Looking to 2012

By Carol Lawless

Wow! It’s hard to believe the new year is upon us already! Your local council has been as busy as elves to fill your STC stockings over the holiday season and into 2012.

First, we’re delighted to welcome our newest volunteers – Ann, Sian and Dwight.

We finalized our budget and submitted it to head office for approval in October. We still retain a working bank balance but continue to strive to keep our books balanced, through careful scrutiny (thanks, Jim) and watching for opportunities to produce some income. Specifically we’re looking for sponsorships for events and scholarships. If your company might be interested, contact our Vice-President, Rob Cundari.

We’ve decided not to renew our partnership with Communitech. While we hope to re-connect with this unique organization in the future, the timing wasn’t quite right. We have, however, started another initiative with the Accelerator Centre. Watch this blog for more details, but it’s an exciting opportunity for senior writers to mentor and consult with entrepreneurs who operate under the Centre’s aegis.

Our two competitions are under way. The Publication Competition is looking for your entries by the middle of January. If not quite ready but you’re planning to enter this prestigious event send us the webform entry early to let us know you’ll be submitting an entry. It’s on the stc-soc.org website.

We’re also ramping up for our student awards competition. It’s open to all Ontario, post-secondary students. With a $1000 scholarship on the line, we’re expecting another good crop of student entries.
Council has also been working to put together our spring workshop.

We’re expecting two days of top-notch learning at the end of April. We’re still in the planning stages but we will have three or four separate workshops on different topics. There will be lots of flexibility, if you can’t manage two days away from your office. It’s always a great opportunity to upgrade your skills and a very reasonable cost. And, with no long-distance travel required! Pencil in April 26 and 27, now. We’ll let you know speakers and topics, soon.

For education events, we’re planning for Tom Johnson to join us in January via the web. He’ll be delivering a lunchtime talk on organizing help content for “findability”. In February, we’ll have Joe Welinske present “Write More, Write Less: Embracing the value of crafted words and image”.

Outside of the local chapter, the Canadian Chapter delegates continue to discuss items of interest to Canadian technical writers. Their biggest initiative is a Canadian Salary Survey.

Remember, we’re always looking for volunteers, so contact us if you’d like to become involved with other technical writers in the area. There’s lots of work to do this year!