As posted on 16 December, the call for entries for the 2014 International Summit Awards is now open. The International Summit Awards (ISA) competition is accepting chapter or regional entries through 31 January 2014. To qualify, the entry must have been produced or substantially revised within 24 months prior to 1 September 2013 and won an Award of Excellence or Distinguished Technical Communication Award at a local or regional STC competition in 2013–14. All STC ISA entries must be submitted using the online submission form.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Blogger chatted with a representative from the first entry to the competition, Karen Smith of Autodesk. Our conversation is below.
First of all, what is your name and organization?
Karen Smith, senior learning content developer, Autodesk, Inc.
Can you tell me the name of the entry you submitted and a brief description?
Autodesk Revit LT 2014 – Getting Started.
Which community competition did you come through?
New England Chapter, Online Communications Competition.
What did you find beneficial about that competition?
The competition gave us the opportunity to share one of our self-paced, online tutorials with other technical communicators in the New England Chapter. It’s always very valuable to receive feedback from our peers outside of the organization.
What do you do with the feedback you receive from competitions?
We shared the feedback with management, as well as technical communicators elsewhere in Autodesk.
Why have you taken the next step of submitting it to the International Summit Awards?
In past years, we’ve submitted entries to the New England Chapter and have been honored with several awards. We are eager to share examples of our work with other technical communicators outside of our local chapter.
What are you hoping to take away from this competition?
We hope to gain greater exposure for the learning content we develop for our users. In addition, we look forward to receiving additional feedback from the ISA judges on this tutorial.
Anything you’d like to add?
This is our first time submitting an entry to the ISA, so we’re looking forward to seeing how our learning content measures up against entries from other STC communities.
Remember, the deadline to submit a qualified entry to this year's International Summit Awards competition is Friday, 31 January. For more information, please see the International Summit Awards page on stc.org or contact Entries Manager Elizabeth Bailey.