Council Meeting Recap: September

by Carol Lawless, Recorder

Your chapter's council started off the year with a meeting loaded with topics, and amazingly covered virtually everything in the time allotted!

We started by acknowledging our newest recruit – a special thanks to Ryan who will be our Education Manager, along with Ted, who is a familiar face to any of you who have had any doings with the chapter over the last 10 years or so. Ted will be our new Public Relations Manager.

Then, pizza in hand, we got down to business!

A quick review of the STC's strategic plan reminded us that we want to be in sync with our head office. A quick comparison to other communities showed us that even with a reduced council last year and this, we're still accomplishing a substantial amount for our membership.

We hope to accomplish a lot again this year. We'll be looking at ways to beef up our offerings throughout the year, including more general meetings aimed at intermediate and senior technical communicators, telephone seminars, the Quill and education workshops.

Finances

Finances were the next hot topic. With the new payment structure and booming Canadian dollar, we still expect that we'll fall a little short this year and will balance that shortfall by drawing on our GIC. On the expense cutting side, we found a more cost-effective website provider and will be changing over by the end of October.

General Meetings

Our general meetings will continue to be held the first Tuesday of the month, however, without a programme manager (any volunteers?) we feel we will strive to hold as many meetings as we can manage with the volunteers on hand. We'll continue to host the STC seminars – we're waiting for the first calendar to be published to select topics. We'll keep you informed via the website and email.

The Quill

The Quill will continue to be published online and we'll have at least four issues this year – fall, winter, spring and summer. We'll slide in extras when topics and articles dictate the need for more. Let's keep Laura busy and submit articles of interest and education!

Education Seminars

We're also looking at revamping our education seminars. Some thoughts we're kicking around are having several, shorter workshops throughout the year on various topics. Please let us know your education needs and requests!

Competition and Student Awards

Finally, if you have anything that you would like to enter into a chapter competiton, send it to the Toronto competition, but identify that you heard about here — "Southwestern Ontario Chapter - Quill". We'll be helping out with their competition as much as we can. Our student awards will go ahead as usual, but with the presentations will be a little later in the year. We're still looking for someone to run the actual competition, but there are already volunteers to help promote it and judge it.

Join Us

We are a reduced council this year, so if you're looking for a fun way to network, why not consider volunteering to help us? The more hands we have on deck, the better programmes we can provide for the chapter!

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!).