or (worse) leak critical information. This session will teach you the art of connecting blogs and social media tools with real-world business solutions. You'll come away with a better understanding of what blogs can do for your organization, when to utilize them, and how you can play an important role in making them successful.

You'll learn:

• Knowledge about what blogs to well - and what they do poorly
• Advice on how to overcome common objections to blogs
• Strategies for supporting and counseling a leader who wants to start a blog - including effective writing and editing tips
• Tips on how to turn a monologue into a dialogue - getting employees to productively participate
• Measurement approaches to prove the value of your work to management

Jerry Stevenson is a director in the global human resource technology of Buck Consultants, an ACS company. An early pioneer of developing company intranets, his background includes a unique combination of software engineering and corporate communication expertise. Consistently a top-ranked seminar leader at conferences around the world, Dallas/IABC named Stevenson 2004 Communicator of the Year.

9:15 – 10:30 a.m.
Select and attend one of three breakout sessions:

Workshop One / Influencing your audience: Crafting messages that motivate people to say yes
When communicators write messages asking people to take action or to support an idea, they often need to overcome resistance or to motivate those who are indifferent. In this session, you will explore how to use principles of human behavior change when crafting messages so that you influence the audience's thinking and lead people toward the conclusion you want.

We will cover:

• Ways to strengthen your credibility
• Techniques for opening a message when the audience is resistant or indifferent
• Tips for making your ideas stand out
• Principles of human behavior change: three ways you can induce people to agree with you

Ken O'Quinn is a professional writing coach and the author of Perfect Phrases for Business Letters (McGraw-Hill, 2006). Prior to launching Writing With Clarity 12 years ago, he was a journalist with the Associated Press. O'Quinn's clients include Chevron, Visa, Campbell's Soup, John Deere, UPS, Oracle, Merck, Eli Lilly, Raytheon, Reebok, Sprint and Blockbuster. He is also a writing instructor for the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI). O'Quinn's writing has appeared in major U.S. newspapers and in such publications as the Harvard Management Communication Letter and the Journal of Employee Communication Management.

Workshop Two / Writing for a highly specialized audience
What makes audiences pay attention? Is it the content, or the style? Is it the angle, or the attitude? Good writing makes any topic riveting. Drawing on over ten year's of magazine writing experience, Fernando will share basic, advanced and guerilla techniques that you can immediately adopt on your next assignment.

At this session, you will learn how to:

• Craft opening lines that create tension and avoid clichés, buzzwords and tech-speak
• Research your subject and secure interviews
• Use social media to continuously "sharpen the saw" when working on web content, newsletters, ad copy and magazine articles

Angelo Fernando is marketing communications manager at Arizona State University and a technology columnist for IABC's Communication World, covering a wide range of topics targeted at specialized global audiences. His extensive experience includes branding, creative writing, and corporate communication. Fernando has a background in copywriting at Ogilvy and Mather and JWT, and radio at the BBC, London.

Workshop Three / Writing winning award entries
Some of the top communication professionals in the world review award entries to identify the best of the best each year. What do they look for when they are deciding on these communication programs? How do you write an entry that showcases your success? What do you need to do in advance and during implementation of an award-winning program? Learn how to write an award entry so that you get the applause and recognition you deserve for a job well done.

In this session, you will learn how to:

• Demonstrate success that has impacted your campaign's needs
• Utilize research to identify a baseline and showcase success
• Measure results thoroughly

Jeffrey Ory, ABC, APR is senior communication strategist for Deveney Communication, an internationally recognized public relations firm based in New Orleans. Ory is respected globally, working on projects that have earned the highest national and international honors in the profession, including two of the pinnacle recognitions in the communication profession: The IABC Gold Quill Award and Jake Wittmer Research Award. Ory currently serves as chair of IABC's Gold Quill Awards Program.

10:45 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Select and attend one of two breakout sessions:

Workshop One / Writing the magazine feature article
What are elements that make up the article that you can't put down - that stays with you long after you have read it? What do books, article authors and readers say make good feature writing? How does it differ from the typical news story? What prevents you from writing prize-winning articles?

We'll discuss:

• Telling a story - narrative style
• Paying attention to people
• Appealing to the senses
• Pacing and its importance

Don Ranly, Ph.D. is professor emeritus of journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism where he taught for 32 years. An author of articles and books on writing and editing, he has conducted more than 950 seminars for individual newspapers and magazines, corporations, associations and organizations. He has led seminars at 24 IABC international conferences and for 36 IABC chapters, and in 2002, Ranly was named an IABC Fellow.

Workshop Two / Creative writing: Bring your writing to life, and life to your writing
If “the act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe,” (David Hare) then this session will inspire a renewed and personal voice in your everyday business writing. Building on the premise that the best storytelling is borne of memorable conversations, this working session will refuel your quill to remind you that corporate creative writing is not an oxymoron. Come prepared to find life - literally and figuratively - in your written words.

Your next storytelling opportunity will benefit from:

• Knowing how and when to make your writing colorful
• Trying new tricks to generate the great conversations that inspire your true storytelling voice
• Learning twenty questions you've never thought of asking

Jennifer Wah, ABC uses a passion for strategic storytelling to help individuals become inspired, organizations become engaging places, and causes become motivators. She is head honcho of Forwords Communication Inc., based in North Vancouver, Canada, and has won more than 23 awards for communications planning, creative and editorial management, and writing, including five IABC Gold Quill Awards.

12 – 1:30 p.m.
Keynote Luncheon:

Ideaspotting: Fuel for fresh writing
You may have a wonderful writing style and sharp technical skills, but without fresh ideas, you'll wind up with page after page of stale content. That's why you'll want to hear Sam Harrison talk about how to spot great ideas.

Attenders will learn how to:

• Turn off your Negative News Network and burn your excuses
• Break out of ruts and abandon "Not Invented Here" thinking
• Focus on details and spend your creative energy wisely

Sam Harrison is the author of two best-selling books: Zing! Five Steps & 101 Tips for Creativity on Command and Ideaspotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea. His clients include organizations such as the National Football League, Major League Baseball, Merrill Lynch and John Denver Environmental Group.

Top