Council Meeting Minutes:
February and March

by Debbie Kerr, President

The reason that you have not seen council meeting recaps in The Quill recently is that we did not have a face-to-face council meeting in February or March. This means that:

• In some cases, we have not seen each other in two months.
• We saved council two months’ worth of pizza expense.
• You have not had a chance to read emily layng’s descriptive minutes, which are never boring.

Fortunately, with email, we have still managed to make a few key decisions.

Year-End Barbeque

The council year-end is fast approaching, so Donald Johnstone, our Program Manager, has used his great organizational skills to ensure that we have everything in place well in advance.

How?

We had to decide whether our year-end event was going to be catered or whether volunteers would run it. In the end, to ensure we stayed within our budget, council voted to use the volunteer approach to purchase food and “person” the grills. This option was only a possibility because many people indicated that they would help the day of the event and Pauline Horn, our Student Awards Manager, volunteered to co-ordinate everyone’s efforts. It is great that the team approach is alive and well in chapter.

Where?

Donald presented council members with two locations. We voted by e-mail and the location for this year’s barbeque will be at the Wellington Brewery, which is just outside Guelph, by the auto mall on Highway 7. This location was a huge success last year, and the price of the beer was a significant deciding factor.

When?

Since this is a celebration and a time to unwind, we have this meeting on a Friday instead of a Tuesday. This year’s barbeque is on June 9. Mark your calendars!

Education Workshop

Kim Creed, our Education Manager, has been trying to give a report on the feedback that she has received on the two seminars, but our face-to-face meeting keeps getting postponed. She has indicated that the feedback has been positive. Carol Lawless, our treasurer, has indicated that we covered all of our expenses and even managed to make a profit — good news!

Paper Inserts for STC Annual Conference

I received a written request from organizers of the conference asking if our chapter wanted to create an insert that could be put into bags that get handed out at the annual conference. Since there would be an expense associated with creating and shipping these inserts, we would only get a return on our investment if we got more people to join our chapter as a result of seeing these inserts. Most people felt that this was unlikely, so we decided not to create these inserts.

Next Council Meeting

Our next council meeting will be on April 18. I plan to actually hold this one so that we will, once again, be face to face. If you are considering a council position, you might want to come and see what a council meeting is like. If you are planning on coming, please drop me a line. I will give you specific instructions and we will know to watch for you. We meet in a building that has secure access and we don’t want you to have to watch us from the street!

About Debbie Kerr (President)

In the 20 years that Debbie has been writing documentation, she has worked in a variety of industries: government, retail, software, and insurance. She is currently employed at The Economical Insurance Group in Waterloo, where she has stepped out of her traditional role of writing user guides and help files, and now writes a variety of specifications.

Debbie has been a member of the STC since 1994 and has been a council member for many years. Most recently she was The Quill editor for two years.