Dr. Sam Dragga is Professor Emeritus of Technical Communication at Texas Tech University (TTU).  He is co-author of The Essentials of Technical Communication(Oxford University Press, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2018, 2021), Reporting Technical Information (Oxford University Press, 2002, 2006), and Editing: The Design of Rhetoric (Baywood, 1989). He was Editor-in-Chief (2016-2020) of Technical Communication the quarterly research journal of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and series editor of the Allyn & Bacon Series in Technical Communication (19 titles). He has authored or co-authored a score of articles in journals and collections on such topics as professional ethics and intercultural communication. He is a Fulbright Specialist, a Fellow of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW), and a recipient of STC’s Award for Excellence in Teaching Technical Communication and the National Council of Teachers of English Award for Best Book in Technical and Scientific Communication and Best Article Reporting Historical Research in Technical and Scientific Communication. He served as president of ATTW (1997-1999) and initiated the organization’s annual conference in 1998.  He also served as chair of the TTU Department of English (2002-2012). In this Room 42, we focus on the ethics of researching and publishing in technical communication—issues that might cause anxiety, especially for individuals new to the field or new to publishing. We will consider the perspectives and obligations of authors, journal editors, and manuscript reviewers and examine ethical practices in developing research projects, writing and revising manuscripts, and interacting with editors and reviewers.

Chris Dayley is an assistant professor of English and director of the Master of Arts in Technical Communication program at Texas State University. Chris has over 13 years of professional experience in higher education and his scholarly work has been featured in the academic journals Technical Communication Quarterly and Programmatic Perspectives. Chris’ research focuses on issues of social justice with a specific emphasis on diversity and inclusion in technical and professional communication (TPC) academic programs.   Today's technical communication students will become tomorrow's technical communication professionals. Increasing diversity in technical communication academic programs is a very important part of increasing diversity in the field in general. What can academic administrators do to increase diversity in technical communication programs? What can professionals do to help increase diversity in academic programs? How does increasing diversity in the field help technical communication as a profession?  In this episode Room 42, we discuss how to increase diversity in the field of Technical and Professional Communications.

Dr. Sara Doan is an Assistant Professor of Technical Communication at Kennesaw State University, where she teaches data visualization, information design, and Health and Medicine in Technical Communication. Dr. Doan's previous research on instructor feedback has appeared in IEEE Transactions on Technical Communication; her research on COVID-19 charts is appearing this January in the Journal of Business and Technical Communication.   In this session, we talk about some very important lessons learned in a look back at what the COVID crisis has taught us all. We discuss guidelines for creating accurate, accessible, and eye-catching charts about COVID-19, particularly for sharing via social media.  There is nothing like a global pandemic to bring to the front and center the need for accurate and understandable graphics.The use of visual aids in communicating important information to a diverse audience is nothing new.  We know the importance of citing sources and accuracy, but stunning graphics with colors and lines influence our understanding and can shape behaviours and beliefs.  With the advent of Social media and non-traditional news outlets, a new emphasis on stimulating data visualization is first priority.     As professional communicators, it is paramount that we understand data visualization so that we can pair our technical accuracy with the human psychology of aesthetics.    From good graphics gone bad when taken out of context to blatant manipulations to sway opinion with no foundation in fact. We’ll also talk about the need for us to focus on accessibility and the democratization of information especially in times of crisis.

A panel of academics from Michigan State University -- Ben Lauren, Stuart Blythe, Shannon Kelly, and Kaitlyn Nguyen -- discuss how they developed trauma-informed approaches to research and design practice.    Ben Lauren is a songwriter, scholar, and Associate Professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures. Most recently his work has focused on institutional and social change. His first book Communicating Project Management was published by Routledge’s ATTW series.    Stuart Blythe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. He teaches a range of courses in the undergraduate program in professional and public writing as well as the graduate program in rhetoric and writing.   Shannon Kelly is a doctoral student at Michigan State University in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures. Most recently, her work is focused on institutional change with trauma-informed methods and relationality. As a former assistant writing-program-director, she is also excited about curriculum design and the role of mentorship in how learners learn to teach.   Kaitlyn Nguyen is an undergraduate studying Experience Architecture at Michigan State University. Kaitlyn works as a Design Researcher for the MSU Essential Needs portal and a User Interface/User Experience Intern for the MSU Content Studio. She is currently researching how design impacts user interaction and response to products.   In this episode, we discuss the SEEN (Supporting Equity in Essential Needs) project at Michigan State University. SEEN is an institutional and organizational change project designed to improve the university's responsiveness to students’ essential needs that came to life through the collaboration of this interdisciplinary group of MSU academics. Learn how practitioners in the field can benefit from working within trauma-informed frameworks and how trauma-informed approaches to design practice can improve organizational change.

