Judging teams were members of the Advanced Technical Communications courses at Utah Valley University this year. We appreciate the students and their instructors for providing this important service.

Judging evaluation forms, award plaques, and certificates will go to each of the contributors within the next week or so.

Awards:

D2 (Liz Roscovius):

• Best Buy Exclusive Brands SharePoint Training Guide: Achievement
• DX-22LD150A11 Marketing Sheet: Merit
• NS-46E560A11 LED-LCD TV doc set (QSG): Merit
• NS-50P650A11 Marketing Sheet: Merit
• Polaroid Doc Style Guide: Merit
• RF-RBWS02 wireless outdoor speaker doc set (manual): Merit
• RF-RBWS02 wireless outdoor speaker doc set (QSG): Merit
• ValveSTAR G4 Reference Manual: Merit
• VIZIO VBR120 Blu-ray DVD player manual: Merit
• VIZIO XWR100 Dual-band HD Wireless Internet Router User Manual: Merit
• NS-PD8CH Infocast Tutorial: Merit
• NS-PD8CH Infocast 360^o Viewer: Achievement

AGEISS (Eileen Wheelock):

• Restoration Program Waste Characterization and Shipping Manual: Merit

UCAR (Bob Henson):

• Staff Notes Newsletter: Excellence
• UCAR Magazine: Excellence
• UCAR at 50: Distinction, Best of Show

STC Summit Awards

STC offers competitions to evaluate professional technical communication in different media.

It’s competitions time! The Society has completely overhauled the competitions. The new and greatly improved program is now called the STC Summit Awards.

Intermountain STC invites writers, editors, web developers, artists, designers, and illustrators to submit their entries to our local Summit Awards program.

Click the Summit Awards button on the top navigation bar for details on how to submit your materials.

Competitions are open to technical communication professionals. You do not have to be a member of STC to participate. Competitions have two tiers:

• Local or regional (community)
• International (Society-wide)

in the following categories:

• Informational Materials
• Instructional Materials
• Promotional Materials
• User Support Materials

An entry must win a Distinguished Technical Communication Award at the local level to qualify for submission to STC’s International Summit Award competition.

Interested in entering a local (community) competition? The Intermountain Chapter is holding a competition this year. See the Call for Entries document for submission details.

As a chapter, we are required to have an annual business meeting. This year’s business meeting is scheduled for this FRIDAY, September 17th at 7PM. We will be holding the business meeting in the banquet room of the Sizzler restaurant on 9000 South and State Street in Sandy. Dinner will be on your own, and you don’t need to buy dinner to join us.

In the most important part of this business meeting, the chapter administrative council will present the proposed bylaws for the chapter. Our chapter has never had official bylaws, so this is an important step forward for the chapter.

The proposed bylaws are posted online on the chapter website. You can review them here: http://www.intermountain-stc.org/about/intermountain-chapter-bylaws/

If you are unable to attend the chapter meeting, but would like to submit feedback on the bylaws, please send your feedback to president@intermountain-stc.org and we’ll consider it.

Also, if you are unable to attend, and would like to submit a proxy vote, you can send your vote to me at president@intermountain-stc.org and I’ll submit your vote on your behalf. The question that will be presented to the voting members will be: “Do you vote to accept the Intermountain STC Chapter bylaws as they are currently presented on the chapter Website?” We will then ask for votes in the affirmative, and votes in the negative.

If you have any questions about the process, please don’t hesitate to contact me. You can reach me at the e-mail address I gave above, or you are always welcome to contact me on my cell phone at 801-938-8391.

Thanks for your support of our chapter. We are looking forward to some great programming this fall and winter. If you have any suggestions, as always, let us know.

For our August Town Hall meeting, we are going to start the hour by giving you an overview of the bylaws that we (the Chapter board) are proposing. In the September business meeting, chapter members will be voting to adopt the bylaws for the chapter. This town hall is your opportunity to hear what the bylaws are, and how they will affect you as a chapter member (or as a non-chapter participant in chapter activities).

All are invited to join the town hall (regardless of your location or membership status); chapter members should attend to have an opportunity to provide feedback before the vote actually occurs in September.

We will also discuss details regarding the September business meeting, including the format and how you can participate.

As with all our town halls, the format for this meeting is casual. We will begin the hour discussing the chapter bylaws and business meeting, but we will follow wherever the discussion leads us. Call in with your questions about the topic, or about anything else!

See you on the call! Please register below to get the conference call information, and to let us know you are planning to attend.

Attention Intermountain Chapter members!

On September 17, 2010 we will hold our annual business meeting. This annual meeting is required by STC bylaws, and will be a place where we conduct official business of the chapter.

