This blog is one year old, which means it's time to end it. 
My term as president is over, so I can no longer publish a blog with this name. 

In addition, I'm tired of the limitations of Live Journal as a blogging platform. I have to put up with ads and have none of the cool stuff that more sophisticated blogs have. 

So I'm moving to Word Press and continuing my technical communication and STC musings on a new, improved blog called, Don't Call Me Tina. 

I'm currently in Minneapolis attending the STC's Summit. I'll be blogging about the conference for several days. There's a lot of great discussion and ideas here. 

Thanks for reading! See you in my new spot.

Michelle Schoen is our resident Podcaster.

She created a podcast of our March chapter meeting and she's been conducting short interviews with chapter members as well. 

Here's the link to the page she's set up. 
My interview will be appearing here soon!

http://mschoen.libsyn.com/

This page did not immediately open for me, so be patient if you get a white screen. 

Are these podcasts useful? Do you have any other ideas for topics? If so, contact Michelle.

What is the current name of your chapter (geographic community) or SIG (virtual community
Atlanta Chapter

Do you want to change the name of your community? If yes, please enter the new name.
No 

What has been your average annual cost of operating your community over the last 3 years?
$34,000 (this year it dropped to $25,000) 

Describe the members whom you hope to attract to your new community.
Managers, user assistance professionals, educators, students, technical editors, medical writers, graphic artists, consultants, and people entering (or interested in entering) the technical communications profession.

a) What are their concerns, professional needs, and interests?

• Finding interesting work in technical communications
• Keeping up with new tools and new technology
• Winning respect from their employers and coworkers for the work they do
• Interacting with others in the profession to learn, network, and compare notes
• Finding and sharing new and creative ways to make complex information understandable

• By providing a wide range of resources to technical communicators in our area. These include: chapter presentations on topics of interest, annual conference, technical seminars, local SIGs, blogs, a newsletter, a dynamic Web site, social activities, community service, and interaction with local universities (and, where possible, high schools).
• By being the place to network with others in the profession, including those who are hiring and those looking for employment.
• By partnering with other organizations and businesses to promote STC and build relationships

What is the mission statement of your community?

Goals and how we will achieve them:

https://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/2926/71AB2B36FD7B/ 

My company just put itself up for sale, so I'm polishing up my network connections and my resume. 

Every year about this time, the membership lists get "scrubbed" at the Society level. This is a "come to Jesus" moment when you see how you ended up at the end of the year. We took a hit this year. We are down to about 330 members. We got up to over 450 in January. 

Our membership manager points out that this is less of a drop than previous years and that STC as a whole is losing members steadily each year. Stiff upper lip and all that. 

I believe we did make progress this year even if our membership numbers don't indicate it. But we need to redouble our efforts to recruit and retain members next year for sure. Al worked with me to submit a chapter achievement award application and the checklist had some good ideas that we could easily implement. These include calling lapsed members and encouraging them to renew and setting up a mailing list for ex-members and send them news of activities and events. 

I also think it would be useful to consider contacting the primary employers of technical communicators in Atlanta and promoting STC as a professional development opportunity for their employees.

At noon today I attended a meeting of the STC Management SIG leadership and, that SIG lost over 1000 members in the scrub. So everyone is feeling the pain.

• If you identify yourself as a Documentation Manager, the survey addresses a wide range of compelling topics, such as documentation trends, manager compensation, writer management, hiring resources, department promotion, training, and so on. This option takes about 10 minutes to complete.
•  If you identify yourself as a Non-manager, the survey basically asks you to describe your position and to indicate whether or not you are currently working. This option takes about 1 minute to complete.

Every year we present awards to our competition winners at our April banquet. This year's event is next Tuesday. If you haven't reserved your seat, please do so by April 13. Full details are available here. 

One of the highlights of this event is the exhibit of the winning entries for the publications competition. Even if you can't come for dinner, you're welcome to stop by the Marriott between 6:15 and 7. The cash bar will be open and you can browse through the technical publications that were awarded prizes. I always like to look at the styles and templates other companies are using in their documentation. 

At the banquet we'll hand out the plaques to the winners who attend. Then we'll present awards to chapter volunteers who played a particularly important role over the last year. 

