education

IABC Business Writing Conference

Learn how to write clearly and persuasively.

1-2 May, Chicago Business Writing Conference Program

Browse the program below.

All attenders of the Chicago Business Writing Conference will receive a complimentary copy of presenter Kare Anderson's e-book, LikeAbility, with the evaluation e-mail post-conference.

Schedule at a glance

Thursday, 1 May

Friday, 2 May

Conference Program

Thursday, 1 May

7:45 a.m.
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 at all levels and in every type of business must continually turn information into knowledge to help their colleagues and their clients make the right decisions.

In this energetic, hands-on 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!

Whether you're a seasoned wordsmith or you struggle with every sentence you write, The Writing Workshop will give you the confidence and skills you need to communicate your ideas clearly and persuasively. Best of all, you'll walk out of The Writing Workshop with a fresh perspective and renewed enthusiasm for writing.

John Sturtevant has taught business people how to think clearly and write what they mean for over twenty 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 - 1:30 p.m.
Keynote Luncheon:

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 situations. 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 do 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 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.

1:45 - 3:15 p.m.
Select and attend one of two breakout sessions:

Workshop One / 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 Two / 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
• The relationship of sentence structure to punctuation rules
• Three steps for cutting copy
• 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 25 IABC international conferences and for 36 IABC chapters.

3:15 - 3:45 p.m.
Coffee break

3:45 - 5 p.m.
Select and attend one of two breakout sessions:

Workshop One / 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 writing for business. 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
• New tricks to generate the great conversations that inspire your true storytelling voice
• 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 she has won more than 23 awards for communication planning, creative and editorial management, and writing. Front and center are five IABC Gold Quill Awards.

Workshop Two / Produce a newsletter that employees anticipate and absorb
Every company has or wants a newsletter, and yet many publications fail to deliver interesting, well-written content that captures attention. Turning a lifeless newsletter into an exciting communication tool is an effective and essential way to engage employees. As a communicator, your job is to find and share company news, much of which will be obscure, technical, or dull. How then do you create a newsletter that engages and inspires? Where do you find stories, and how do you make them fresh and captivating?

In this interactive session, you’ll review outstanding newsletters and samples of breathtaking corporate prose. (Yes, it exists.) You’ll also wrestle with troublesome scenarios and work with the instructor to find solutions.

By the end, you’ll be able to:

• Grab a busy reader’s attention and hold it until your last sentence
• Know what it means to write with “flair”
• Turn a deadly dull assignment into a living, memorable story

If you’re just starting out, this session will show you basic principles of good writing and good storytelling that will last your whole career. If you’ve been writing newsletters for years, this workshop will show you practical ways to revitalize your employee newsletter, drive up readership and deliver business results.

Paul Matalucci is president of Wordwright Communications Inc., a consulting agency specializing in employee communication. Wordwright’s corporate clients include Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Business Objects, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard and Gilead Sciences. His book reviews have been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, and his features, interviews and fiction have appeared in The Madison Review, Christopher Street and The Capitol Times. Matalucci has also served as a Blue Ribbon judge for IABC’s Gold Quill Award.

Friday, 2 May

7:30 - 8 a.m.
Continental Breakfast

8 - 9 a.m.
General Session:

Write it so they see it, want more and tell others
Write like a movie director, pulling in your audience from the first sentence (your opening scene) and keeping them enthralled until the satisfying ending. From an Emmy-winning former Wall Street Journal and NBC journalist, hear how to "story board" your written message and images to evoke interest, establish credibility and grow your readership. This session shows you exactly how to involve both instinctively analytic and empathic readers. You will leave understanding how to involve and activate your readers.

You'll learn how to:

• Make readers feel you are writing to them
• Use three “Yes Triggers” to gain agreement with your message
• Motivate more people to act by offering three choices
• Maximize credibility by referencing extremely unlikely allies
• Evoke bragging rights so readers pass along your ideas

Kare Anderson is a once phobically-shy stutterer turned journalist who translates behavioral research into ways to become higher-performing and happier with others. She's the author of Getting What You Want, SmartPartnering, Walk Your Talk, Resolving Conflict Sooner and Beauty Inside Out. Her clients are as diverse as Google, Human Rights Watch, Pfizer and Nordstrom.

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

Workshop One / Writing the strategic communication plan
Strategic communication planning is necessary for any business, but the thought of going through the process, the research and the writing can make even the seasoned communicator shiver in their shoes—it shouldn’t. Learn the critical elements of a communication plan and be guided through the steps of creating one that integrates activities, focuses on goals and objectives, and aligns with the varied interests of your target audiences.

You’ll learn:

• The importance of research and how it can make communication planning easier
• The process to develop messages and tactics for your key target audience
• The tips to integrate measurement into your plan

Jeffrey Ory, ABC, APR, is vice president for Deveney Communication, an internationally-recognized public relations firm based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ory is recognized 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. A long-time IABC member and volunteer, Ory currently serves as the chair of IABC’s Gold Quill Awards program.

Workshop Two / Writing the magazine feature article
Writing features does not mean writing fluff. What it does mean is writing copy of all kinds with a flair that readers find compelling and enjoyable. This session will push you to write more stories that readers read and remember. Through use of literary devices (similes, metaphors, examples, etc.), you'll have more fun and your copy will spring to life.

We'll discuss:

• Using narative style versus the inverted pyramid
• Discovering characters rather than sources
• Writing for story rather than merely reporting facts

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 25 IABC international conferences and for 36 IABC chapters.

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

Workshop One / Writing the interview
To write a compelling business interview for a publication, some critical components need to be in place. In this session, CW editor Natasha Nicholson will explore the development and use of a content plan that helps you focus on the essentials. She will also address the preparation required to produce a clean and workable transcript.

You’ll learn:

• Why live interviews often produce the best copy
• How to turn a raw interview transcript into a first-rate article that maintains the voice of your subject
• Strategies for streamlining copy by identifying key messages and removing unnecessary passages
• Ways to avoid the approval process taking over your copy

Natasha Nicholson has been with IABC since 1991 and currently serves as the vice president of publishing and research, as well as the executive editor of Communication World magazine and its online supplement, CW Bulletin. Throughout her career, she has conducted and edited numerous interviews with high-level executives working for prominent organizations.

Workshop Two / Writing for the media
Breaking through cluttered inboxes to secure traditional media coverage requires writing that is smart, targeted and compelling. While having great contacts and strong relationships matter most, the message must be clear and newsworthy.

By combining case studies, insight and interaction, this session will teach attenders how to:

• Write pitches and releases that connect
• Craft the right message for the right time
• Resist bad habits that get in the way of great headlines

Shawn M. Kahle, APR, is managing director at Arment Dietrich Inc. With more than 25 years of senior-level public relations and communication expertise, Kahle’s media relations experience is extensive in multiple sectors including retail, nonprofit, telecommunications, real estate, trade shows, hospitality and consumer events. Kahle currently is on the public relations faculty at Loyola University in Chicago, and previously was a lecturer at Wayne State University in Detroit. Kahle serves as a board member of both IABC/Chicago and PRSA Chicago.

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.

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