Pondering When to Renew? Renew Now and Enter to Win!

Posted: 09 Dec 2009 11:19 AM PST on STC's Notebook

Ponder no more! If you renew your STC membership by 16 December, you’ll be automatically entered to win an Amazon Kindle or one of five iPod Shuffles! So not only will you get all the great benefits STC has to offer, but you might get a little something-something in the bonus round as well—Wink Martindale, eat your heart out!

Last year STC gave away five iPods, but we’ve upped the ante a bit to include the Amazon Kindle this year. And with the contest ending 16 December, we’ll do our very best to get the winners their prizes as soon as we absolutely can for gifting purposes.

Valid entries must be completed by 11:59 EST PM (GMT-5) Wednesday, 16 December. At that point, we’ll conduct a drawing and notify the winners. What could be better? Renew your STC membership and continue all the benefits, and maybe win some stuff in the process!

Tips for Renewing or Buying an STC Membership

As I was renewing my membership, I found out a few things that I didn't read before starting the online process. I also found out a few things by asking STC Head Office. To help you avoid some surprises, or perhaps to answer some questions before you ask them, here are my personal discoveries (all prices are in US dollars):

• A Basic STC membership no longer gives you membership in a chapter or a SIG. Each chapter membership now costs an additional $25, and a SIG membership costs $10 each.


• If you do not renew your membership by February 28, 2010, you are subject to an extra renewal fee of $15.


• If you do not renew your membership for a year, you are subject to an extra renewal fee of $30.


• When you buy an STC membership for the first time, there is an additional initiation fee of $30.


• If you want printed versions of the publications, the magazine Intercom is $30 + $7.50 for postage to Canada; the journal Technical Communication is $75 + $7.50 for postage to Canada.


• You have the option of paying your total dues in four equal installments over the course of the year.


• If you want to add a chapter or SIG membership to your existing membership, you can do it over the course of the year.

To buy or renew your membership, go to the STC Head Office website.

If you discover something useful about buying or renewing a membership that isn't listed here, feel free to leave a comment.

The Toronto chapter and the Southwestern Ontario chapter of the STC would like to hold a joint workshop session on April 19 and 20, 2010, but the questions are where and about what topics?

Please fill in the following brief survey (http://www2.stctoronto.org/get-involved/next-event/survey) if you think you would like to attend one or two days of in-depth training at an affordable price. If you provide your contact information, we'll put your name in for a draw for a free workshop pass.

Survey closes Friday, December 18, 8:00 pm.

Canadian Chapters Meeting #3

The Canadian chapter presidents had another meeting on November 11. Here are the highlights:

• Our request to the Society (Head Office) to enable us to elect a Canadian director has been turned down.
  
• The Alberta chapter has shared their salary survey questions with the other Canadian chapters, where they will be reviewed to see how they can be used to perform our own Canadian salary survey.
  
• Our chapter offered the Society an interest-free loan for two years, and the Society turned down the offer. As a result, our chapter will keep all surplus funds to pay for our chapter activities. The Society will not have to cover a shortfall in our budget for years to come.
  
• Two other Canadian chapters have decided to make a gift of some of their surplus funds.
  
• All Canadian chapters are interested in amending the international chapter affiliation agreement, which the Society says is open for amendments because it no longer reflects the new relationship between the Society and the international chapters. The Toronto chapter and our chapter have been drafting an amended agreement, and we will share it with the other chapters and the Society.
  
• The Toronto chapter discovered that the council members are actually covered by the Society’s Directors and Officers (D&O) insurance, contrary to information that we were previously given. This means that each chapter does not have to buy their own insurance, saving us hundreds of dollars annually. We have a copy of the policy which specifically states that Canada is a jurisdiction that is covered.
  

We discussed a mutual concern about getting new and existing members to join/renew their memberships not only with the Society, but with our chapter. The new dues structure makes it easier for people to join the STC without joining a specific chapter; in fact, people will have to pay an additional fee if they want to become a member of any chapter. Since the amount of funding available from the Society depends on the number of members who join chapters, people who choose to become members of the Society only will have a big impact on what services the chapters will be able to provide.

