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
site.
I hope to see you next year in Atlanta.