By Hillary Hart, President
I am very Excited to be STC’s president during this year of rapid changes in the way we all communicate and collaborate. Before looking forward to the coming year, let me summarize briefly what STC has been doing for 2010–2011.
In the past year, STC has developed five exciting initiatives. First is a redesigned, interactive, beta-tested website for STC.org. We rolled out the first portion of the new website in February and have now launched the MySTC portion. MySTC is an online home for communities and members, with availability for announcements, networking, virtual meetings, chats, and so much more. I want to thank all those members who helped with debugging and improving the usability of MySTC.
The second initiative has come after 30 years of STC studying the pros and cons of professional certification for technical communicators. STC has developed a certification program that we are sure will benefit professionals who choose to become certified. The Certification Task Force has defined six common areas of practice for the profession—you can find out more at www.stc.org/education/stc-education. These areas cut across all of the divergent positions and roles technical communicators take on—they are broad enough to apply to most of the jobs we have. This portfolio-based program is flexible—you get to submit the materials that you feel show your skills best.
I am excited about the possibilities this program can bring to the technical communication profession. A Certification Commission, allied to but separate from STC, has been created to administer the program and evaluate the candidates. I wish to thank Steve Jong, chair of the Certification Commission, for his wonderful and dedicated work.
As for initiative number three, just recently we released our latest member offering: 38 free archived seminars that all members can access. We promised members two seminars when you renewed, but we’re giving you all 38 instead as a celebratory kick-off to this new feature!
The fourth initiative of the past year is a new development program to facilitate donations to support STC programs, scholarships, etc. I want to thank Nancy Hoffman and Chris Juillet for conceiving and working diligently on developing this program. For more information, please see the article on page 23.
And the fifth initiative of the past year is a redesigned Community Affairs Committee (CAC), composed of volunteer members from the communities who now have a direct voice in two-way communication between the Board and STC members. As president, I’ve seen how powerful our communities can be, and I know that they can learn from each other—and that the Board and the staff can learn from them as well. Thanks to the CAC, I’ve been able to get regular feedback from our communities and to get information out to them better. That two-way communication has been and I’m sure will continue to be extremely valuable to me personally as president, to the entire Board of Directors, to the staff, and, I hope, to the members.
Which leads me to my plans for the upcoming STC year. My main goal for 2011–2012 is to develop and deepen a “culture of learning” all across STC. I want to deliver on the promise of the past year’s initiatives—especially the updated, collaboration-enhancing website—by building spaces where we can all teach each other—about the art and science of technical communication, about how to communicate the value of technical communication, and about how to lead and advance our profession.
Successful learning, of course, requires trust among the participants—in our case, the STC Board of Directors, the other leaders and members, the CEO, and the staff. I pledge to you that I will work hard for the next 12 months to foster trust among all the STC constituencies, to develop (via the website and all communication media available) a learning environment for all of us, and to thereby deliver a better value proposition for STC members.
Goal number two is to continue harnessing the power of social media for the benefit of STC communities and the advancement of the profession of technical communication. Because of their ability to focus—at the same time—on the user, the developer, the product, and the information content, technical communicators are the masters of the information-technology age. Let us use our skills to provide models of effective, ethical, and humane communication. I will provide forums for discussing how to navigate the relatively unknown waters of social media as a professional; how to share and communicate facts and truth and feelings without denigrating or ganging up on anyone; and how to stay open to other perspectives and explanations when it is so easy to get our own voice out there fast, and the loudest voice wins.
And, finally, I will work hard in 2011–2012 to publish a Body of Knowledge for technical communication. It won’t be a finished product—if any body of work is necessarily in perpetual beta, it must be a profession’s BOK. But we must keep trying to frame out the multiplicity of skills, concepts, and knowledge-areas that enable technical communicators to contribute so effectively to business, government, and the public good. Certification will cover only a few basic areas of practice—we need the depth and breadth of a true body of knowledge in order for the profession to be a profession.
Stay tuned.
