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...