Council Meeting Recap: January/February

by Carol Lawless, Recorder

Your chapter council has been busy since the last Quill! This recap combines the results of the last two council meetings, since much of our February agenda was a continuation of that of January.

We've been shuffling locations for our meetings – thanks to both Equitrac and PEER Group for coming through, and to Leanne and Marisa for arranging to feed the hungry council.

General Meetings

There will be two general meetings in March.

Our February general meeting shifted so much that it is now the first week of March. We’ve been blazing a new trail for the Southwestern Ontario chapter! It will be a broadcast to remote members via webcast. We hope that members in Sarnia, Goderich, and other “remote” places will take the opportunity to join us! For those of you in the area, you can attend the meeting as usual. For more inforamtion, see our chapter website.

The annual wine and cheese is on Tuesday, March 27. Come out and meet our Director, Cindy Currie; toast our competition winners, student award winners, and our Distinguished Chapter Service award winners; plus, enjoy the company of your fellow tech writers.

Webinars

We’re moving forward with webinars—we have another booked for March and will continue to watch for topics that our membership has expressed interest in. We also discussed purchasing a projector for the webinars (and other events) and are looking into the costs.

Education Workshop

The April Education workshop planning is moving along and promises to be a great couple of days. Take a few minutes to read the article in this issue about the workshop. We’re still looking for volunteers to help promote it, so don’t hesitate to contact Leanne Rollins if you can spare a little time for your chapter.

Website Cleanup

We also managed to clear up some administrative work—the FAQ section of the website has had some early spring cleaning—it should now be up-to-date. Thanks to Karen Pogue, our Karen Pogue, who provided the details that enabled us to clear up some problems with the membership information on the site. Thanks also to Margie, who in addition to her Quill editor duties is also our webmaster, for posting the changes. She has been busy updating our website as events have been starting and finishing, like the XML Workshop (starting), and the Student Awards competition (finishing).

Competitions

We had a chapter competition for online communication and technical publications. Winners wanted to be able to acknowledge that they had won in those competitions by posting a logo on their websites. In response to that request, we have asked one of our members to develop a new “STC Chapter Winner” logo. While it is not ready yet, maybe we will unveil it at our annual wine and cheese meeting.

The deadline for the Student Awards Competition has just closed and the number of entries is more than double the number that there were last year. There are entries from the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University, and the University of Guelph.

Online Training

The results from the online poll about access to free online training were disappointing. Only 22 people responded with 17 being interested. We are still looking at options for a single-seat licence, where only one person at a time can sign in for the training. We will discuss this more in March.

Professional Association Fair

We were invited to set up a booth at the WLU Career Services Professional Association Fair. If we could get an exhibit together in three weeks (no technical writer would say a three week deadline is impossible! Just get out the magic wand!), we planned set up a booth. We were ready to have a team assembled and recruit volunteers and adopted the team slogan “Miracles performed here. The impossible takes a little longer”. However, after the meeting, when Debbie contacted the organizer of the event, we found out that not everyone had as much interest or energy as we had. The “official” fair was cancelled, but we were still welcome to come and set up. We decided to wait until next year.

Next Year’s President

The search is underway for next year’s president. If you’re interested and would like to serve the last couple months as VP, to get comfortable, contact Debbie at president@stc-soc.org. Since we pay money towards your attendance at the STC Annual Conference, it is better if you step forward now, so that you can make plans to attend this year’s conference.

Conclusion

Two council meetings, 16 action items, three motions passed unanimously and lots of laughter—in a nutshell.

About Carol Lawless

Carol has been a member of our profession since 1993 and is a senior STC member. She is a founding partner of KCA Consulting, specializing in web usability and usability testing. She's also an independent contractor, when a suitable project arises. She is our official recorder at council. Outside of the STC and work, Carol's special interest is Ancient Civilizations, and still does not tire of visiting ruins (her favourite is Delphi with Karnak a close second). In her spare time, she runs Mom's taxi and loves to read (while waiting for the next taxi run!).