Barbara L. Heninger

Technical Writer / Writing Manager

**** ***** *** *** *****, CA 94024

Home: 650-***-****

Mobile: 650-***-****

Email: abqf9w@r.postjobfree.com

Technical Writer with over 20 years of experience writing award-winning manuals, online help, and websites, including 4 years as manager and 9 years as peer leader. Experienced team leader with good interpersonal skills; work with cross-func tional teams including engineering, support, training, and marketing to identify and achieve common goals, meet deadlines. Self-manage on multiple tasks; can quickly gather source material, learn tools and write from specs or design documents. Respon sible for customer support, training, marketing, and usability design for online documentation; improve documents through customer interviews, surveys and usability testing.

Highlights Led project to publish over 400 manuals on internal website and external support site, satisfying users by providing additional access to manuals and more frequent updates.Helped create a team to analyze support calls and write frequently-asked questions (FAQs), resulting in over $1 million annual cost-avoidance in handling support calls.Participated in a team to build a database management system for automating Pubs processes, to support a 70% increase in the number of manuals released within one year.

Tools

FrameMaker, FrameMaker+SGML WebWorks Dreamweaver Documentum

Microsoft Word, Publisher, FrontPage, Excel, Visio Windows / HTML Help tools CorelDraw, CorelPaint PaintShop Pro Adobe Acrobat/Distiller, PhotoShop

HTML, SGML, XML UNIX, Windows/XP Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools

Employment Timeline

Oracle Corp., Belmont – Web conferencing 2004 – 2005 Documentation Manager

Cadence Design Systems, San Jose – EDA tools 1994 – 2003 Sr. Tech Pubs Consultant

1990 – 1994 Sr. Technical Writer

Daisy/Dazix Systems, Mtn. View – EDA tools 1988 – 1990 Tech Pubs Group Leader

1986 – 1988 Sr. Technical Writer

JDC Systems, Foster City – Pubs contractors 1983 – 1986 Technical Writer

Skills

You have been relentless in meeting the needs of our customers. When a challenge presents itself, you face it with courage and display a leadership that motivates others.

Ray Bingham

Cadence CEO

from text of President’s Club Award, 2000

Publications Management / StandardsExperienced manager and team leader. Hiring supervisor of Oracle and Daisy/Dazix writers; peer-led teams of writers at Cadence and JDC. Wrote performance reviews, scheduled projects, edited documents, worked with development teams.Led geographically dispersed project teams in California, Massachusetts, India, Israel.Created department style guide and Word templates for Daisy. Led team at Cadence to create FrameMaker templates, making HTML conversion and automated tools possible.Helped specify and test internal Publications tools to automate and speed production.

Customer AdvocacyLed Tech Pubs presence at annual Cadence User Group conferences. Gave demos and presentations, administered surveys to improve manuals, analyzed data, summarized results to management. Managed booth staff, equipment, created print collateral.Participated in demo and training booths for real-time collaboration tools at Oracle World. Led demos, answered questions, interviewed users, provided technical support.Answered customer questions about Oracle and Cadence products, wrote FAQs. Helped design online feedback tool and defined response processes at Cadence.

Skills

continued

Excellent! You are right on target. It has ALWAYS been a major pain to search. This format of drill ing down to a set of selectable items lets me create a better search criteria.

Derrick Carson

Marketing mgr.

re Cadence online library, 2001

Writing / Editing / TrainingProduced online and printed user guides, reference manuals, setup guides, help, websites, and FAQs for novice to experienced users on a wide range of topics:

EDA tools IC layout PCB design Design database admin. FPGAs

Business tools Web conferencing Instant messaging Accounting

Database management Statistical forecasting

Hardware EDA workstations Inventory control toolsDesigned, wrote, and produced printed quick reference cards, brochures, and flyers.Created self-paced tutorials for non-technical users of web conferencing and instant messaging tools, and technical users of custom IC design products.Developed print and video courses to train customers about online documentation; led training classes for Cadence engineers and wrote internal documentation describing APIs and procedures for linking software tools to online manuals.

Online Design / UsabilityBased on customer needs, prototyped and helped create both FrameViewer- and html-based online documentation systems that reduced the cost to deliver manuals.Improved customer satisfaction with online knowledgebase by usability testing new Search interface designed to strengthen brand recognition (sourcelink.cadence.com).

Volunteer Publications Work

BarbWired Designs – www.barbwired.com/designsWrite and design brochures and programs pro bono for non-profit music groups. Design, write, and publish The Voice, bi-annual newsletter for Schola Cantorum; co-designer of Schola Cantorum’s website: www.scholacantorum.org.Write program notes for Redwood Symphony: www.barbwired.com/barbweb/programs.

Associations and Awards

Senior member, Society for Technical Communication2004: Presented paper, Do Users Use a User Guide? at STC National Conference.2001: Presented paper, When Users Hate Help, with JoAnn Hackos of Comtech Services at STC National Conference1998: STC Northern California Distinguished Award for Online BooksSTC Northern California Awards of Excellence (2002, 1993, 1992), Achievement (1997), and Merit (1992) for hardcopy and online manuals.

Numerous Cadence Design Systems service awards, including:

2002 Winning with Teamwork Award for improving SourceLink interface

2000 Cadence President’s Club Award for customer advocacy

1995 Special Achievement Award for helping to create a new doc system

Education

1982 Completed Master of Journalism coursework, University of California, Berkeley

Dent Hayes Robert journalism scholarship

Internships at Peninsula Times Tribune, Palo Alto; American Cancer Society

1979 Bachelor of Arts degree in English, University of California, Santa Barbara

Exchange student at Georg-August Universit t, G ttingen, Germany

Phi Beta Kappa honors student

View online portfolio at www.barbwired.com

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