Emma Rose has spent her career crossing the academic and industry divide. She is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Washington Tacoma and an Adjunct Associate Professor in Human Centered Design & Engineering at University of Washington Seattle. Her research interests include participatory and human-centered design and developing methods to engage communities and marginalized populations in the design process. She is also the Past Chair of ACM SIGDOC, a professional organization dedicated to the design of communication. Prior to her academic career, she spent over a decade working at a User Experience consultancy helping organizations bring design thinking into their practices and product development.    Join us in Room 42 as we discuss the relationship between User Experience and Technical Communication. Are they the same field, do they overlap, or are they distinct? How should we be preparing the next generation of technical communicators to work at the intersection between UX and TC? What skills do professionals need to be successful?   In this episode, Dr. Emma Rose discusses the evolving state of UX and Technical Communication. She shares some of her recent research results that examine how the UX industry is changing. She also discusses the specific skills and dispositions early career professionals need to succeed in UX and how that is informing teaching and practice.

Guiseppe Getto is an Associate Professor of Technical and Professional Communication at East Carolina University and is President and Founder of Content Garden, Inc., a digital marketing, content strategy, and UX firm: http://contentgarden.org/. His research focuses on utilizing user experience (UX) design, content strategy, and other participatory research methods to help people improve their communities and organizations. He has published a co-edited collection, Content Strategy in Technical Communication, with Routledge. The findings of his research have been published in many peer-reviewed journals such as IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication; Technical Communication; and Computers and Composition. His work has also appeared in industry-based publications such as Intercom and Boxes and Arrows. In this episode of Room 42, he discusses how technical communicators can create user-focused, context-driven content to improve the customer experience. Technical content is increasingly valuable to organizations as savvy consumers search for reviews, tutorials, and technical specifications for their favorite products and services. Technical communicators exist at the crossroads of the customer journey, where information gathering, buying habits, and loyalty coalesce. But in many organizations, no one is truly in charge of improving the customer experience across all content channels. Someone needs to be. And maybe that someone is you!

Pam Estes Brewer, Mercer University, researches topics related to communication in virtual teams, online teaching, usability, and research methods. She teaches general technical communication courses as well as advanced and graduate courses in usability research, research methods, and international tech comm. Join us in Room 42 as we discuss how industry practitioners, working out on the front lines, can conduct reliable and valid research that can be published and instigate change in the workplace. Practitioners often have not had training in how to conduct reliable and valid research. Pam Estes Brewer explains how you can take your ideas, implement research that is both reliable and valid, and get it published so you can build change and support your career growth.

Samantha Blackmon (she/her) is a gamer/researcher/games researcher who loves playing games with her daughter and talking about games with anyone else who will listen or watch. She is passionate about games and making the games community a more inclusive space. Her research focuses on bringing together the voices of gamers, academics, and games industry folks in order to get a fuller picture of the games community and all of the people who comprise it. Her greatest academic goal is to create scholarship that is informed by and accessible to those outside of the academy, which makes for some pretty non-traditional work.  Her recent work has included looking at how to use games in the classroom and a Black Feminist Mixtape analysis of how Black women have affected the video game industry. She is currently working on a project that pays homage to the upcoming 10th anniversary of her blog and podcast, Not Your Mama’s Gamer, and a project that looks at representation and visibility of marginalized people on live streaming platforms. Samantha loves video games, books, crafting, and coffee, definitely coffee. Join us in Room 42 as we discuss how technical communicators can use techniques pioneered and perfected in the games industry in their scholarship, their content projects, and in the classroom. We talk about the importance of reaching your audience, meeting them where they are, so you can reflect and relate to them. We also discuss how lessons from the gaming industry can be useful anywhere people are learning, absorbing, and interacting with content. For example, Samantha talks about how games have a way of "scaffolding their tutorials" so as to promote quick adoption and long term retention in content consumers. In this session, practitioners learn how to take these lessons and apply them in their daily content projects.

Sweta Baniya, is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Professional and Technical writing at Virginia Tech University. Her scholarship centers around the ever evolving, changing, and challenging global issue of natural and man-made disasters, such as earthquakes or climate change. Her research draws upon non-western paradigms into dialogue with contemporary rhetorical framings of natural and man-made disasters to support local and global communities faced with responding to such events. Her work has appeared in Enculturation, Journal of Business and Technical Communications, Journal of Technological Studies. Join us in Room 42 as we discuss the role of transnational publics as well as women in disaster management and disaster response. A former communication practitioner, she shares on how public voices, actions, and transnational activism is something technical communication practitioners can collaborate with in order to support communities suffering during and after a disaster.

Carlos Evia is Professor of Communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, where he is affiliated with the Centers for Human-Computer Interaction, Communicating Science, and Humanities. During the 2020-2021 academic year, he is the faculty fellow at El Centro - Hispanic and Latinx Cultural and Community Center. His research and teaching work focuses on planning and developing technology-based content solutions for workplace communication problems, particularly in situations involving multicultural audiences or misrepresented communities.  Join us in Room 42 as we discuss the benefits of intelligent content, such as single sourcing, content reuse, and multichannel publishing and how, even in practitioner circles, there is pushback and criticism against some of the tools and standards that technical communicators use to produce and publish intelligent content.