STC President Bernard Aschwanden’s Inaugural Address

By Bernard Aschwanden | President and Associate Fellow

Editor’s Note: Bernard Aschwanden was formally installed as STC President at the Annual Business Meeting during the Summit on Monday, 22 June.

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Thank you. To the STC’s past, current, and future members and volunteers, and also to the Board, staff, and families who support us in what we do. Your efforts got us here, so thanks.

Bear with me as I recap a moment from a past conference. After an overnight flight with little sleep, I wanted to say “hi” to a presenter—an STC President—and the only person who saw me sneak into the back of the room. My plan was to relax before my afternoon presentation. A few slides later, the speaker said, quite loudly, “Bernard, do you have any ideas?” Startled, I looked up at a slide, which asked in bold letters, “What is the FIRST rule of technical communication?

Good question. Let’s add to that and ask, “What is the first rule of technical communication in context of STC?” Is it to listen?

Feedback on almost everything we do is immediate and arrives in multiple formats, such as an email, phone call, meeting request, Facebook posting, Twitter message, blog article, or dozens of other ways our audience reaches out to us. We need to listen, but listening is not the FIRST rule.

I believe you deserve honest and respectful communication on why STC makes the decisions it does. STC communities face change and challenges. Although we may differ on ideas or how they are implemented, we do them in the best interest of STC membership. Financially, we aren’t out of the woods, but we see light beyond the trees. Membership has stabilized after many years of decline. We communicate a lot of information, good and bad. We need to communicate, but it’s not the FIRST rule.

The STC Board listens to you and to STC staff, lawyers, accountants, and partners we work with. With informed opinions after hearing ideas, costs, and risks, we hope to take the right actions. It’s a difficult job, but a rewarding one, like many of our full-time jobs. We strive to balance the needs of audiences, the wants of stakeholders, and the availability of resources. We need to know the parameters of all three to act in the best interests of our Society. A drive to action, though, is not the FIRST rule.

To recap: We need to listen, communicate, and act. We do so for our audience—the Society—but we also need to do so for our future audience. Without growing our audience, all that we do would be for no one.

Rule 1 therefore is: Know your audience.

The Board serves to represent our audience—an audience of members in the thousands who can’t all be here, but who are represented when they vote, participate in a local community, join a SIG, or at the most basic level each year as they renew their membership. We are, however, a smaller part of the entire audience of all technical communicators.

STC has always been about knowing your audience. Let’s prove to employers, hiring managers, department heads, executives, and ultimately anyone who pays for what we do, the value of what we do. We are business. STC members connect buyers and business, and we increase the likelihood of landing a contract or making a sale, and we do it through professional technical communication.

STC members add value to the bottom line. How? Excellence in documentation. We achieve this by participating in professional development including education sessions, conferences, in-depth webinars, hands-on workshops, community-level peer-to-peer events, and leadership development. We do it through certification, training, and mentoring. Think about that. We participate in these events to change what we know and how we interact with others.

We also need to change our Society to stay ahead of the curve, to be the destination people want to get to. I envision a year of change and growth with a push to prove to businesses the value of content as a corporate asset, and to position STC members as the curators of that content. Business assets include products, people, and patents, but it also includes content, copyright, and creativity. These are areas in which STC members excel. Let’s find ways to prove this.

STC is 6000 strong, but there are easily tens of thousands of people who are involved in our profession globally, across millions of businesses. They work like we do, on the cutting edge of technology, they feel the pulse of the industry. We need to identify ways to communicate, to listen, and to encourage them to join us in STC. Thank you for your support.

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