Below is STC President Mike Hughes’s opening presidential address from the annual business meeting at the 2010 Summit. This copy was written before the conference, so exact words may vary slightly.
Mike Hughes
We can divide the history of STC into three eras (so far):
- Everything that happened up to this year (2009–2010)
- This year
- Everything that will happen after this year
What I mean is that this past year was a singularity that will never be repeated. A traditional professional association gets violently buffeted by the perfect storm: A declining industry base, a declining membership base, and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
But it would be inaccurate to attribute our difficulties exclusively to external forces. We are essentially an organization that is trying to apply a “generation then” set of solutions to a set of “generation now” problems.
I have been a member of STC for 20 years. I joined during a period of strong economic expansion where our profession was growing in double digits and pulling in new practitioners from all walks of life and academic backgrounds. Like me, very few of those members had formal training in technical communication; the field had not even been envisioned when we were in school. STC was where you went to figure out how to do that cool new writing job you just landed. Today, the profession is contracting and new practitioners come into the field with degrees—mostly advanced degrees—in technical communication. And our future members have grown up immersed in what I would call new media, but to them is just now media. My generation looked at a diskette and asked, “What is this?” The new generation of technical communicators looks at an icon of a diskette and asks, “What is this, and why does it mean Save?”
As a professional society, we must make big changes. We have the double task of paying the bills while adding more value for our members. We may never again see the membership numbers that we saw in our most prosperous days. The economic recovery everyone sees on the horizon is not laden with the jobs that got lost in the crisis that preceded it. The work that was being done by our fellow practitioners who’ve been laid off landed on our shoulders, and our companies have gotten used to the new ratios. That means the costs of running an organization must be distributed over a smaller base. Take it from one who has wrestled with our budget more hours than you can realize, it is a cruel math, and it has no long-term loopholes through which to escape that reality.
Therefore, in the coming year, we must put every service and value package on the table and ask, “Is it still the right offering?” Our conference, our publications, our communities, our recognitions, our educational programs, every committee—all must all be re-evaluated and re-factored or even eliminated if that time has come.
And we have to envision new offerings, ones that bring new value propositions for the new economic realities.
Those of us on the leadership team know we have a credibility gap we have to close, and there are strained relationships that have to be mended. We must learn to be a more transparent team, not just with the membership, but even among ourselves. It will not be enough to just communicate our answers more openly, we must share the debate more openly, share our own indecisions and conflicts so that members understand the complexity of the issues and can be more supportive and help us find solutions. Before the board can “speak with one voice,” we must share our diversity of thought.
And now comes a harder message. Sometimes friends must be frank with each other and say, “Yes, that dress does make you look fat,” or, “Yes, you are too old for that car.” I have served STC for 20 years. I am as sincere a friend as STC can have, and so I must tell you, as a friend, that we have to start behaving better and being nicer to each other during disagreements. There is an enormous difference between saying, “You’re wrong,” and saying, “Hey, stupid, you’re wrong.” If we are going to survive and prosper as a profession of communicators, and solve the problems we need to solve, we need to communicate more professionally during times of disagreement.
Lastly, so you know what I am working on, here are my three highest priorities for this year:
- More meaningful transparency
- Programs that expand employment opportunities and increased recognition of our profession
- Re-energized communities to deliver value for membership
In conclusion, we are the first members of a new era; we have gone beyond now generation and then generation. Collectively we are the regeneration of STC. Let’s see all of our problems with fresh eyes that look forward and not dwell on what has gone before us. We cannot rewrite that history, so let’s concentrate on working together to reshape our future.
