What the Fox Says: STC President’s Quarterly Report

It’s hard to believe how fast the year flies by. The work carries on, but I’d like to take a few minutes to recognize what STC has achieved so far this year and what’s currently going on to keep us going into the future. “The only time you should ever look back is to see how far you’ve come.”

2018 Election

The 2018 STC election is now open and runs through 9 March at 5:00 PM EST. Electing our society’s leaders is a privilege and I strongly encourage each of you to take a couple of minutes to vote.

If you are a current member who joined or renewed by 1 February, you should have received an email with a link to access the ballot and vote for next year’s incoming board and Nominating Committee members. If you are eligible to vote and did not receive the email, please contact James Cameron.

Current Happenings

The STC board and staff are diligently working to evaluate our plans and programs to ensure we’re delivering the best value to our members possible.

Exciting Education Opportunities

STC offers a wealth of webinars and online courses for you to broaden your skill set and advance your career. Our Education Manager, Deborah Krat, has really upped the game in 2018, and we have a number of amazing online courses available in the next few months that span a variety of topics: tech comm fundamentals, content strategy, proposal writing, science writing, usability, and web writing. Technical communication continues to evolve, and our education offerings evolve with it.

Chapter and SIG Model Task Force

The board feels strongly that our communities should offer a baseline experience to ensure community members receive maximum value for their money. To that end, we have created a new task force to evaluate and propose any needed changes to our community model to reduce complexity and focus our communities to have a customer-oriented approach.

Women in Tech Comm SIG Activity

Our newest SIG is off and running! The Women in Tech Comm SIG had its first webinar in February and the next one is coming up on March 28. Join us for some great discussions and networking opportunities pertaining to women in technology and technical communication. All genders welcome.

Tech Comm Thought Leadership

We are exploring some opportunities to partner with other tech comm-related organizations to share ideas about the tech comm discipline, advocate for our profession, and learn from each others’ successes and failures. We are in the early stages of putting this group together, but I’m excited to see how we can work with other similar and tangential associations to advance technical communication and its academics and practitioners.

2018 STC Summit Approaching Fast

We’re only a couple of months away from our premier event of the year, the STC Summit! Check out the schedule at a glance and list of speakers at the Summit website. I’m excited to welcome our keynote speakers, Carla Johnson and Andy Hines. Their topics of Perpetual Innovation and Potential Disruptors, respectively, are the perfect fit for our 2018 Summit theme—“Communicate the Future”—and will help all of us strategize for our personal and organizational futures. Join us in Orlando for what promises to be an outstanding and fun learning and networking experience!

As my presidential year draws to a close, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for the hard work, dedication, interest, and time you’ve put in to improve STC. We have a warm and wonderful community, and I’ve been honored and privileged to serve as your president this year. Technical communication and STC are truly at a transformational point, and I look forward to continuing to work with you as we ride the wave of that change.

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