education

IABC Business Writing Conference

Learn how to write clearly and persuasively.

Seattle Business Writing Conference Program

Browse the program below.

Schedule at a glance

Thursday, 26 March

Friday, 27 March

Conference Program

Thursday, 26 March

8-8:30 a.m.
Registration and Continental Breakfast

8:30 a.m.–12 p.m.
Transparent writing: Learn to think clearly and write what you mean
Information is plentiful in business. But how you communicate that information is critical. Communication professionals must continually turn information into knowledge to help their colleagues and clients make smart decisions. Whether you’re a seasoned wordsmith or you struggle through every sentence, you’ll gain the confidence and skills you need to communicate clearly and persuasively. Best of all, you’ll walk out of the session with a fresh perspective and renewed enthusiasm for writing.

In this lively presentation, you will learn:

• The most important goal in writing (it’s not what you think)
• The No. 1 question on every reader’s mind (you’re thinking it right now)
• Why thinking about tomatoes will make you a better writer—guaranteed

John Sturtevant has taught business people how to think clearly and write what they mean for more than 20 years. He co-developed and taught a business writing curriculum at Harvard Business School for five years. Sturtevant was also a professor of business communication at The European School of Economics in Rome. Prior to this, Sturtevant was vice president of marketing for an Internet software company and co-founded SturtevantFishbourne, an award-winning, full-service advertising and marketing agency in Boston. In 1985, as senior producer at AVW, Houston’s premier multimedia production company, he created programs designed to motivate employees, and simplify complex ideas.

12:15–1:20 p.m.
Keynote Luncheon:

Integrating your print and online vehicles
The death of print has been greatly exaggerated. Smart companies and communicators are using print to educate and engage their audiences, as well as push people to their online content. Your print and online tools should be working together to help you achieve your communication goals.

In this practical session filled with real-life case studies, you’ll learn how to:

• Decide which content belongs in print and which belongs online
• Switch gears and create the right kind of content for the right kind of vehicle
• Integrate all of your communication tools—print, e-mail, blogs,podcasts, web sites, intranets and video

Steve Crescenzo is principal of Crescenzo Communications. He has helped thousands of communicators in North America, South America and Europe improve their print, electronic, face-to-face and social media communication efforts. Crescenzo has twice been rated the No. 1 speaker at IABC’s International Conference.

1:30–2:30 p.m.
Effective communication in a 2.0 world
The online environment has changed dramatically in the past two years. The old mantra of “people don’t read online” simply isn’t true anymore. People do read online...but they also want to listen to audio, watch video and interact with the content. Creating content in this new online world involves more than just writing words—it’s about changing the way you think about your content.

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• Create 2.0 content that people will actually pay attention to
• Use multimedia vehicles and social media to draw more readers to your site—and keep them there
• Change your writing style—and help executives change their writing styles—to reach the 2.0 audience

Steve Crescenzo is principal of Crescenzo Communications. He has helped thousands of communicators in North America, South America and Europe improve their print, electronic, face-to-face and social media communication efforts. Crescenzo has twice been rated the No. 1 speaker at IABC’s International Conference.

2:45–3:45 p.m.
Select and attend one of two breakout sessions:

Workshop One / Writing to informed consumers and participating in marketing conversations
With the increasing effectiveness of conversational marketing, 92 percent of consumers indicate that they trust their peers more than they trust marketers. Consumers who believe they are better informed by conversational marketing are more willing to abandon product loyalty and act on trusted endorsements. This hands-on, interactive session will provide you with resources to assess and improve your traditional promotional communication, take advantage of conversational marketing opportunities and clearly convey value to consumers.

During this session, you will:

• Review what is known about informed consumers and conversational marketing and how promotional writing has changed
• Practice identifying strategic objectives and planning for effective measures of performance
• Learn how to write traditional marketing communication so that it becomes part of informed consumers’ conversations

Todd T. Hattori, ABC, is currently managing the development and implementation of customer relations processes and performance metrics for the Washington Department of Information Services. He has provided strategic communication leadership to government, nonprofit and private organizations to align communication with organizational strategies and goals. Hattori currently serves as the immediate past chair of IABC’s executive board.

Workshop Two / What’s new in newsletter writing?
Isn't it time to re-tool and re-fuel your newsletter engines? Does your newsletter still look like it did before the Internet? Have you become more visual, accessible and interactive? Are you serving readers with useful information in the most usable way? Whether you're putting out an internal newsletter, marketing an external one or creating an online edition, attend this session to pick up some newsletter tips that will guarantee you better results.

This session will address how to:

• Assure your newsletter is useful, usable and gets used
• Grab readers with bright headlines and breakouts
• Incorporate a table of contents, and understand why it’s important, even in newsletters

Don Ranly, Ph.D., IABC Fellow, 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 26 IABC international conferences and for 36 IABC chapters.

3:45–4 p.m.
Coffee break

4–5 p.m.
Fine-tune your editing skills
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 and three steps for cutting copy
• The relationship of sentence structure to punctuation rules
• The fundamentals of coaching writers

Don Ranly, Ph.D., IABC Fellow, 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 26 IABC international conferences and for 36 IABC chapters.

Friday, 27 March

8–8:30 a.m.
Continental Breakfast

8:30–11:30 a.m.
Morning Workshop:

Think like a reader: Write copy that gets read by making it more relevant and valuable to your audience
Each day, your readers are bombarded with more than 5,000 pieces of information. That's nearly two million messages a year. In this environment, avoiding information—throwing it away—is literally a survival strategy. So how can you write copy that gets read instead of copy that winds up in the trash? To reach your readers, you need to think like a reader. The secret to thinking like a reader is a simple four-step process that makes your information more relevant, valuable and rewarding to your readers. This workshop will help you master that process.

Specifically, you will learn:

• The formula readers use to determine what to read—and what to throw away
• A two-minute perspective shift that will convince more people to read your copy
• A three-letter word that will focus your copy on the relevance to the reader

Ann Wylie is the author of multiple learning tools that help people improve their communication skills, including “Rev Up Readership,” “Think Like a Reader” and Planning Powerful Publications, published by IABC. As president of Wylie Communications, Wylie handles special writing and editing projects for Sprint, Readers Digest, The Mayo Clinic and other major clients. Previously, she was editor of Hallmark Cards’ employee magazine, Crown. Her work has earned 40 communication awards, including a Women In Communications (WIC) Clarion award and two IABC Gold Quill Awards.

12 p.m.
Networking Luncheon with Keynote Presentation:

Strategic communication in the digital age
Today’s media environment presents challenges never seen before. This presentation will look at how to get your message out when you can't always count on the traditional media and other sources of news are random and varied. You’ll leave with tips on how to tell your story when newspapers are closing down, all the young people are on Facebook and Twitter, you don't have the e-mail for Obama's Blackberry and everyone else is on the Internet checking the stock market.

David Schaefer is director of public affairs at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, where he is responsible for communication and media, government relations and community affairs. He began professional life as a journalist and spent nearly 30 years as a newspaper reporter and editor. Most of that time was at the Seattle Times as a reporter, political editor and Washington, D.C. correspondent. Since leaving the Times, Schaefer has worked as press secretary for U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, as a public affairs consultant for the Seattle firm of Gogerty, Stark, Marriott, and as assistant director of public affairs for the Port of Seattle.

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