President’s Message: Here's to Friends, Accomplishments, and Plans for 2008

by Debbie Kerr, President

Well, another holiday season has come and gone. It's always great to get together with friends and families. I heard a few parents comment that they wished that their kids could be back at school, and this was only after a few days of them being out of school. Although I had some "interesting" moments with my children; overall, everything went well, and I enjoyed the time off.

The same can be said for our chapter - I mean the part about getting together with family and friends and not the part about wishing they would go away.

Learning More About Fellow Communicators

I consider the people on council to be my friends. We went out for dinner in December, and it was great. Although we had a short council meeting for part of the time, it was nice to see and talk to these people outside of a regular council meeting. Often we have full agendas at our meetings, and if we spend too much time talking about things outside of our STC focus, then our meetings get too long. This dinner gave us the opportunity get together and get to know each other a little better on a more personal level.

There are also people that I see at general meetings that I would like to get to know better. With a small amount of networking time at the end of each general meeting, most people wish there was more time, and we are often there until 9:00 chatting with meeting attendees, even when the speaker finished a half hour earlier.

Part of the holidays included a celebration of the New Year. If you are negative, your only thought is that you survived another year. If you are positive, you remember all the great things that you accomplished in the past year, and think of all the great things that you can do in the upcoming year. I like to think that the people in our chapter are positive, so I would like to recap on some of the things we accomplished since September 2007, and mention a few of the things that we have planned for 2008.

Recognizing Achievements

Since the council year starts in approximately the last quarter of the year, I am only going to list those achievements for that time frame.

Since September, the Southwestern Ontario Chapter has:

• Held two general meetings on topics that people requested in our survey from the previous council year. In the survey, participants indicated that we did not have enough meetings for intermediate and senior members. Since we value your opinion, we had a meeting about being contractors and independent consultants as well as meeting about being a manager. Both meetings were panel discussions, and they were received well.
• Hosted a webinar in December. A webinar is a presentation that enables to view the presentation online, and interact through a speakerphone. Head Office is using different software for this type of presentation, so questions can be submitted online instead of through the phone.
• Sent out its first issue of The Quill, our chapter's newsletter. This was a first issue for a new editor, Laura Zinn, and I think it was great. Remember, anyone can submit articles for this newsletter, so please send them or any topic ideas to quill@stc-soc.org.
• Participated in an online and technical publications competition in co-operation with the Toronto Chapter STC.
• Recruited speakers for several of our upcoming general meetings and education days.

Some of the other accomplishments are less obvious to those of you who are not on the council, but they are still achievements:

• Ted Edwins, our PR Manager, and Margie Yundt, our webmaster coordinated efforts to improve our website functionality "behind the scenes", including changing our webhosting provider, resulting in a significant decrease in the hosting costs for the website, and a more stable, functional environment. While some things may look relatively the same, they are far different behind the scenes.
• Your council has had monthly council meetings to plan events for our chapter. We want to provide members with as much value as possible. If you want to influence the direction we take, then we want to hear from you, or offer to take on a council position. There are some still open.
• Lori Jankowski, our Treasurer, has prepared a budget for the year, to ensure we stay on track financially.

Planning for 2008

This year will be another busy part of the council year. In 2008, our plan is to have monthly meetings from February to June. There will be more issues of The Quill. We also plan on having more webinars. The details will be posted on our website, as the descriptions of these topics become available. Some topics are specifically targeted to technical communication is southwestern Ontario. To see general descriptions about what we are offering for meetings in 2008, click on Upcoming Events in this newsletter.

Remember, you can make a difference. In fact some of you already have by providing us with your feedback. Send me an email at president@stc-soc.org if you want to make a difference too by suggesting topics, or by getting involved with our chapter.

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