We decided that a three-tier pricing policy (one for non-members, one for STC members, and one for chapter members) was unwanted overhead. Instead, chapters decided that a two-tier approach would be easier to manage. The structure of those tiers is something that each chapter will have to decide. For example, one option would be to give discounts to all STC members (regardless of whether or not they are a member of the chapter). Another option would be to give discounts only to members of the chapter. In all cases, fees paid for events will go directly to the chapter.

If you have any questions or concerns about these issues, please feel free to comment, or send an email directly to president@stc-soc.org.

Content Reuse Education Evening

No matter what your business, efficient communication is crucial to your success. With that in mind, are the writers and content managers in your company working efficiently? Unless you are doing everything possible to reuse your content throughout your organization, you’re wasting time and money.

This special event is designed for a broader group of communicators beyond the technical writing community. We’ve assembled a team of content reuse experts for this session, which is open to anyone in the business community. As you’ll see when you attend, content reuse is not just for the technical writing community. The principles and applications are relevant to virtually any content environment. No matter what your business or your function, you can reuse your content.

Pamela Kostur, a partner at Parallax Communications in Toronto and a recognized content management expert, will describe the benefits of writing for reuse, and the process of planning and creating reusable content. Bryan Lynn, a founder of Thirty Six Software in Indianapolis, will demonstrate SmartDocs, an MS Word add-in that integrates the power of content reuse in the Word environment, and uses Microsoft SharePoint to centralize storage of reusable content and configure reusable content metadata.

The event concludes with a hands-on Smart Docs training session, conducted by Front Runner Training of Toronto, a recognized leader in technical communication training. Participants will also receive a trial version of the Smart Docs software to start work on reusing their own content.

Date: Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Time: 6:30 to 9:30 PM, doors open at 6:00
Location: University of Waterloo, Arts Lecture Hall, Room AL 208
Cost:

In person: members are free; non-members are $5

Webinar: members are $10; non-members are $20 (to cover the cost of each network meeting line)

Registration and Payment: See our website.

FrameMaker User Network Meeting

Front Runner Training hosts a F.U.N. meeting...

Kitchener, Ontario
Tuesday November 17th, 2009

University of Waterloo
J.R. Coutts Eng. Lecture Hall
Room 212 (RCH 212)
6:00pm-8:00pm

Map of University

Tim Grantham will discuss DITA and FrameMaker 9.

Mark James from Adobe Systems Canada will provide a high level overview of Adobe Acrobat 9 3-D to show its cool capabilities!

Help us give a kid a Christmas this holiday...At all our events we are accepting new, unwrapped toy donations for the CP24/CHUM Christmas Wish.

Here is a link to register to the event...http://www.front-runner.com/Events.php?eid=1

Thanks, hope to see you there!

Sincerely,
Veronica Kütt
President
Front Runner Training,
a Div. of Front Runner Publishing Solutions Inc.
416-515-0155
Call Toll free: 1-877-999-0155
veronica@front-runner.com

"Learn what you wish you'd known yesterday!"®

Bylaws are Done

We are pleased to announce that the Southwestern Ontario chapter bylaws are done and sent to Head Office for approval. Here are the highlights:

• The elected directors are the President, Treasurer and Secretary, which is standard practice for a registered non-profit organization. The Corporations Act of Ontario requires at least three elected directors. The council consists of many other people (for example, webmaster and employment manager), who are "appointed" by the directors from those who volunteer.


• The President can only be in office for two years. If the President wants to extend his or her term for a third year, there must be a vote at the annual general meeting.


• The chapter must hold an annual general meeting that is open to all chapter members.


• Any member with the support of nine others who belong to the chapter can require the council to hold a special meeting to deal with a specific issue.

