The 2014 membership season opened on 23 September, and we’re already seeing plenty of renewals as well as a number of new members! Your Friendly Neighborhood Blogger looked through the names and picked a few people to talk to about their membership and why they’re a part of STC. Below are a few questions with Lori Blough, a New TechComm Professional member. Keep an eye on STC’s Notebook for more conversations with members!
What's your name and current job?
Lori Blough. I work for GANTECH Inc., on a contract to a small division of Xerox, called UI-ICON.
When did you first join STC, and what prompted you to do so?
My first membership to STC was in 2012, two years after I graduated from the University of Central Florida (UCF). Several of my professors there had recommended membership. I had also been a member of Future Technical Communicators (FTC) at UCF, which is heavily involved with the Orlando Chapter of STC.
What went into your decision to renew?
After a couple of years working in the field I am finally comfortable enough to start looking around for additional training opportunities and have a desire to become more active in the tech writing community, especially locally.
Was there a specific thinking of “I want to renew right away for 2014”?
Actually I had been thinking about attending the 2014 STC conference, so I started looking for more information and realized, as you do, that a lot of time had passed since my original membership. I was planning to wait until the beginning of the year to renew when I got an email about renewing NOW and getting the last few months of 2013 included (the 15 months for the price of 12 promo). Since I was planning to renew at some point, this seemed like a pretty good time to go for it.
Can you talk a bit about how being an STC member has helped you as you start your career in techcomm?
My career start actually involved rather a lot of luck than making use of STC or networking. I was working data entry for UI-ICON when I decided to go back to school. Not long after that, my boss found out that I was working on a techcomm degree and started shifting me over to doing part-time tech writing work. I discovered that she had been an English professor and technical writer in her past; essentially I ended up having a four year paid internship while I studied at UCF, then went full-time with UI-ICON after graduation.
What communities are you in and why?
I joined the Lone Writer community because I am the entire tech writing department at UI-ICON! I think it would be nice to have other lone and lonely tech writers to chat with. I also joined the Usability and User Experience community. My company focuses on creating programs and applications for our client to share information across several state offices, and we are very concerned with the user experience—helping them communicate more easily and efficiently, transitioning them from legacy systems and mailed paper forms to Web applications, and providing the training materials to help them make that transition with as little stress as possible. We are almost constantly involved in user testing and user feedback to improve their experience.
What STC benefits have you taken advantage of in the past and what are you looking forward to in 2014?
Honestly, my first year of work after joining STC started off with a bang and just kept running. I haven’t been as involved in STC as I wanted up to now; I have been busy getting up to speed with a brand-new career. So with that, I’m looking forward to being more active in 2014, attending local meetings of the Orlando Chapter, giving back to my university via the Orlando Chapter, and taking advantage of networking and training opportunities as they arise.