June/July 2007

Volume 47, Number 6

My First STC Summit

by Ron Arner

I was so impressed by my first STC Summit this year that I’ve decided to go again next year and as often as possible thereafter.

I’ve been reading about the STC Summit in Technicalities for several years, and although it always intrigued me, I was never inspired to attend. This year it was my duty as Vice President to go. I looked forward to the experience knowing that I would get to meet other members of STC, see some interesting product demos (and maybe snag some cool giveaways), and hear some interesting speakers talk about the latest innovations in technical communication.

The summit began with Leadership Day on Sunday, and I knew the rest of the week would be a success because on this day alone I learned all kinds of things that will help me in the coming year. I met several other incoming presidents who are just as nervous and excited as I am about the challenges that lie ahead, and I also learned about the LCR, or Leadership Community Resource, which is a new STC structure for providing support and guidance to communities.

There were several highlights over the next few days, including:

• A humorous introduction to the summit for “first-timers” on Sunday night
• The opening keynote on Monday morning with Sanjay Gupta, author of Fermat’s Enigma
• A preview of the next release of FrameMaker
• Watching members of our community receive awards at the Awards Banquet
• Two sessions by Dr. Karen Schriver, who wrote Dynamics in Document Design, the book I used in my Technical Writing class in grad school
• Several other informative and interesting sessions on everything from graphics to Web 2.0
• A hilarious closing keynote with comedian Ze Frank

Plus there were great receptions, never-ending humor that only technical communicators would appreciate, a night at the Guthrie Theater, and more. If you have never attended an STC Summit, I highly recommend you consider doing so in the future: next year’s summit will be June 1–4 in Philadelphia.