June Intercom is guest edited by Jack Molisani with a theme of career management and prosperity. Jack is president of ProSpring Technical Staffing, executive director of The LavaCon Conference on Content Strategy and TechComm Management, and author of Be The Captain of Your Career: A New Approach To Career Planning and Development. He has solicited six articles that showcase ways to be more successful and influential in the workplace. This issue also marks the retirement of Jack’s column Advancing Your Career. Thank you, Jack, and all the authors in this issue of Intercom for your expertise and assistance with promoting our professional development.
From the Guest Editor
I recently had the pleasure or hearing STC Past President Andrea Ames speak at a conference. (Andrea is the first woman in the history of IBM to rise to her level from an information development track.) She presented an inspiring keynote on career development titled, “Forget ‘Predict’ the Future—Create the Future!”*
In her keynote, Andrea reminded us to not only watch for career opportunities, but to create career opportunities. So when Intercom Editor Liz Pohland asked me shortly thereafter if I’d be interested in guest editing an issue of Intercom, I said, “Yes, and I have a perfect theme in mind: career management and prosperity!”
I firmly believe people should learn from the success and failures of others (it’s faster than making them all yourself), so this issue contains career advice from some stellar leaders in the content development field. While some of the authors are seasoned veterans and some are up-and- coming stars—all are successful at what they do.
The issue starts with an article on strategic career planning by STC Fellow Victoria (Vici) Koster-Lenhardt, the global employment advisor for Europe at the U.S. Department of State. Cruce Saunders, author of Content Engineering for a Multi-Channel World, has written an article about the emerging role of the content engineer, and Tom Aldous explains how to become the driving force in your career. Barbara Giammona writes about the seven soft skills for super success, Lisa Pietrangeli tells us how to be an influencer, and Christopher Ward follows with and article titled, “A Printer, a Desktop, and a Tablet Walk into a Bar: Creating TechComm Nirvana.”
Closing the issue is the final installment of my quarterly career column, in which I share a life-shaping lesson I learned from the novel The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zalazney.
I hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed contributing to it.
—Jack Molisani Jack@ProspringStaffing.com
*Note: Andrea Ames’s keynote address can be viewed at http://lavacon.org/2014/program. Many thanks to Adobe Systems for hosting the session on Adobe Connect and making the presentation available for free to the technical communication community.