I had a lot to do at IPCC 2013 in Vancouver this year. One workshop, one info session about the IEEE Professional Communication series, and one paper to give with/for my colleagues at Cornell. Whew!

The workshop was with Christine Nicometo, and it focused on techniques to use when presentations and slides have to go in front of audiences who need more than one language. We had some great attendees, and we made some wonderful connections with new colleagues in Aarhus.

On the heels of that talk, Saul Carliner and I spoke about publishing with a PCS pub (he’s the editor in chief of the PCS journal; I do the book series). Since around 1999, I have enjoyed working with Saul, and that session was no different. It was a packed room, and we hope we sparked some interest in our pubs with that set of folks. I think we did!

Last, I gave a more traditional paper on a topic I’m working on with Rick Evans, examining the use of microgenres in engineering writing. Rick is teaching me so much about linguistics (I’ve forgotten the complicated nature of deep linguistic analysis of texts over the last 20 years). Some great conversations followed that talk, too.

But maybe best of all was having the unique opportunity to listen to Dr Bernard Amadei, the founder of Engineers Without Borders, USA. His story is incredible, and we all came away wanting to do more, to do better, with the talents that we have.

Vancouver was great, and the UBC campus was amazing. Thanks, all!