Category: STC

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Minutes from Our Business Meeting at the Conference

Virginia Janzig

The business meeting of the STC Technical Editing Special Interest Group (TE SIG) was called to order by Pat Moell on 3 June 2008, at 7:30 a.m., in the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown Hotel.
Pat recognized members of the board who were present. She also noted that the Distinguished Service Award was going to be presented to Diane Feldman at the 55th Annual STC Technical Communication Summit recognition banquet that evening.

Pat identified SIG accomplishments and areas of direction for the SIG:
• Bylaws, budget, and strategy
• Job listing aids
• Continue to hold annual elections (first election held October 2007)
• Provide 2 scholarships yearly
• Continue quarterly membership meetings
• Improve Web site

Pat asked each attendee to introduce themselves and identify what the TE SIG is doing that is worthwhile and identify things that might be offered to the membership.

SIG suggestions
• Continue quarterly meeting topics
• Consider repeating popular topics
• Discussion list is useful
• Opportunity to meet people
• Sense of community, validation of work and career
• Love of language (St. Bernadette’s Barking Dog)
• Change time of meeting once a year to accommodate other time zones
• Job bank, specific editing opportunities, possible link to LinkedIn?

Style guides and other resources
• Style manual in a wiki
• Consolidating style guides
• Need strong knowledgebase
• List of style manuals
• Open source style guide. Sun is driving this. SIG needs to be heavily involved.
• Automate process for updating style guides.
• Common ground for international style guide: international companies using one language with writers and editors from many languages and cultures.
• Terminology – AP, Chicago Manual of Style, IEEE, software, writing (content management)

Editing – types, different ways to do it, skills
• Types of editing: journalism, technical, peer (peer review), small groups, international groups, group editing, content versus context
• Differentiate writing and editing
• Writer-to-editor ratios – how to handle, what to edit
• Expanding editing skills to provide value, protect job
• Editors who do other things – how to juggle different jobs
• Collaborating with writers, subject matter experts, building relationships, lessons learned
• Editing engineers and other highly technical subject matter experts – approaches

Management stuff
• Getting STC into large companies (possible?)
• Getting STC out to more lone writers
• Metrics for management, ROI, prove the value of editing to management.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:35am.

 

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Impressions of STC’s 55th Annual Conference

Pat Moell

I enjoyed meeting so many Technical Editing SIG members at the STC Conference in Philadelphia in early June. Thanks to all of you who volunteered to work at our table at the Welcome Reception, to facilitate the editing discussions at the SIG luncheon, and to present at our Technical Editing SIG Progression, “Editing Influences across Technical Communication.”

I was thrilled to see such great attendance at our annual breakfast meeting on Tuesday, June 3. Thank you for arising early enough to attend a 7:30 a.m. meeting. You all had great ideas for activities our SIG could be doing. We’ll be working on a strategic plan that will incorporate some of these ideas to work on over the next two years.

Leadership Day was informative and inspiring. Some characteristics of an exemplary leader are to model the way (do what you say you will do), inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act and strengthen them, and encourage and respect others.

The quality of all the presentations I attended this year was very high. There were many good sessions for technical editors to learn more about their craft.

One general trend that I noticed was expressed succinctly by Andrea Ames: “Think more! Write less!” This trend toward minimalism was well represented by the session, “Editing Modular Documentation: Some Best Practices,” by Michelle Corbin and Yoel Strimling. If you follow their rules for chunking, labeling, and linking and follow their best practices, you will find that you have clear, simple topics that users can easily understand.

Another trend was expressed well by our keynote speaker, Howard Rheingold, the author of Smart Mobs; he spoke of the power of social networking through the use of our modern technologies to change history, our businesses, our government, and our lives.

If you are interested, the session materials are available as a link from the http://www.stc.org(external link) site.

I hope to see you next year in Atlanta.

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Who Are We? What Should STC Be?

Mike Hughes

I am Mike Hughes, and I am running for Second VP for the Society for Technical Communication. In this article I tell you a little about me and my vision for our profession.

Who am I?

I am a Society Fellow currently on the editorial advisory board for Technical Communication and the Ken Rainey Excellence in Research award committee. I chaired the subcommittee on Research at the STC Academic-Industry Leaders Summit in 2007, and I was organizer and leader for the Sharing Corporate Knowledge Institute at the Summit Conference in 2007. I am also currently filling an interim director position on the board. In my day job, I am a user assistance architect for IBM. I have a master’s degree in Technical Communication and a PhD in Instructional Technology, and I am a Certified Performance Technologist through the International Society for Performance Improvement.