Milton Edwards will be our MC. Joe Scardina is heading up the banquet committee. 

One thing to note is that construction is fully underway for the new "flyover" bridge at the end of Perimeter Center Parkway. The bridge is designed to alleviate traffic problems in the Perimeter Mall area, but I'm skeptical. You can read about the project here. 

I hope to see many of you at the banquet!

• Managing a corporate information portfolio
• Evaluating process maturity
• Partnering with customers and developing user scenarios
• Developing team effectiveness and collaboration
• Planning and monitoring information projects
• Managing translation and production
• Evaluating project performance
• Managing for quality, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness

This just in: 
Here is the list of people selected for the rank of STC Fellows and Associate Fellows. Sadly no one from our chapter this year, but I know several people on the list — names that you may recognize, too.

Jack Molisani, our speaker at the upcoming chapter meeting, was elected an Associate Fellow.

Geoff Hart, our workshop presenter at Currents, achieved the rank of Fellow. 
Same with Whitney Quesenbery who attended our January meeting. 
Also, Andrea Ames, a recent president of the Society. 

Congratulations to all! They will formally receive their honors at the banquet at the Minneapolis conference. 

For more information on STC's honorary ranks, visit this page on our Web site. 
It's not too early to begin thinking of nominees for next year. Contact me if you have a suggestion. 

Dirk and I continue to get e-mails from conference participants with kudos. This proves that numbers aren't everything. Going into the event several of us were concerned about the low attendance. But with the right program and atmosphere, no one really notices the number of people. One session I attended only had four people and that was a little disheartening, but the competition was fierce given the caliber of speakers. 

We had fewer out-of-town guests this time around, too. The last two years we've had a small contingent from Club Car in Augusta and some participation from Tennessee. While we are still in an official STC Region we can't really leverage that without a regional director-sponsor. Next year we'll need to think of other ways to encourage STCers from other areas to attend. 

One idea might be to ask another chapter to co-sponsor Currents with us. We could offer a discount to anyone who had to travel over a certain distance. One of the northern Florida or North Carolina chapters, perhaps. 

The only logistical glitch was the computer setup. Not all the rooms had computers and not all the speakers brought laptops. But it was easily solved with a few room changes and commandeering of laptops.

My panel was a great success! The topic was, "What Does It Take to Succeed as a Technical Communicator: Professors and Managers Sound Off" (or something like that). Carol Barnum from SPSU and Helen Grady from Mercer U in Macon represented academe. Christian Walters from Cox Communications and I represented the managers. I prepped the panel ahead of time with some opening questions. About 20 people were in the audience including Susan Burton and George Hayhoe. Brian Fleming of HelpWrite and Mike Hughes took issue with the professors' statements about not teaching tools. A lively debate ensued, but in the end, we realized there wasn't a great disagreement. I will write up more on this topic later. David Yates and Emma Mulvaney provided a good followup with their session on "Staying Responsive to the Workplace: Educating Skilled Technical Communicators." New faces from Auburn!

The lunch was better this year. Great Southern barbecue with yummy cobbler for dessert. Arranging food is always dicey because you have to tell the kitchen how many you need to feed ahead of time. If more people show up after you've sent the number, it can get ugly. Thank goodness for the American practice of preparing two meals for each person. This works very well in a buffet . You can count on half the women and a small percentage of men only having salad. (I wonder if the Marriott would do a buffet for our awards banquet???) 

Another great aspect of the conference was chapter members I hadn't met before. It's nice to put a face to a name! Standing in line for lunch, I learned that two members had gone to high school in the Minneapolis area, just like me. Minnesotans keep turning up in this chapter.

Technical writers put technical information into easily understandable language. They prepare operating and maintenance manuals, catalogs, parts lists, assembly instructions, sales promotion materials, and project proposals. Many technical writers work with engineers on technical subject matters to prepare written interpretations of engineering and design specifications and other information for a general readership. Technical writers also may serve as part of a team conducting usability studies to help improve the design of a product that still is in the prototype stage. They plan and edit technical materials and oversee the preparation of illustrations, photographs, diagrams, and charts.

After 14 years, Tech-WRL has launched a new site. They've finally ditched the 90s look and entered the 21st century. One nice new feature is an RSS feed.