This entry is being posted on behalf of Kirsty Taylor, candidate for Vice President in the 2020 STC election.
Hi Fellow STC Members,
I have been honoured to serve as your Secretary for almost four years, and I’m humbled to be able to continue to serve you, along with eight fellow board members, for the coming three years. I have been a technical communicator, tech comm team lead, and localisation lead for over 20 years, and our core skills – as the explainers of technical things to all kinds of audiences – continue to be needed around the world. We work in offices or remotely, as lone tech writers or in teams of hundreds, as full-timers, contractors or independent consultants, with FrameMaker, DITA, Markdown, Word or CMSes. Yet, we’re all explainers, and we’re crucial in an ever more complex world.
I nominated to continue to serve on the STC board as Vice-President because I’ve truly enjoyed my years of service so far. I’ve met even more STC members, and worked with a great group of current and former board members to make big and small changes to STC and create a vision for its future. I hope you’ve seen the recent Notebook blog post about STC’s new partnership with Association Headquarters. This is just one example of the recent work by the board to help ensure an exciting future for STC. I’m aware of everything we’ve been doing as a board since 2016, and I want to continue to work with fellow board members to create a strong and exciting future for STC and our members.
If you haven’t met me, you may not know that I have a different kind of accent. I’m Australian, and I live and work in Brisbane, Australia, on the lands of the Jagera and the Turrbal people. I’m sure some members are worried that having a board member or Vice-President from Australia would incur significant cost to STC. I want to reassure you that STC does not pay for all of my (or any other board member’s) travel and associated costs for our (typically two) annual meetings. All board members have a set expenditure limit for each face-to-face meeting, one of which is Summit. I have a slightly higher limit due to being based outside North America, but the Society does not bear the full cost of my travel expenses. Board members typically have out-of-pocket expenses for our meetings; mine are probably a bit larger due to my location, but that is both a sacrifice and an investment I’m willing to continue to make, and I have generous support from my employer to reduce that personal financial cost. It may be a bit different to discuss this so publicly, but I think it’s really important to be open about it.
If you haven’t yet, please participate in the election forum on the STC website – https://www.stc.org/election-forum/. Learn about all of the candidates, from those who will be working together on the board for the coming years, to those who will be helping to find candidates for the 2021 and 2022 elections (the Nominating Committee candidates).
Will we have diversity of ideas to create and mould STC’s future strategy together? Will we represent the various aspects of our members (and our own) profession, both now and in the future? The future of our Society isn’t just in your vote for Vice-President – it’s in your votes for each role in the election. Please participate, and try to get to know those of us you don’t know.
Please engage in the election process; ask questions in the forum, make an informed decision and then vote in the election!
I will be so honoured to be the first Antipodean STC Vice-President.