Photo: Rick Lorenz for STC

Carl Stieren is a writer, speaker and team leader. His work spans the media. Carl has created five websites and with customized programs to process webforms. He wrote software manuals in FrameMaker and Microsoft Word, Windows help files using RoboHelp, and HTML using Notepad and Dreamweaver. As a writer, Carl has had hundreds of articles published and photos in newspapers and magazines. In Chicago, he interviewed writer Studs Terkel, author of Working and Hard Times, for CBC Radio.

In the sciences, Carl began his technical writing career with features for The Globe and Mail/Report on Business. For the next 10 years, he wrote user’s guides, programming manuals and getting started manuals for two Ottawa software companies: Simware, Ltd. (now NetManage) and OmniMark Technologies. For five years in a row, he presented papers at the international conference of SIGDOC, the Special Interest Group on Documentation of the Association of Computing Machinery. In 1998, SIGDOC published Stieren’s· The Zen of Minimalism: Designing a Top-of-Class Manual for Beginners and Advanced Users, a paper he presented at their 1998 conference in Quebec City. He studied chemistry at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and received a certificate in Business Computer Systems and Programming from Ryerson Polytechnic University in 1993. From York University in Toronto, he earned a B.A. in history.

In the humanities, Carl researched and wrote Crossing Borders: Canadian Friends and International Affairs, 1931-1997, 1998, ISBN 0-920367-42-9. As a reporter and news editor of a community newspaper for three years, he covered business, labour, the arts, and federal and provincial politics. As a photo editor, Carl co-ordinated photographers and assigned shoots that brought inspired work back to the paper. For five years, he worked as Co-ordinator of Canadian Friends Service Committee. Carl has travelled widely in North America, Europe and Africa, and once worked for an advertising agency in Hamburg, Germany. He is fluent in German and proficient in speaking and reading French.

As a team leader, Carl was News Editor of the Etobicoke Gazette. At Simware (now NetManage), he headed the documentation team that produced a suite of manuals for REXXWARE, a new computer language. At OmniMark, he was the documentation team leader for SureSpeed. In process facilitation, he designed, planned and facilitated an introductory series on conflict resolution techniques in the spring of 2001. Carl also designed, planned and facilitated a week-long workshop and simulation on Central America for junior high school students. For three years, he planned and facilitated the Grindstone Island School for Peace. He was instrumental in the creation of Grindstone Co-operative and was one of the founders of a new nonprofit organization in Ottawa in 2000.