By Brian Lindgren | Associate Fellow
Over the years, STC competitions have been a sort of baseline for providing feedback on the quality of technical communications. People enter STC competitions not only with the hope of winning an award, but also with the expectation of receiving a thorough critique and constructive feedback from their peers. In the review process, many of the judges also learn from their peers, so as technical communicators, we have a unique bidirectional mentor/protégé relationship.
This was a very good year for the International Technical Communications Competitions. We received 115 entries, down slightly from last year, but this year there was no Technical Art competition. There was actually an increase in the number of technical publications submissions, with the online communications staying around the same. This was also the first year that we held Best of Show (BoS) judging the same weekend as the Summit. This not only allowed us to save money on transporting the entries, but it also allowed more chapters to submit entries by extending the submission deadline.
I’d like to thank the two competition managers. Deanne Levander managed the International Online Communication Competition and Preeti Mathur managed the International Technical Publications Competition.
We had four Online judging teams and nine Publications teams—39 judges overall. Thank you to all of them. I would like to thank the Best of Show judging teams specifically.
In the International Online Communications Competition the BoS judges were Debbie Doyle, Thuy Vu, and Jennifer Wendell. In the International Technical Communications Competition, the BoS judges were Jackie Damrau, Nathaniel Lim, and Paula Robertson.
The Best of Show in the Online competition was the JR Automation Technologies, LLC website (www.jrauto.com/), submitted to the STC West Michigan Shores chapter competition by Brette Christe and Kimberly Graham. The BoS team wrote, “Everything about this year’s Online Best of Show winner is exemplary. Even though the company’s product line is multifaceted and serves a wide range of industries, the website is perfectly clear in every way. Simple navigation, creative use of visual media, and rich content showcase the company’s products, vision, and philosophy. All elements of the website demonstrate the company’s commitment to innovative solutions, and the website is a prime example of technical communication at its best.”
The BoS winner in the publications category is Baker Atlas: 75 Years Young … the Future has Never Looked Brighter, submitted by Noel Atzmiller of the STC Houston chapter. This is a 96-page hardcover book about which the judges wrote, “The book is a wonderful combination of technical and visual information. The inside flap of the dust cover gives the reader a good sense of the contents of the book, which is a mini-introduction to the history of the company and an acknowledgement of the company’s employees worldwide. It gives readers a greater appreciation for the oil and gas industry. The reader gets a complete sense of how each area of innovation shaped the company and helped it grow. The book embodies all the basic elements of good presentation of technical information while demonstrating creativity appropriate to the subject matter.”
Thanks to everyone who participated in the success of this year’s competitions and congratulations to the winners.
