Society for Technical Communications : Phoenix Chapter

STC Phoenix will conduct electronic voting for the 2008-2009 Administrative Council from May 1-7, 2008. All member of record as of April 29, 2008 will receive an electronic ballot via e-mail.

For more information, contact Dana Osborne, current chapter president, at president@stc-phoenix.com.

Join us for an interesting and educational evening on May 13th, 2008 at 6:15 p.m. Pacific Time as Tom Johnson presents Combining Social Media with Help Authoring.

The Web landscape has changed considerably in the last several years. Users are no longer passive consumers of information (Web 1.0), but instead are active contributors of content (Web 2.0). They expect to interact and share information, not only with other users, but with project teams and companies.

Although interactive technologies have flourished on the Web, much of the help authoring community remains in the one-way communication model. We treat our users as if they have little or nothing to contribute back.

In this virtual meeting, Tom will discuss six of the most compelling technologies that enable users to become contributors: blogs, wikis, social networks, forums, podcasts/videocasts, and interactive online help. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of each medium and how technical writers can use these technologies to better connect with users.

Our March 2008 issue of Rough Draft is available!

Scott will discuss the weaknesses in our current approaches to managing content and content creators and make the case for:

1. The adoption of software tools that can drastically outperform human counterparts.
2. The adoption of controlled vocabularies to help make content less ambiguous and to improve content quality and translation accuracy (and make translation less expensive).
3. Documentation managers to use metrics to make informed, professional business decisions.

Scott will also demonstrate a content quality management tool so you can “see” how these ideas work in practice instead of simply imagining how they might work.

It will be a very valuable evening!

Our chapter survey helps us understand the needs of our members so that we can provide useful programming. Please take a moment to take our survey:

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Membership News

The Society for Technical Communication (STC) is a professional association that advances the arts and sciences of technical communication. Its 14,000+ members include technical writers, editors, graphic designers, multimedia artists, Web and intranet page information designers, translators and others whose work involves making technical information understandable and available to those who need it.

The Phoenix chapter of the STC is recognized as the hub of technical communication in the Valley of the Sun. At chapter meetings members and non-members alike enhance their technical communication skills, learn about the latest trends and technology in our field, while building professional relationships. Currently our membership stands at 187, a number that compares with last year’s membership.

If you are interested in the benefits that accrue from membership in the Phoenix chapter of the STC but have not yet joined or renewed your membership, please visit www.stc.org/membership.

Norm Haskett,
Phoenix Chapter Membership Manager

From mid-November 2007 to mid-January 2008, our chapter sponsored a campaign to encourage potential members to join and continuing members to renew their memberships. Those who did so had their names entered into a drawing for $50 dollar gift certificates. Out of 187 chapter members, 80 met the January deadline. Their names will be tossed into a hat (or a facsimile thereof) and six names will be drawn at the chapter meeting at the Airport Hilton on March 11th. Winners not present at the meeting will be contacted and their gift certificates mailed to their home address. Thanks to all who participated.

Norm Haskett
Phoenix STC Chapter Membership Manager

Next year’s science fair will be quite different from years past. It will be the Arizona Science Fair (AzSEF), and it will combine the Central Arizona Science Fair, Northern Arizona Science Fair, and the Arizona-American Indian Science and Engineering Fair into one large event – up to 1,000 entries are expected!

We have several volunteers (thank you all), but we need more! This is just a one-day commitment, won’t you please join us on Mar. 20th?

The December 2007 of the Rough Draft is available for download. Click here to download the PDF or visit the Newsletter page to download the current and previous editions.