Who are we?

Technical communication is a diversified profession, one that supports multiple career paths and roles. Whether we call ourselves technical writers, information developers, instructional designers, content managers, or whatever, we improve the user technology experience by providing information that eases and enhances that experience.

When our profession was initially emerging, we stated our value in terms of the correctness and completeness of our documents and the clarity of the language in those documents. Then, as we matured, we started defining our value in terms of how we benefited our end users. And now we are taking our value proposition to yet a higher level: how we support the missions and objectives of the organizations that employ us. This means that our value can’t stop at the quality of the communications we produce; it must extend to the effectiveness of the actions they enable, and beyond that, to how the improved effectiveness of our users benefits our sponsors. The list is long, but these are just a few:

  • Increased customer adoption (because new products and services are easier to install and use)
  • Reduced support costs (because product owners can maintain their own products better)
  • Lower medical costs (due to better patient compliance with medicines and procedures)
  • Improved product quality and reduced production costs (because workers can comply with best practices that are easily understood)
  • Increased customer loyalty (because the web sites and other communication channels we create build communities of common value and interests)

 

What should STC be?

If those are some of the things we are about, what should the role of STC be?

  • Provide professional development programs in the core body of knowledge that defines us as a profession
  • Show leadership and provide education in the emerging tools and technologies that direct our future as a profession
  • Serve as our advocate within government and industry to articulate our contributions and needs as a profession

We have invested a lot of our society energy and resources over the last several years in improving the structure and governance of STC. I think we can quit reinventing ourselves now and put our new structure to work. We need to shift our focus outward again and ensure that as members we are getting full value for our dues. My main focus as an officer will be the following:

  • Maintain a balanced budget that funds the programs that add the most value for members
  • Ensure that our publications and conferences provide the content that helps members do their jobs
  • Create a collaboration where members, vendors, employers, and academic communities help technical communicators keep up with the ever-changing demands for tools and technology knowledge
  • Support a certification program through STC that helps our sponsors trust and understand our value and that creates sustainable careers for technical communicators.

Please visit my website at http://www.mindspring.com/~mikehughes/index.htm(external link) to get more information on my background or read some of my published papers. Go to my blog at http://user-assistance.blogspot.com(external link) and click the STC label to read more about my positions and thoughts on specific topics related to my candidacy.

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STC as the Global Leader for Technical Communicators: Rich Maggiani’s Vision

Rich Maggiani

STC needs Board members who are experienced in the field, who understand our profession and the contribution we make to the world, who recognize the role that STC plays in representing and promoting our profession, who understand the services STC must provide for our membership, and how STC must be the global leader for us. This is my vision for STC and one that I will arduously pursue as your Director-at-Large.

I care deeply about STC. I have been an STC member for more than 12 years. I have held a volunteer position in every one of those years, beginning with being a co-founder of the Vermont chapter to my current role of leader of the Public Relations committee (which has 18 international members). Last month, I was honored to become an STC Fellow in recognition of my work as a marketing and technical communicator.

My profession is technical communication. I have been practicing that profession for well over 20 years. In my work, I constantly focus on promoting technical communication as a profession, and technical communicators as professionals who create unending value.

Experienced with STC Board matters. I have been doing STC Board-related work for over three years now. Three consecutive Board Presidents have appointed me: one year as Assistant to the President for Competitions; two years as Public Relations leader (my current position) where my committee has been breaking new ground in researching and promoting technical communication and technical communicators around the world.

Experienced as a Board Director. I am experienced with Boards of Directors. I have been Board President for the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR) after sitting on that Board for four years. VBSR is a state-wide business organization. As Board President, I directed a transition from a tactical to a strategic Board. I have also been Board President for two years for a food cooperative in New York after having sat on that Board the two previous years.

Business experience. For over sixteen years, I owned and operated a full-service marketing and technical communication agency. Currently, I am running Solari Communication, a company dedicated to applying technical communication to help clients increase sales and profitability. As a business owner, I understand how STC as an organization must operate to be successful, I understand the inner workings of technical communication and how to successfully market and promote our profession.

Educational experience. I currently teach technical communication to undergraduate students at Champlain College in Vermont. Previously, I taught graduate students at Saint Michael’s College business writing and communication skills. I am certified to teach secondary education through adult learners. I have also presented numerous sessions on communication topics to STC local, regional, and international conferences as well as other organizational conferences.

