President’s Message: Spring Into Action

by Debbie Kerr, President

This is my second attempt at my article. I wrote the first article to tell you about all the action that was going to take place in the spring, and then I read Carol’s recap of the council meetings, and realized that she had covered everything that was in my article. Ask my children, and they will tell you that I don’t like to repeat myself, but I don’t mean that in the sense that you aren’t listening. I just don’t want to bore you. My purpose is to inspire you to take action…to get you to take part in all (or at least some) of the activities that we have planned for the rest of the year.

Some of the activities actually involve going to a particular location, while others are activities that you can do from the comfort of your PC. You might be surprised that attending a general meeting is part of the latter.

Participate in Our First Webcast of a General Meeting: March 6th

We have arranged a general meeting that will be accessible both in person and through a webcast. The topic will be about learning styles and how knowing about them can help you adjust how you document information so that your audience will get the maximize information from what you write. There a few things to note for this meeting:

1. If you are attending the meeting in person, we have moved this one to the Modern Languages building, Room 117, at the University of Waterloo.
2. If you want to participate in the webcast, you need to do a few installs first, so you may want to step through these before the broadcast begins at 7pm on March 6th—the instructions are here.

Since this is the first time that we are doing it, there may be some “glitches”, but the benefits will far outweigh any problems, we hope. Give it a try; you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. We look forward to your feedback!

Visit with Cindy Currie at Our Wine and Cheese

For the first time in a long time, a director is coming to visit our chapter—Cindy is touring Ontario and will be stopping by our Annual Wine and Cheese on March 27th. I have communicated with directors in the past, but Cindy has been exceptionally responsive. Whenever I have a problem or a question, she is right there. If there is anything that you want to say to Cindy, why not come out to our Annual Wine and Cheese event and talk to her in person? Can't make it to the meeting? Feel free to contact Cindy directly at dir1@stc.org or send your questions to me, and I will be happy to discuss them with her, and get back to you.

Our Wine and Cheese is typically a night when we hand out a lot of awards, and this year is no different. There are a lot of people who have done a lot of great things that we want to recognize. Want to find out who is getting the honours this year? Well, we don't want to ruin the surprise; so you'll just have to come!

Voice Your Opinion

While we offer our annual education workshop (XML anyone?) and FREE webinars to members and a nominal fee for non-members (our next one features Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Content Management), we realize that not everyone can get to our area.

For this reason, we tried to provide free online training to our members. We posted a survey on our website to see who would be interested in using this training if we made it available but as only 22 of our 171 members completed the survey, we did not have enough of a response to warrant any action. Please take the time to make your opinion known. What you say does make a difference. We want to include and make services available to all of our members, but we can’t give you what you want if you don't let us know what you want.

Network With Us and Each Other

If you are new to the chapter, contact our Membership manager and tell us a bit about yourself. What have you got to lose? This is a form of networking, which is one of the main purposes of our chapter. You can also send an email to someone who has written an article for the newsletter and tell that person what you thought of the article. Get a dialogue going. Email your council members with your questions and suggestions. Get involved.

As a technical communicator, you know that people learn more by doing. You will learn more about your own profession if you ask questions and interact with others in your field.

You don’t have to be in this area to take part in this activity. Don’t let distance be an excuse for not getting involved.

Write an Article

Have you ever thought that you would like to see something in the newsletter and wondered why nobody has written about it? Maybe it is time that you wrote an article. If you don’t do it, no one else will. Share your knowledge, or just send your story ideas to Margie Yundt, our newsletter editor—she would love to hear from you! Why not get published? Maybe someone will write to you, and you will find someone entirely new to network with. I judged with someone at the international level, and I think I have found a friend for life. You just never know how you are going to connect with certain people.

And Finally...

Whether you do any of these activities is up to you. Just make sure that you do something. The saying may be that it is better to give than to receive, but it should be, “You receive whenever you give.” Give yourself a shake, and wake up out of that winter slumber. Make sure you receive all the benefits of your STC membership by giving every opportunity that presents itself a try.

About Debbie Kerr

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. For the second year in a row, Debbie has bravely taken on the role of Chapter President.