communication department

Volume XX Number 6

STC Conference

Conference Wrap-up: Highlights from Minneapolis

STC’s 54th Annual Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, provided members with the most current information on topics of interest within the technical communication profession, as well as leadership tips and happenings at the Society level. A summary of conference highlights follows.

Leadership Day

STC leaders held progressions on topics related to producing community newsletters, recruiting volunteers, planning chapter programs and educational events, managing a Society project long distance, and much more:

• Cindy Currie, Second Vice President of STC, explained how the Society envisions the “STC Community of the Future” during a progression titled “What the Society Does for Communities.” For a community to best serve STC and its members in the future, Currie stated that it should be “self-defining, within STC rules; able to provide value from within; an incubator of ideas; part of a worldwide profession; and one of many different avenues through which STC serves a typical member.” For more on “STC Communities of the Future,” see the March/April 2007 issue of News & Notes.
• Char James-Tanny, STC Secretary, and Lisa Pappas, AccessAbility SIG Comanager, shared nine tips about using technology during a session titled “Tools for Collaborating Virtually for Communities.” Among many helpful tips, they recommended finding other chapters or special interest groups (SIGs) that are using the technology you are interested in incorporating, and asking such communities to mentor you. Also, promote the added value of working with these tools to community members; for example, volunteers who implement and consistently use a particular tool can add this to their résumés and promote their new knowledge at the workplace.
• Judith Herr, SIG Advocate, and Carolyn Kelley Klinger, Second Vice President and Membership Committee Manager of the Washington, D.C., Chapter STC, offered suggestions for recruiting volunteers. These included ensuring that all current volunteers share the responsibility of recruiting new volunteers, adding a volunteer application form to your community Web site so that interested volunteers can apply online, and making an effort to recruit one-on-one rather than relying strictly on mass communication that reaches many members at once (such as e-mail).
• Jackie Damrau, the new manager of the Leadership Community Resource (LCR), was named “LCR Volunteer of the Year.” See the article “Jackie Damrau Named Leadership Community Resource Volunteer of the Year” in this issue for more about Jackie.

Bylaws Forum

During the bylaws forum, members were given the opportunity to ask questions about the newly proposed changes to the STC Bylaws that will be voted on this fall. The new bylaws were updated to ensure they are in compliance with New York State law and are written as a policy-driven document. Supporting documents, including a text of the proposed bylaws, an audio recording of the entire forum, and a comparison of the proposed bylaws and current bylaws, can be found on the STC Web site.

It was also mentioned at the bylaws forum that SIG financial issues were still under consideration. Members were reminded that a special election to select a Region 1 director (which became necessary after previous Region 1 Director Cindy Currie was elected second vice president in the 2007 election) will be held shortly. See the article “Region 1 Election” in this issue for more about the special election.

Noteworthy Conference Changes and Offerings

• Fewer conference sessions. The program committee accepted only 21 percent of the session proposals for the 2007 annual conference. The result: a larger proportion of high-quality presentations.
• Certificate programs. The combination of seminars and sessions exposed participants to a broad range of thinking in many given topic areas. Attendees who completed the programs received a certificate of attendance.
• Institutes. Designed by well-known experts, these “conferences-within-a-conference” featured speakers with extensive and unique experience. This year, STC offered Institutes in content management, sharing corporate knowledge, information design and architecture, and Web 2.0.
• Biggest-ever EXPO. More than seventy vendors of technical communication products and services filled the exhibit hall at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Adobe, Inc., the Platinum Sponsor of the Technical Communication Summit, also offered a number of sessions on best practices for technical communicators using Adobe products.

Attendees’ Observations

• “The Summit was a great success. And I am completely amazed by your office staff. I [was] worn out—and I was only there a few days, for a few hours each day. It seemed like your staff was there every minute of every day. As always, the energy of the STC office astounds me. Thank you to everyone for devoting that energy to us!”
  —Becca Taylor, Immediate Past President, Houston Chapter STC
• “I wanted to thank everyone at STC for putting together a fun, inspiring, and educational conference in Minneapolis this year. It was my first time attending the STC conference and I came away with a lot of energy and enthusiasm for our profession. The keynote speakers to open the show and close the event were both excellent. The variety of sessions, the EXPO, [and] the networking luncheons were great. I appreciated the emphasis on networking that was delivered in messages from the conference leaders—it’s something that other conferences should do more. I was fascinated by the diversity of businesses and industries represented at the event—there’s a lot of potential in that.
  Keep up the great work. I hope to attend next year’s conference if I can arrange it.”
  —Chris Norred, Member, Puget Sound Chapter STC

Conference Photos Available for Use

Community leaders who are interested in seeing photos from the conference in Minneapolis may visit gallery3.stc-cdx.org. Also posted are photos of the Board of Directors. Newsletter editors and webmasters may feel free to use these images for community newsletters and Web sites.

Conference Proceedings CDs Recently Mailed

The STC office has recently mailed CD-ROM copies of the Proceedings from this year’s Technical Communication Summit in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to conference attendees. The CD-ROM contains papers that showcase the work of those conference speakers who chose to submit material for inclusion in this year’s Proceedings.

Please note that the papers written by speakers may not necessarily correspond to the content they presented at the conference. The CD-ROM does not include session material, such as bulleted handouts and PowerPoint presentations detailing the highlights of a speaker’s conference presentation. These materials can be found on the STC Web site.

If you have questions, please contact Lloyd Tucker, Director of Education and Membership.

Call for Proposals to be Posted Soon

STC’s 55th Annual Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, will be held June 1–4, 2008. The call for proposals will be posted on the STC Web site. Anyone interested in presenting at the conference will need to submit a proposal online via the site. Please check www.stc.org for more information and updates.