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Providing Value: STC Takes the Lead

Larry Kunz

Are you getting value for your investment in STC? Many members, as they renew their memberships for 2008, are asking what value they receive in return for the dues they pay.

I’m pretty well sold on the value of STC. Just last year I got a new job after spotting the opening on my chapter’s employment page. During the interview process, I benefited from the experience I’ve gained through STC and the contacts I’ve made in STC.

But that’s just one person’s experience. STC must offer real value, consistently and across the board, to members and prospective members. STC will need to offer even more value to remain competitive in the next few years.

(Yes, I said “STC” and “remain competitive” in the same sentence. STC is a business, and it confronts significant issues and stiff competition in today’s marketplace. It’s nice to think that STC is more than just a business and that it’ll always be here. But the reality is that, to remain viable in the short term, STC must do better at proving its value.)

Taking a longer view, however, STC has an opportunity to provide value in ways that go far beyond what’s possible today. STC is uniquely positioned to take the lead in defining the profession of technical communication. When we do that, we’ll provide significant and enduring value for our members, for practitioners who haven’t yet become members, for the people who employ us, and even for society in general.

Defining the Profession

Ever since I joined STC 25 years ago, we’ve been saying that technical communication is a profession. But we’re an immature profession, and as a result our work often isn’t taken seriously by the people who employ us and the people who buy our products.

To grow into a mature profession, we need at least two things:

  • An agreed-on code of ethics. STC has its own ethical code, but it doesn’t represent the consensus of the entire profession, and it’s not enforceable.
  • A unique body of knowledge, and the expectation that each practitioner has mastered that body of knowledge.

The technical communication profession is desperate for leadership – desperate for a set of ethical values, an agreed-on body of knowledge, and perhaps a credentialing system.

Today, all of the pieces are in place for us to develop technical communication into a mature profession. We have the will, we have the know-how, and we have an organization – STC – with the stature, the broad reach, and the resources to lead the way. STC can assemble the building blocks for our profession, it can forge consensus, and it can gain buy-in among the significant stakeholders in the worldwide community of technical communicators.

What Is STC Doing?

As a member of the STC board of directors I’m leading the effort to formulate a strategic plan, or roadmap that positions STC as the leader in defining the profession – especially by establishing a body of knowledge and promoting ethical standards. (We’ve already begun working on the body of knowledge.)

You might have heard the phrase telling our powerful story. The strategic plan focuses on raising the profile of all technical communicators – and emphasizing the value we provide to our employers and to the world in general – by marketing our people and the work we do.

The strategic plan also emphasizes establishing and expanding partnerships. By teaming with other organizations, STC will strengthen its leadership role in the profession and position itself to provide even more value to its members.

STC doesn’t need to be fixed. It needs to be modernized. The board of directors, along with the executive director and her staff, understand this. We know that STC must keep providing value over the short term while setting the stage for long-term value by defining the profession. We’re implementing plans to keep the business of STC strong by retaining and attracting members and by constantly reviewing its suite of programs and services to ensure that they still make sense.

I believe that we can find a way to develop technical communication as a profession and continue delivering real value to our members – all without losing the social and interpersonal aspects that have made STC so special to so many people over our history.

What It Means to You

Defining the profession will benefit every technical communicator because it’ll make us more valuable to the people who sign our paychecks. Instead of simply saying “I need some manuals and online helps” (which reduces technical communication to a commodity, not a profession), our employers will realize that they need professional people who contribute value to the organization by increasing customer satisfaction and making products easier to use – thus easier to sell.

We’ll prove our value on a much wider stage as well. By providing information that makes technology work for the people who use it, we contribute real value to society as a whole.

I’m running for second vice-president because nobody is better acquainted with the issues that STC will have to confront as leads the profession to where we want it to go. I can foster a climate of creativity and cooperation in which we’ll plot a course for the Society and the profession. STC needs leaders who can build consensus and explain decisions to the membership at large. I hope you’ll entrust me with your vote.

The next few years will be exciting. Along with my membership dues, I’ve chosen to invest my time and energy in being a part of this effort. I hope you’ll agree that STC’s future, and the value it’ll bring to you, is worth investing in as well.

Lawrence D. “Larry” Kunz, a candidate for STC second vice-president, is a member of the Society’s board of directors and immediate past president of the Carolina chapter. He is employed as a Senior Technical Writer at Systems Documentation, Inc., in Durham, NC, where he manages a large software documentation project. To learn more about Larry, check out http://lk81924.googlepages.com/home(external link).