I would like to thank the subcommittee that worked extra hours to develop, review and revise these bylaws. They are Jim Bousquet, Lori Jankowski, Debbie Kerr, Carol Lawless and Gord Varney.

If you would like to see the bylaws in their entirety, all 17 pages, send me a request: president@stc-soc.org.

Canadian Chapters Meeting #2

The Canadian chapter presidents had another meeting on September 22, 2009. Here are the highlights:

• We are going to propose to Head Office that Canadian members be allowed to elect a Director who will represent Canadian interests.


• We are developing a Canadian salary survey.


• The chapters that have a surplus would like to voluntarily share at least some of it with Head Office. We recognize that the local members worked for that money and deserve to benefit from it, so we are working to balance our chapter's needs with Head Office's needs. We are currently negotiating with Head Office to find a way to do that.


• We discussed contingency plans in case the STC organization goes bankrupt.

Feel free to comment if you have any concerns or ideas.

STC Montreal Teams Up with Other Professional Organizations

I just heard about a one-day professional development and networking event for freelancers in Montreal on October 24, 2009. The STC chapter there has teamed up with other organizations to set up expert panel discussions. There's still time to get early-bird discount tickets. For more information, see http://mediaville.ca/.

Career Day with STC Toronto

STC Toronto has invited us to their Career Day and Resume Workshop on Tuesday, September 29, 2009. Southwestern Ontario STC members get in for free. See http://www2.stctoronto.org/get-involved/next-event for the details.

Education Evening - English Usage Guide for Writers and Editors

Hobgoblins, Salad Forks, and Hard and Fast Rules: An English Usage Guide for Writers and Editors
Presented by Alan Yoshioka, PhD (University of Waterloo alumnus, Chair of the Toronto Branch of the Editors' Association of Canada)

When is it okay to boldly split an infinitive? To use a sentence fragment? Even if you were lucky enough to be taught much grammar in school, you might not know which rules are still considered current and which have gone the way of the rotary phone. Sometimes there are several correct ways to make a point, and the choice between them is just a matter of emphasis, while at other times the main concern is to maintain internal consistency within a document. Then there are usages that are unsuitable for a given context and audience.

Learn to distinguish matters of editorial taste from rules that should really be followed all the time. Also get tips for dealing tactfully with team members when there’s a usage point on which they’re dead certain, and dead wrong. Come with questions about the rules you’re anxious about—or about which you’re anxious.

Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Time: Presentation begins at 7:00 p.m. / Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for networking
Where: Room DC1304 at the Davis Centre, University of Waterloo
Cost: Free for members and non-members

For more details go to http://www.stc-soc.org/calendar/2009-10-06.php

By-Laws Almost Completed

The council is taking steps to register with the Ontario government as a non-profit organization. This would make the chapter a legal entity and allow it to enter into agreements with other organizations (such as banks and hotels), instead of forcing one of the council members to be responsible for the agreement. It also requires the chapter to develop by-laws defining how the chapter is run and how decisions are made. Once registered, the chapter must make annual reports to the government, proving that the chapter is meeting the standards of a non-profit organization.

The first step has been writing our by-laws and ensuring they comply with the requirements for a non-profit organization. The by-laws define:

• Who the elected officers are


• How and when elections are held


• Which council members are appointed


• The roles and responsibilities of the elected officers and appointed members


• How all chapter members can have a voice in running the affairs of this chapter


• The chapter's relationship with Head Office

The by-laws have to be approved by Head Office. After that, we can submit them to the government of Ontario along with our application for non-profit status.

If you would like to see a copy of the by-laws before they become official, please contact me, Fei Min Lorente, at president@stc-soc.org.

Webinar on Structure 2.0-Knowledge Delivery at Symantec

The Southwestern Ontario Chapter of the STC is hosting this webinar (Structure 2.0—Knowledge Delivery at Symantec) on Wednesday, September 16, 2009.

