Meet the ETC Presenters

We are glad to present the presenters for the Evolution of Technical Communications Conference.

Laura Bellamy is an Information Architect at VMware, Inc. She has been a long-time DITA champion, working at IBM during the adoption and proliferation of DITA. Throughout her career she has worked on every facet of DITA implementation from the migration of many product libraries, to the creation of specializations, the management of conversion projects, and development of reuse strategies. Her recent work at VMware has focused on defining the DITA standard, creating training for topic-based writing and DITA education, and writing authoring guidelines for DITA-sourced documents.

Jordan Stanchev is a senior information developer at SAP. His main field of work is developing documentation resources for SAP NetWeaver Developer’s Guide, in the areas of Service Composition, Composite Application Framework (CAF), and SAP NetWeaver Development Infrastructure (NWDI).

Ivan Terziev [Vozd] is a technical writer with broad and versatile 10+ years of experience in authoring, maintaining, and localizing end-user and technical software documentation in English and Bulgarian. He is currently holding a position of a Senior Technical Writer at Experian, being an integral part of the Tallyman software development team in Bristol, UK. Two years ago, Ivan organized the first Technical Communication Conference for technical writers in Bulgaria - see more at http://techcommbg.playtech.bg.

Vanya Kiritzova is a Technical Publications Manager in VMware Bulgaria. She expanded the Bulgarian Tech Pubs team from 2 to 7 writers in 18 months. She is now faced by the challenge to manage and motivate a group of writers working on 7 products for multiple releases in a complex and changing environment. Vanya has a Journalism and Mass Communications degree from the American University in Bulgaria and became a technical writer "by chance". Having loved the profession at once, she later transitioned to a management position "by determination".

Margarita Staneva is a Senior Technical Writer at VMware. She became a technical writer in 2002 – right after graduating from the Sofia University – and she loved the job. In 2005 she joined Sciant, where she worked on various projects. At VMware she’s the lead writer of the vCenter Update Manager documentation, handling multiple main and update releases. She was an active participant in the FrameMaker to DITA authoring transition and enjoys the challenges of new technology, new processes, and the progress of technical writing.

Branimira Dimitrova is a Senior Technical Writer at VMware Bulgaria. She has been working in DITA since she joined the company in 2008. Her first project was the pilot DITA project for VMware worldwide. Currently she is working on projects with multiple documentation deliverables. That involves a great share of content reuse which is the topic of her presentation. In her spare time she likes meeting with friends, dancing, and walking in the open.

Stuart Clements is a Staff Technical Writer at VMware, based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Documentation lead for the vCenter Orchestrator and Lifecycle Manager products. Participant in the pilot schemes to implement DITA XML documentation at VMware and to road-test a new content management system. Previously, Stuart worked at Sun Microsystems in Grenoble, France, with responsibility for documenting the monitoring and management components of the Java SE platform, mainly using SGML-based documentation technologies. Before becoming a technical writer, Stuart trained and worked as a technical translator and interpreter.

Niranjan Jahagirdar is a Technical Editor at VMware, based in Bangalore, India. He works with 4 other editors, and with writing teams in Palo Alto, Sofia, and Bangalore. When he is not working content, he likes to design graphics, assess Web-site usability, catch up with old friends, or simply go on a long drive.

Yordan Ugrinov's professional background, prior to technical writing at VMware, is in communications and online publishing. He graduated the American Univercity in Bulgaria in 2002, with a major in Journalism and Mass Communications. The newest addition to the dynamic Technical Publications team at VMware Bulgaria, he has been with the company since July 2009. His broader interests include web technologies, open source content management systems, and all things futuristic and technological.

Vanya Maneva is an expert information developer at SAP. She has been with the company for 3.5 years working mainly in the areas of architecture, administration and troubleshooting documentation as well as documentation communities.

Snezhina Velcheva is an expert information developer at SAP. She has been with the company for 5 years and her main areas of expertise are ABAP Workbench Tools, Switch and Enhancement Framework. She is also a community moderator on Docupedia.