Reaching the STC Summit (Part One)

By Ursula McCloy

It's strange being a newbie again. I've been a tech writer and an STC member for over 13 years (or is it 14?), and normally I feel a bit weathered around the edges. But I've never made it to a summit, so it was a brand new experience for me. I've been wondering for a few years - why, oh why, did I not go in '97 when it was in Toronto? So I was pretty excited to get the opportunity to attend: hoping to learn a bit, network with the people who I know by name but not in person, and spend a few nights in a quiet hotel room, sans enfants.

Sunday - Day 0

Leadership Day isn't strictly part of the education portion of the summit. Instead, it's time for the community leaders (SIGs, chapters, special committees) to talk STC shop: what the society is doing, what it's changing, what it's looking for feedback on. After the requisite intros, awards, and thank-yous (yawn), we got right down to work. The burning question this year is what can STC do to serve its communities and individual members better? What do people want from the STC?

The day was a series of progressions, so I picked some of the topics that seemed most relevant for our chapter.

• Competition: Discussed how they're improving the evaluation forms. Last year, they threw away the old checklists, since what people find most valuable are the actual reviewer comments. But they are hoping to improve the forms this year so they're less work for the reviewers to fill out. Wonder if that will mean less review comments in general?
• Virtual marketing of your community: I'm suspicious of stuff like this, since I don't have time to moon about on Facebook and tweet about what I had for lunch. But the main point was whatever method you use to communicate with your members, make a plan for the year, stick to it, and be consistent. So whether your channel is a newsletter, a Facebook page, or a mailing list, you've got to know when you need to communicate something, communicate it at the same time, and in the same way. You need to make message consumption simpler by making it as easy to digest as possible.
• Problems/successes faced by geographic communities: Lack of participation in chapter events concerns everyone, particularly when members are polled and say that is what they value. What to do about decreasing attendance? Virtual seminars (either entirely remote, or live webcasts of an actual meeting), moving locations, planned communication about events are ways to encourage people to come out. Or just do stuff together. Like go to movies, hikes, baseball games, the pub. There is a general feel that we need to re-establish the community aspect of a chapter.
• How can we recruit, support, and maintain volunteers in a virtual environment? Bodily presence at events isn't always possible, so how can we harness people to help out remotely, and how do we outline terms of engagement? For example, what is an appropriate time period for people to respond to an email, before they've missed the window of opportunity? Answer: 1 business day or less. I think that's pretty true for work too.



Leaders and Attendees Mixing It Up at the Community Reception


Finally, we wrapped up with a demo and Q&A session about the MySTC networking site its features, the planned enhancements, and so on. I think it's neat that our local chapter can have its own group; maybe we can have a forum where we can ask for advice, voice opinions, and get to connect with people in our own area? So scratch my above comment about mooning about on Facebook -- I've already signed up, connected with a bunch of people I met at the conference, and am looking forward to some collaborative inspiration.