Location: PEER Group, 72 Victoria St. South, Kitchener

Time: 1:00 to 2:30 pm

Description

Learn how the information developers at Symantec went from information in a book paradigm to topic-based, on-demand user assistance, and all the advantages of that transition.

Presenter

Tristan Bishop has been driving documentation process improvement since 1996. These efforts have included: building a knowledge management strategy for Wells Fargo Online; crafting an XML publishing environment for Invio Software; managing multiple documentation teams; migrating VERITAS FrameMaker documentation into topic-based XML; unifying Symantec stakeholders to ensure optimal content delivery.

For more information about the webinar and the speaker, see http://www.stc.org/edu/seminars01.asp.

Fee

At the PEER Group location (sponsored by the Southwestern Ontario Chapter STC):

• Free for members and $35CAD for non-members.

At any location (sponsored by STC Head Office):

• $79USD for members and $149USD for non-members

Registration

To attend the webinar at PEER Group, email Tracey Aitcheson. Please provide your membership number if you are a member.

To attend the webinar from any other location, register here: https://access.stc.org/imispublic/Core/Events/eventdetails.aspx?iKey=WEB0916.

More Details

Watch the calendar page on our website for more details.

Canadian Chapters Meeting #1

As a result of the current financial crisis at STC Head Office and the need to ensure that Canadian members receive services that are relevant to this country, the presidents (or delegates) of the Canadian chapters met via a teleconference on August 12. The Canada West Coast, Alberta, Manitoba, Southwestern Ontario and Montreal chapters participated in the discussion, but the Toronto and Eastern Ontario were unable to join us.

To address the need to create value for Canadian STC members at a Society level, we decided that we would ask the Society to create a position for a Canadian director. To make this a convincing request, the Canadian chapters want to jointly present a business case. All the chapters are looking for volunteers to write the business case and to share ideas about what the benefits would be of the new position to both Canadian STC members and the Society as a whole.

In addition to discussing getting more value for Canadian members, the chapters also compared notes on plans to help the Society with the financial crisis. Most chapters intend to help in a monetary fashion, but the terms and amounts are still under discussion.

Although the teleconference meetings are restricted to chapter presidents or a delegate, we are responsible for representing our council's opinions and ideas. Council members are welcome to participate in an online discussion site, which serves to set the agenda for meetings. All chapter members are welcome to contact their presidents or other council members to voice their opinions or ask questions.

The Canadian chapters are planning another meeting to check on the progress of action items from the first meeting, as well as to discuss contingency plans if the Society should fail to overcome the financial crisis. It looks like this will be the first of many meetings.

Canadian Chapters Are Meeting

The Canadian Chapters would like to discuss how and how much we can co-operate to provide more services for Canadian STC members. Due to the vacation season, it's taken a while to find a date when a representative from each Canadian chapter can meet via a conference call. That call is now scheduled for August 12, so check back next week to see the results of that meeting.

In the meantime, the council has created a budget for 2009-2010 and we plan to submit it to Head Office to meet their deadline of August 17. The council is also working on finalizing the by-laws which is a requirement of registering as a non-profit organization.


More to come...

A Conversation with Head Office

Cindy Currie, President of the STC, talked to our chapter and other Canadian chapters about our reluctance to give our surplus funds to STC Head Office, and our general feeling that we are not fully integrated in the international organization. There were representatives from the Canada West Coast, Alberta, Manitoba, Eastern Ontario, Toronto, and Montreal chapters, as well as us. Cindy was joined by Susan Burton, Executive Director/CEO, and Aiessa Moyna, Treasurer. We had a very constructive and enlightening conversation; these are the highlights:

• Canadian chapters are not legally obliged to give surplus funds to STC Head Office.


• Cindy made the case that if we want to see the STC survive, we should be motivated to help them out financially because without enough funding, the STC will collapse. Passing surplus funds to Head Office is meant to be a temporary measure to see them through the financial crisis.


