The January issue of Intercom focuses on professional development. Have you been wondering about professional certification, how to move into the medical and healthcare field, how to work with nonprofits, or how to model a better user needs framework? If so, then this issue has what you need to know.
Looking for more information on certification? An article by STC CEO Chris Lyons and myself explains what certification is, why STC built the certification program, and what it can do for you and your employer. This issue also includes an article by certification Chief Examiner Craig Baehr on the exam and its nine area of competency. If you’ve been wondering what the nine competency areas are or how to study and take the exam, this article provides an essential overview.
Interested in the healthcare arena? Lisa Meloncon has provided an article that explains the overlap between technical communication and what she calls patient experience design (PXD). Arguing that PXD provides a defined path for technical communicators to be involved in the development of patient education materials, she explains how skills technical communicators already have easily transfer to communications within the medical and healthcare industry.
Working with a nonprofit? Through eight years of experience with nonprofits, Guiseppe Getto has written an article that explains how technical communicators can help nonprofts build and sustain better online presences and Web content. He provides tactics that technical communicators can use to help organizations with limited resources increase their capacities for building and maintaining effective Web content.
Looking for a new user model? In his article, Ellis Pratt has coined a new content maturity model “a technical communicator’s hierarchy of needs.” In the model, he focuses from the user’s perspective to help organizations understand where users interact with tech comm content and to link goals across project stakeholders at the start of a project in order to get the necessary funding.
This issue also includes a guide to the upcoming 2016 election; information about the Summit Keynote Speaker David Rose and the fun to be had in Anaheim, California; and three columns: one on ethics in edutainment, one on technical communicators as accessibility advocates, and a new advice column from tech comm managers Kit Brown-Hoekstra and Cindy Currie.
I hope you enjoy the first issue of Intercom for 2016. I look forward to your comments and thoughts online, or email me directly!
