Category: STC and SIG News

Project Phoenix: The Road Ahead

STC President Michael Hughes announced Project Phoenix to members in August. The stated goals of the project are:

• Transform the society’s web presence to increase the value for current and future members
• Improve the relationship between the society and its current and former members
• Increase the society’s registered member base
• Grow the society’s revenue while decreasing its reliance on dues-based revenue
• Establish the society as the center of the online universe for technical communicators globally
• Dramatically overhaul the society’s brand identity
• Increase the digital distribution of the society’s publications

On September 16, the Project Phoenix team announced The Road Ahead, a road map for the project over the next nine months. Find out what’s in store for Project Phoenix and STC—and how you can help.

Throughout Project Phoenix, members will be asked for input, feedback, and discussion on a wide variety of subject areas, and all comments are greatly appreciated. “I ask for everyone to look for some way to get constructively engaged in this project during this year,” said Hughes. “Together, we can build the new STC.”

More…

Connect with the SIG Email Lists

The Lone Writer SIG maintains two of the most popular email lists in STC.

The main email list, stclwrsig-l, is a great source of support and camaraderie for many STC Lone Writer SIG members. It is unmoderated and managed by the SIG Manager.

The off-topic email list, loners_OT, is a discussion group for all off-topic posts that members of the STC Lone Writers SIG want to share, but don’t want to post to the main mailing list.

Want to learn more about these lists, visit the Main Email List and Off-Topic Email List pages on the SIG website (member user name and password required).

More…

Following the Summit From Afar

If you, like me, weren’t able to attend the 2010 Technical Communication Summit in Dallas last week, there are several opportunities to experience the conference from afar through the blogosphere.

STC’s Notebook includes several posts from STC staffers, including a video interview with incoming president Michael Hughes as well as information on the new certification program announced at the conference.

Tom Johnson’s I’d Rather Be Writing includes video interviews with Char James-Tanny, Whitney Quesenbery, Joe Welinske, Neil Perlin and others.

Gryphon Mountain Journals and Technically Speaking also provide some interesting insights.

Are there other blog posts on the conference out there? Feel free to share them.

More…

SIG Activities at the Annual Conference

With the annual conference coming up in just a couple of months (less a few days), the Lone Writer SIG managers are starting to get some questions about SIG activities in Atlanta.

The short answer is: Details are still being worked out.

The long answer is that discussions just started yesterday on our listserv about options for the after-hours SIG get-together. If planning this year follows the same course as in previous years, date, time, and location usually gets settled a couple of weeks before the conference. When the details are available, we’ll post them here and send them out on Twitter.

With respect to the SIG “business” meeting, room reservation requests were sent in last week and conference organizers will let us know the date and time of our SIG’s meeting. (The SIG meetings have typically been early in the morning so as not to compete with the conference sessions.) Details will be posted here and on Twitter.

Stay tuned…

More…

And Here We Are Again…

In 2000, with Shari Gray’s blessing, I launched The Solitary Scrivener newsletter with a local crew of volunteers that included Martha Darda (design), Bev Henderson and Rhonda Bracey (copyeditors) and Gretchen Stahlman (Solitary Refinement columnist). It was a quarterly newsletter, distributed in PDF to members, with an ambitious editorial calendar.

Nine years later, I’m incoming SIG Manager, looking for ways to bring together the listserv and non-listserv members of our large SIG. Beyond that, I want the rest of the online world to begin meeting the uber-cool 1172 members that have, over the years, made this SIG one of the largest, most participatory, most helpful communities of technical writers around. Our activities on LinkedIn in the last nine months have introduced us to a lot of lone writers from around the world—folks looking for the kind of support, knowledge, and camaraderie that can be found in the Lone Writer SIG in spades.

As Winnie-the-Pooh would say, tapping his head thoughtfully, “What to do, what to do…”

And so, here we are again. The name is the same, only the format has changed. It’s time to get our collective genius out in the open. Lone writers aren’t merely jacks-of-all trades, although that is an unofficial bullet point on our job descriptions. We’re creative and self-reliant professional writers who have learned how to churn out quality work in all manner of conditions: no help, a little help, a lot of help; no money, a little money, a lot of money; less-than-ideal tools and the tools a lot of folks would sell their souls to be able to work with. We write for print, online, multimedia, mobile, and more—sometimes, all of the above. Between current and past experience, we’ve got most industries covered, including some that would surprise you.

So come one, come all…SIG member, STC member, new online friend. In the words of Liz Strauss, you’re only a stranger here once.

More…

 < 1 2 3