Whether you are a seasoned technical writer or a newcomer to the field, attending conferences and professional development events is critical for growth. Such events help you upskill yourself, keep up with current trends in the technical writing and documentation field, and, most importantly, network with other peers. In this blog, we aim to give you a comprehensive overview of the top conferences you can look forward to attending as a technical writer happening across the globe. Get ready to mark them on your calendar.
Top 12 Conferences Every Technical Writer Should Attend
While there are plenty of technical writing community meetups and events across the globe, we recommend short-listing the ones you would like to attend based on the value you plan to derive from them. While some showcase new technology in the field, others focus purely on upskilling and writing methodology. So, let us look at the top-rated conferences right away!
1. Convex: April 8-10, 2024: Minneapolis
Convex promises to be an immersive experience for content developers. Their 3-day conference plans to offer technical writers a wealth of ideas and information to support their efforts in defining and executing a comprehensive content strategy.
Writers attending the conference will be able to learn more about content management, ways to improve the visibility of their content, the latest technology and tools that assist in content creation and management, and, most importantly, network with top industry representatives.
The conference promises more than 15 sessions daily, making it an extremely valuable conference for technical writers and Documentation experts.
Registration for the event is priced at $1,395.
2. Write the Docs: April 14-16, 2024: Portland
Write the Docs is one of the USA’s largest communities of people involved in software documentation. Their annual conferences are attended by programmers, tech writers, customer support, designers, project managers, product managers, developer advocates, and literally anyone else who cares about product or service documentation. Around 400 people usually attend this conference.
They have innovative sessions like “Writing Day,” where you can get other attendees to work on a project you have in mind, or you get to show off a tool you have discovered. If you don’t have either, you can join someone else’s project or discover new tools as a writer, which helps you improve your core writing skills.
There are also a lot of opportunities to brainstorm in their “lightning talks” and “unconference” sessions, where you can speak about any topic you want by scheduling it. This helps you expand your network and learn about topics you love or are passionate about.
Tickets are priced from $100 for students and $600 for corporate employees.
3. STC summit—May 13 & 16, 2024, Atlanta USA
The Technical Communication conference and expo include education sessions, pre-conference workshops, keynotes, vendor showcases, networking opportunities, and entertainment and social events. Attendees will get the opportunity to meet and listen to experts who are shaping technical communicators’ work. Speakers include celebrated authors, industry pioneers, and leaders from well-known companies.
It is a great conference for anyone involved in technical communication, from technical writers to content strategists and information architects to user advocates. The sessions are in-depth on topics like how writers can use open API for documentation, how to use data to inform your decisions, etc.
While most technical communications conferences may have a narrow focus, the STC summit is broad, with its depth reflecting the diversity of technical communication.
The registration fee for this conference is $1,300.
4. LavaCon—October 27-30, Oregon, Portland, USA
LavaCon specializes in content strategy by inviting content professionals to share their best practices and lessons learned. The benefit of attending LavaCon is that it is highly focused on content strategy, Content metrics, Authoring tools and more. So, most sessions are extremely in-depth, and strategists gain a lot of knowledge.
For example, last year’s LavaCon focussed on “Creating Enterprise Content Strategies” and had 70 sessions on planning, managing, and implementing content initiatives. To give you an idea of the sessions you may see this year, last year’s sessions included “Convergence of MarComm and TechComm”, Headless Content Management, and more.
Tickets to this conference are priced at $2,450, but early bird registrations allow you to take a colleague or your boss along for free.
5. Tcworld—November 5 to 7, Stuttgart, Germany
The Tcworld conference is one of the world’s largest gatherings of technical writers, with anywhere between 4,000 to 6,000 writers from across Europe, Eurasia, and the USA attending it. With writers and speakers flying in from all over the world, it allows every attendee to get updated with the latest updates, events, and technology being implemented in their industry in any country.
The three-day conference usually features more than 200 specialist lectures, meetups, workshops, and presentations by exhibitors and stalls. There are also lively and fun evening events and discussion forums. Parts of this event can be attended online too. As an exhibitor or product owner looking to create brand awareness, this is one of the largest audiences you can access in a single location.
Tickets to this event are priced at €580 for online and €940 upwards.
6. MEGAComm 2024—February 7-8, 2024
This conference, mainly meant for technical Communicators, translators, and Content managers, is attended by around 200 of them from in and around Israel. The sessions are largely focused on documentation. You can expect to attend sessions about visual testing of documentation and polishing your API Documentation and CommonMark Tips &Tricks. 2024 will be the 18th year this popular conference is conducted.
Considering Tel Aviv is one of the startup capitals in the world, it’s a great event to understand the direction in which the documentation industry in Israel is moving, industry requirements, challenges, and, of course, networking!
The MEGAComm event can be attended online, too. Tickets are priced between $280 and $415.
7. CPSTC—October 18-19, 2024, Menomonie, Wisconsin
Organized by the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, the conference is meant for all scientific and technical writers who specialize in writing and publishing scientific and research papers and will be held in Menomonie, Wisconsin, this year. The conference sees a lot of exciting research papers being presented—which include poster presentations, workshops, panel presentations, and individual presentations.
This conference is meant more for students looking at tools and ways to plan their paper and poster presentations. It will also include many sessions on business, science, and technology writing for specialized magazines and journals in those fields.
The ticket prices for this conference have not been released yet.
8. Soap! conference—June 5-7, Krakow, Poland
Soap conference again targets content writers but plans to focus on numbers. This conference may be ideal for content managers. The sessions promise to cover a lot about the role of numbers in technical communications, such as demographics, stats, data analytics, salaries, content and team sizes, budgets, metrics, etc. They plan to prove that numbers matter as much as words in technical writing.
Some sessions will also cover data storytelling and how it could be used in customer documentation, making our content more data-driven, information architecture, etc. However, there will also be sessions on technical documentation, learning materials, use of video and graphics, UI and UX, etc.
The sale of tickets has not begun yet.
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