This year, we will hold the business meeting at a the Sizzler restaurant on 9000 South and State Street in Sandy. Everybody is welcome, but only current chapter members will be able to vote on chapter business.

The most important item of business will be adopting new chapter bylaws. We will present these bylaws for a vote at the business meeting.

Please make every effort to attend this meeting, as it is a time that you get to make your voice heard.

More details are available here.

We are using DimDim as our web conference provider, and technically, things went smoothly with one exception. Apparently you cannot record the phone bridge conversation. If you want to record the meeting, you have to have all your attendees use the VOIP (using headphones and microphones attached to their computer) feature. And if people are connected via VIOP, they cannot be heard on the conference call. So you have to have everybody use either VOIP or phone bridge. For next month, we’ll try to work out some of those kinks so things run even better.

The down side of that glitch is that we didn’t get a recording of today’s meeting. Next month, I’ll use my computer’s microphone to pick up the speaker phone audio, which should at least provide SOME ability to record the call.

Speaking of next month, I’m about to schedule our next town hall. In June we are going to be discussing STC Certification. We’ll talk about what it is, why it matters, and what you need to know. We’ll also have an open forum where you can bring your own questions or comments to the table.

Please remember — you don’t need to be a member of the chapter to join in our conference call (one of our participants today was not a chapter member). This town hall is open to all technical communicators who want to participate.

See you next month. Watch the site for a date and time announcement.

Last year, I was the incoming Intermountain Chapter president. I missed the beginning of Leadership Day where then-president Mark Clifford took the chapter presidents and SIG managers aside and dropped the bomb labeled “$1.2 million shortfall.” The rest of Leadership Day, most of which I attended, held a tense atmostphere. People were upset and probably panicking to some degree. I felt somewhat overwhelmed as a new chapter president stepping into office and being handed these problems.

I wouldn’t say that I doubted the Society board over the following twelve months, but I tried to voice my concerns where members of the board would hear them. I admit that my dissatisfaction with the board stemmed from a perception that they weren’t open and transparent enough. They solicited ideas from all members, but I didn’t see much communication back that described which ideas the board was discussing. I wasn’t alone on this.

This year, the proceedings of Leadership Day left me with a feeling of greater confidence in STC and its board. I believe that STC is moving forward with more strength and a clearer vision. We still have problems to solve and obstacles to remove, but I believe the board has made huge strides. I’ll tell you about four things that are reassuring for me.

Recommendations from the Community Support and Funding Task Force

Hillary Hart, now vice president of STC, assembled a task force with leaders of communities from all size categories. I had the opportunity to join but didn’t think I could give it the time it would deserve. But the task force surveyed members and made recommendations for board consideration that would boost the support that chapters receive and improve members’ perceptions of the organization and board.

The main recommendations that I support are:

• STC should position itself as the place to go for employers to find technical communicators.
• STC should position itself as the place to go for training on how to write technical papers and how to write technical presentations.
• STC should create a marketing committee to promote STC.

Having been told by chapter members who declined to renew membership this year that STC’s value level didn’t justify the cost, I felt strongly enough about these items that I stood up at an audience microphone and thanked the task force for their work and their recommendations. I think if acted on, these recommendations will significantly increase STC’s importance.

Certification

Cindy Currie announced that the board approved a plan for a work-based certification program with a revised plan due in June. Instead of having to pass an exam, practitioners in the field of tech comm can submit work to be critiqued in six areas. I wonder what this means for communicators who deliver proprietary, private, or sensitive information and will be finding out before the conference is over.

Still, this provides technical communicators with the opportunity to obtain credentials in the profession. As a result, employers will have this specific standard against which to judge candidates and know that someone who has been certified by STC has certain skills.

Marketing Committee

Of course, if employers continue to lack understanding of technical communicators, our skill sets, and why we’re important, they won’t care about our credentials. The task force recommended a marketing committee be formed, and this made perfect sense to me. Chapters have a PR manager position, so why isn’t there such a thing at the Society level?

Mike Hughes wrapped up Leadership Day with a preview of his speech for the annual business meeting the next evening, and he told us that he had already begun forming a marketing committee. This group will focus on making sure employers know who STC is and who technical communicators are.

Transparency and Building Trust

In his closing comments, Mike also told us that one of his emphases as president of the Society will be for the board to open up to the members a lot more. Mike wrote on his personal blog about struggles the board faced, and I think doing so increased his credibility because people could see that the board is composed of real people who wrestle with real problems, and it wasn’t their intent to force a policy or procedure on people. Mike’s posting about it didn’t hurt the board’s image in my mind.

