Those Little Bar Charts

Typically, when the idea of an extensive membership survey comes up at council meetings, we get bogged down on concepts like significant data, valid results, response rates... well, you can see where I'm going with that: it's not terribly exciting.

We're listening!

Your chapter leaders really, really want to know what you think about our programs, education sessions, and opportunities to give you more value for you membership bucks. While we haven't perfected our ideal survey—and frankly, it might be a few more years until we get that ironed out—we have tried for a few years to get casual information from visitors to our website.

For example, when we asked you which membership benefits you valued the most, here were the results:

While many of the options were deemed important by you, publications and networking were on the top of the heap.

Then, we asked you what skills you thought were most important in a technical writer... by a landslide, clear communication and the ability to learn each earned over 1/3 of the votes with writing not far behind (we're shocked).

It's not all about work

Now, not all of our surveys are serious. This summer, I learned that most of our survey respondees believe that a beer on the patio is the best way to stay cool during the summer—though, an 18% minority believed that hiring an engineer to make fans out of old manuals was the superior method. I also discovered that a general meeting based on a water-fight would probably leave me standing by myself in the middle of a park, since that was the only option that gathered no votes.

The squeaky wheel...

gets the grease. You know the saying, right?

So, that just goes to say that when you respond to our little homepage surveys, you're telling us what you want to see.

For example, when multiple interesting remote seminar topics are offered in a month, we often post the choices in the survey box and ask you to tell us which one you want to participate in.

So far, this method has worked very effectively: you get to hear the topics that interest you, and the council knows we made the best choice for our audience.

These surveys are important. The results can have a big impact on the direction we take in our chapter. For example, our education seminars will be taking place in February, so November is when we have to make a lot of our decisions for the seminars. Whenever a question comes up where we want feedback from our members, we will be posting questions and possible options on our website so that people can vote. 

Make sure that you take the time to represent your interests. Please go to our chapter homepage and vote today!

As usual, if you have any comments about a survey, or about other issues, please contact someone on the STC-SOC council. We're always happy to hear from you.

About Opal Gamble

Technical writer, web monkey, and general geek, Opal became a STC-SOC council member in 1997. A graduate of UW's co-op Rhetoric and Professional Writing program, Opal is a contract Technical Writer at Campana. She also runs her own freelance business, Silver Mouse Communications.

When she's not doing STC business or working, Opal races cars and spends a ridiculous amount of mental energy trying to figure out how to go faster.