• The Canadian chapters pointed out several important services that Head Office does not provide, such as a Canadian salary survey and group insurance. The Canadian chapters discussed taking the initiative to implement these purely Canadian services. Cindy said that the Society might fund these initiatives if we presented them with a business case.


• The Canadian chapters discussed whether to form a national organization.

The Canadian chapters are currently discussing where to go from here. In my opinion, all Canadian STC members would benefit from closer co-operation between the Canadian chapters, but whether there is enough collective will to form a national organization remains to be seen.

The Southwestern Ontario chapter is currently setting the budget for the rest of 2009 and 2010 to meet Head Office's deadline of August 17. As part of the budget discussion, we will explore what, if anything, we can do to help Head Office out of their financial crisis.

Your thoughts and feedback are always welcome.

I'll keep you posted on any new developments.

The Current State of Affairs

The STC Head Office has provided information about how this financial crisis came about, how they have already cut costs, and what they would like to do to remedy this situation. In addition, they have provided answers to frequently asked questions. You can read the articles about each of these items at http://www.stc.org/LCR/state-of-the-society.asp (you must be able to log into the STC site to read these).

However, if you want to read a summary before deciding if you want more detail, here are the highlights:

• The shortfall for 2009 is $1.2 million USD, but Head Office plans to cover that shortfall with $400 000 from their reserves and $250 000 through a line of credit. This means that they have to obtain about $500 000 from other sources.
  
  
• The shortfall is due to a drop in reserves that were held in investments, a decrease in the number of members, and a decrease in attendance at the annual conference. These are the three main areas that the STC usually depends on to sustain itself. However, although members are a source of income, the cost of serving a member actually exceeds the cost of a membership. To keep the cost of membership down, Head Office has been making up the difference through the revenue generated from their conference and their investments. Unfortunately, this year there is not enough revenue.


• Head Office has implemented cost-cutting measures such as moving the office to cheaper quarters and not replacing two staff members.


• They would like to make up the $500 000 shortfall by raising dues, increasing educational offerings (for example, more Web seminars), asking for individual and corporate donations, and asking chapters for any surpluses they have in their bank accounts. Our chapter has a substantial surplus from previous years when our Education Days were very successful.


• To encourage all chapters to provide programs, and to spread the wealth around to needier chapters, Head Office is changing its accounting method to zero-based budgeting. This means that chapters must submit a budget to Head Office each fiscal year (something that we already do), but now Head Office must approve it prior to us implementing it. Then, instead of regularly receiving funds based on the number of members of the chapter, chapters will receive funds only if they cannot cover all the budgeted expenses themselves. Any excess reserves or profit that a chapter accummulates must be given to Head Office.
  

Lots of other money-generating and cost-cutting measures have been suggested and debated. If you want to follow these discussions or add some of your own, check out the STC Ideas group on the Ning network (http://twitzap.com/u/MDk?xgi=6X1VNGI).

As you can imagine, this chapter is reluctant to surrender the reserves in our bank account with little direct benefit to our members. Also, the legal relationship between our chapter in Canada and Head Office in the USA is not clear. Both sides are working to understand what this means. As we understand more and choose a definitive path, I'll share this information with you through this blog.

In the meantime, the administrative council of this chapter is trying its best to ensure that you get as many (if not more) services and programs as we have offered in the past. We hope to minimize the effects of the turmoil surrounding Head Office. Let us know if you have specific concerns, questions or suggestions.

Welcome to the Southwestern Ontario STC Blog!

We've started this blog because the Society for Technical Communication (STC) is experiencing a financial crisis due to the global recession. As a result, there may be many changes taking place that will affect you as a member. Since developments are happening fairly rapidly, we thought you might like to keep informed through this blog. I'll be updating it at least once a week, and you can comment on my postings.

To make sure you are kept up-to-date, you can subscribe to be notified when there are new postings to the blog.

Depending on interest and our volunteer council's ability to keep it up-to-date, we may continue the blog after the financial crisis is over. Please provide your feedback.