Mike wants members of the board to speak more openly about their deliberations so that members of the Society can become engaged and offer input early—of course with the caveat that we will be listened to, but our ideas may not be acted on. But that openness and encouragement of conversation will help to build the trust that many members lost over the last year.

Wrap-Up

I believe that having made it through the financial crisis, STC can make big strides toward being what it should and being the gathering place for technical communicators of all varieties. It’s encouraging to have received confirmation that Mike and the rest of the board see our problems and want to engage in more open communication with the rest of the members.

When I renewed at the beginning of the year, I was giving the board a year to show me what they would do. After what happened on Leadership Day, I expect I’ll be renewing my membership again in 2011.

Cross-posted at http://gryphonmountain.net.

I am fortunate enough to have an employer that sets aside funds for each of us to attend a professional development conference, which is why I’m able to be here at STC Summit. I came with Ben Minson (our outgoing chapter president) and Tom Johnson (our chapter webmaster). At the conference I also ran into Greg Barrus, our vice-president-elect.

Ben and I attended Leadership Day, which occurs the day before the main conference. I loved leadership day! The atmosphere was very casual and inviting, and I gained a lot of great insight into running our chapter.

I want our chapter to work towards getting a chapter recognition next year at Summit, so I’m going to be working with our chapter board to prepare a program that will help us meet that goal. I believe that as we work towards getting a chapter recognition we will be providing more value to our chapter members, so I hope you will join me in working towards that goal.

Another goal that I have that is an outgrowth from Leadership Day is for our chapter to sponsor one or more web conferences. We will pay our presenter, and we will charge a nominal fee for members (slightly more for non-members), but we’ll charge enough to make a small profit for the chapter. (I’m thinking $15 for a member and $25 for a non-member with a $100 speaker fee — but those are just some initial thoughts; your input is more than welcome!) I’d like to market the webinar outside our chapter, so we can get members from all reaches of the globe who are invited to attend the session. If you are interested in this type of event, please let me know. And if you would like to be involved in planning something like this, make sure you get a hold of me so that we can work together to make this happen.

I think more than anything I learned two things from leadership day: (1) The society is alive and doing very well; and (2) the society-level board is made up of some awesome people.

First, I want to reassure our chapter members that the global STC organization is doing very well. I offer my sincere thanks and congratulations to our outgoing global board for their hard work in weathering the financial crisis of the last year. The organization as a whole is doing very well, and I think that with the changes that they have implemented and are implementing, we are going to see a stronger global organization that will be more capable of meeting the needs of our global membership.

Second, I want you to know that we have some great people on the society-level board. As members, we had the opportunity to elect these leaders, and frankly, I think we’ve done a great job. These board members are high-class people who are exceptionally friendly and are willing to bend over backwards to find out what we, the general membership, want. Remember, these society-level board members are just regular members  themselves who are volunteering to serve the society as a whole, and after rubbing shoulders with them for the last couple of days, I can assure you that I believe they are doing the best job they can. They are working hard, and they solicit your feedback. As members, I encourage you to contact the Society board and express your concerns and propose solutions that you would like to see. You can find contact information for the entire board at: http://www.stc.org/about/board-of-directors.asp .

Well, I didn’t intend to write a novel, but I want you to know that I have confidence in our organization. I’m excited to be a member of STC right now, and I’m thrilled to be our next chapter president. I hope we can work together to make this an amazing year. It will be as we come together as a team that we are able to make this organization stronger and help shape it into the organization that we want it to become.

What values, traits, and  experiences do you bring to the office?

I have served as chapter treasurer for 2 years. I worked closely with the STC office to process and move forward with the zero-budgeting reports and have worked hard to keep chapter costs at a minimum.

What is the most important challenge or issue you see facing the chapter, and what possible actions or solutions do you see?

Reductions in memberships and lack of renewals have caused concern among the current board. We have worked tirelessly to create programming that appeals to our membership. We plan to continue to offer a variety of program options for our members going forward.

STC Service, awards, and honors:

 Past president, Competitions Manager, Programming Coordinator

Education and other (non-STC) professional affiliations, awards, and honors:

Bachelor Degree in English Composition from Brigham Young University. I teach composition and technical writing classes at Utah Valley University.

Professional Experience

I am a veteran technical communicator with experience as a writer, editor, trainer, course developer, usability specialist, and project manager/team lead. I have worked for Novell, THIINK Subscription, Legato/EMC, and Quest Software.

Additional Comments

I am committed to keeping our Intermountain Chapter going. The upcoming STC year holds great promise. I believe having a viable, active chapter is the goal of every member of our board.

I updated the post similar to how I updated the January meeting post. In both, I embedded the audio recording right at the top. I’ll try to update all our meeting posts with recordings of the meetings like this.