Would your employer be willing to pay at least part of the expenses of attending the Technical Communication Summit in Columbus, Ohio, from 21–24 June? It couldn’t hurt to ask! Consider writing a memo to your supervisor that explains how you and your firm would benefit from your attendance. The following model is based on a memo that worked for its author. Feel free to modify it for use within your company.
Dear [your supervisor’s name]:
I understand that our company is cutting back on training costs and we are looking for ways to get the most for the money we spend in every area. There is a cost-effective professional education conference in June that will help [your company] reduce expenses in translation costs, structured authoring, project management of reports and publications, as well as several other areas.
I would like to attend the 2015 Technical Communication Summit in Columbus, OH, on 21–24 June, presented by the Society for Technical Communication. The Summit is packed with more than 80 sessions over the three full workdays with topics covering all aspects of technical writing, editing, project management, and publication production. The preliminary program is currently available online, and when the full schedule of sessions is released in February we can go over the list together to determine which ones will benefit the company most.
With most conferences, the challenge has always been to get to as many of the higher priority sessions as possible. That’s where the Summit is different! STC now includes SUMMIT@aClick in the registration fee. This is an online collection of the conference’s content. It’s like being able to bring the entire content of the conference back to share with the rest of the company. This increases the value of my participation tenfold. Not only does it capture the audio and visual presentations of the speakers, its content can be shared and revisited for a year after the conference.
Costs: [List transportation costs, registration fee, cost of meals, and the price per night of the hotel room. The conference room rate at the conference hotel is $164.00 plus tax for Single or Double]
Summary of Benefits for [your company]: With the current economic conditions, everyone at [your company] is being asked to do more and control costs wherever possible. This conference is a small investment in empowering me and others involved in [technical communication efforts] to do even more. The sessions will provide us with more knowledge of report production, editing, writing, management concepts, and government contracting. This knowledge will enable us to handle [a particular client or project] with more professionalism and confidence, which will reflect favorably on [your company]. And with SUMMIT@aClick, I will be able to pass on much of this information to coworkers—it provides me a recording of most of the sessions after the conference, so I can return to areas of interest over and over again as needed and share it with colleagues.
Thank you very much for considering this request.
