communication department

By Theresa Putkey, Senior Member, and Former Chapter President

While I've been involved with the STC Canada West Coast chapter, it has always struggled to maintain the structure that has been outlined in the chapter's bylaws. This structure consists of an executive team plus the following team: programs, membership, newsletter, public relations, competitions, job banks, seminar, hospitality, and special projects.

In slow economic times, the chapter normally has no problem with finding volunteers. In good economic times however, there is often a shortage of volunteers for the chapter.

In response to a State of the Union email I sent as President of the chapter (yes, I'm an Amero-Canadian), a chapter member suggested that people are starting to gravitate towards loosely-knit, online, topical communities. People are networking and communicating online and that, while in-person meetings are invaluable, this is not necessarily the most appropriate form of communication and knowledge sharing for many of us.

The Canada West Coast chapter faces a challenge in that it is meant to serve all of British Columbia. Some chapters are city-based; some have chapters that serve a whole region. It has been obvious for years that the CWC chapter is really a "Vancouver" chapter that does not serve members outside of the Lower Mainland. Some effort has been made in the past to establish an Interior group or an Island group, but with little overall success.

To reinvigorate the chapter, I suggested that the chapter move to a member-driven, online community. Instead of the eight volunteers currently pulling the chapter along, the chapter's 250 members can set the pace, build momentum, and provide more value than a handful of volunteers are able to provide.

These ideas can apply to other chapters, not just to the CWC chapter. To move to an online community, we were able to take advantage of the weblog based website implemented two years earlier (and, in fact, contributed to the chapter winning a Pacesetter award).

The chapter has a lot of content on its STCwestcoast.ca website, but it also has an editable portion that can be edited by anyone with access. Volunteers have been using it to share information, and the executive decided that all members should have access.

We also purchased the Discussion Forums module for the web software and provide a space for members to discuss geographic issues, as well as anything else they thought the community could help with.

When members sign up for the chapter website, they get user names and passwords and can use this same user name and password to get to the wiki and forum. This empowers members to start a community (such as a contractors group or a regional group), post a question in the forum, organize an event, and start a local group even though they don't know everyone in their community. They can take discussions from the forum and move the information to the wiki or the chapter's online newsletter. Obviously, this idea only works if members participate.

Not only do members get to discuss, but also preserve their discussions in articles. The more articles posted in the newsletter, the more active the chapter appears (and is!). The chapter can get more publicity with employers, new technical writers, act as a deeper resource for senior writers, and start generating energy and momentum for shining more light on technical writing.

After participating in online discussions, members may feel more inclined to meet each other in person. Someone can suggest an event idea, a speaker, or just a social. Yet there are sometimes delicate issues that people may not want to discuss in person. Through the forums, members can get to know someone in the community.

Bi-monthly meetings normally attract 10 percent of the membership, yet take the majority of chapter resources. In having a community that is member-driven, in-person meetings can happen when members have established a critical mass for an event. The chapter can help fund the event, provide "how to" resources, and act as support for the event.

This can help motivate members spread across the landscape to have events. If there is funding and support available, organizing an event can be much less daunting. Even if it's a simple question of "Where is a good place for technical writers to have a drink and discuss contracting?" then the chapter can provide information.

Other ideas included having live web seminars. If someone knows of a live web seminar, then members can organize through the forum, get a location, arrange for paying the fees, and host the event.

Throughout this journey, there have been many other proposals on how to maintain dynamic and meaningful involvement at the chapter level. Each chapter needs to find its own grounding, but there is always the need and responsibility to respond-by using its own creativity and resources-to lack of participation and momentum. I hope that this article provided a few ideas for how to transition from a physical to virtual community, thus responding to the chapter's changing dynamics.

Theresa Putkey (tputkey@keypointe.ca) is a senior member and the former President of the STC Canada West Coast Chapter from 2007-2008. She works for Key Pointe Usability Consulting, Inc. in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Note: STC's bylaws in Article IX, Section 8 require chapters that are located in the United States to have at least three officers; president, secretary and treasurer. Chapters are free to have more officers on the executive committee and as many or as few other positions as they wish. View STC's bylaws.

Under new U.S. regulations, non U.S. Chapters of U.S. based organizations must be legal entities within their own countries and must follow the laws of their countries. Most countries stipulate there be a minimum number of officers, similar to the United States.

STC has created two separate model chapter bylaws as tools for chapters to consider what their bylaws should contain:

• U.S. based chapters
• Non U.S. based chapters

If you have any questions, please contact Diana Buttram