By Chris Lyons | CEO and Kit Brown-Hoekstra | STC President
The year 2014 was a successful one for many reasons. It was a year of improvement in jobs and economies around the world, particularly in the United States. Correspondingly, the number of technical communicators working increased and we saw a greater number of job postings on the STC Job Board. STC’s staff and volunteers were hard at work as well. Much like the world, 2014 was a year of increasing momentum for the Society for Technical Communication and its members.
For the first time since the recession, STC’s membership grew, albeit slightly. This was a significant achievement after many years of decline. We worked to increase the value of membership in 2014 by adding a print copy of Intercom to Gold memberships and initiating a quarterly series of free webinars for members of Chapters and SIGs. Additionally, the Technical Communication Summit held in May in Phoenix, Arizona, was a big success with strong attendance and high satisfaction ratings reported by attendees. We debuted a new Virtual Track in Phoenix and extended the live audience for our Summit sessions across the United States and internationally. Conversations begun at the Summit often develop into new member offerings, and this year, we launched a SIG focused on Agile software development. Most significantly, STC began work on re-opening the Professional Certification program.
Internally, STC initiated broad changes to its infrastructure and staffing. We began work on improving the STC online enterprise. Our goal is to leverage the collective footprint of dozens of Chapter and SIG websites to share content, drive advertising, and at the same time decrease the maintenance effort. We began offering free hosting to all Chapters and SIGs and standardized the sites as much as possible via WordPress. And finally, but perhaps most importantly, we did a great job managing our 2014 budget, resulting in the first operating surplus STC has had in many years.
The 2014 annual report reviews the past year and highlights the actions taken in 2014 to strengthen the Society, both in terms of the value it provides its members and its sustainability as a business. It informs members of performance in major program areas, significant changes, and new initiatives. We hope all STC members and volunteers will share in these accomplishments and continue their generous support.
To read the entire 2014 Year in Review, visit www.stc.org/images/stories/pdf/stc2014yearinreview.pdf.
