October/November 2003

Volume 44, Number 2

Looking back

by Martha Sippel

I enjoyed my year as president of the Rocky Mountain chapter. I am writing this to say thanks to all our members, mention our chapter's accomplishments and awards, and thank some people who were instrumental in guiding our chapter in 2002 and 2003.

Major accomplishments

This year, the Rocky Mountain Chapter received a Chapter Achievement Award of Excellence at the international level during the Awards Banquet at the STC Annual Conference. I accepted the award on our behalf.

The chapter won this award through the contributions and efforts of our officers, committee managers, committee members, judges, speakers, and everyone else who helped with a Chapter activity. Thanks to everyone's hard work, the STC RMC is maintaining high standards by continuing to receive international awards for our activities and efforts. This award reflects all of the great things we have accomplished for members in the past year.

We moved our newsletter, Technicalities, online in November 2002. Ron Arner took over as the new editor of the newsletter shortly thereafter and he is doing a great job. We hope to continue improving the newsletter online after winning another award of excellence for the newsletter last year. The STC RMC estimates this move will save us about $10,000, which we can use in other ways to publicize the chapter, the profession, and our activities.

In March we held a special senior member celebration that honored our Fellows, Associate Fellows, and Senior Members. We rescheduled the event due to the March blizzard, but we still had good attendance the week after the storm. Art Elser, an STC Fellow, talked about what volunteering in STC, and the contacts he has met through STC, have meant to his career. It was a successful celebration that we plan to continue next year.

Our Nominating Committee, Molly Malsam and Marella Colyvas, held our first election using online voting. Your vote was completely anonymous for the first time this year (and you could only vote once!).

We had a successful competition again with several local and international awards. The details are available at www.stcrmc.org/technicalities/april_may_2003/feature6.htm in the April/May Technicalities. Out of 56 entries, 44 received awards. Some of these entries won awards at the international level. You can see the international award winners at http://stc.org/pro_competitions.asp.

Also, thanks again to our competition managers, Deb Braun, Beth Buonanno, Marella Colyvas, Kathy Ramsey, and Mary Jo Stark. In addition, the competition would not be successful without the help of all the judges who volunteer their time to carefully review and provide constructive criticism to the entrants. If you would like to participate as a judge for this year's competition, please contact Marella Colyvas at marella.colyvas@eds.com or 303-763-3700.

Those who attended know that we had a wonderful awards reception with an excellent speaker, John Hedtke. If you didn't attend, you can read the gist of John's remarks at www.stcrmc.org/technicalities/aug_sept_2003/feature3.htm. Thanks to Frank Tagader, Kim Bell, Jeanie Fogwell, Michael Livsey, and Mary Jo Stark for arranging the logistics. If I forgot anyone, I sincerely apologize.

Accomplishments helping us win the Chapter Achievement Award

We held a strategic planning meeting at the president's home in August 2002 to formulate strategic short-term goals and objectives for 2002-2003. We used this meeting to begin a long-term strategic planning effort to carry us through the next few years. This will help us improve the continuity of our initiatives each year.

Carla Mead, our Publicity Manager, began a larger-scale publicity endeavor by renewing efforts to publicize our meetings in local newspapers and technical publications. In addition, she sends meeting announcement postcards before each meeting to attract more members to our meetings.

We revamped our "Why Hire a Technical Communicator" brochure and plan to begin distributing it to employers who have hired technical communicators in our area. We will compile our list of employers from companies who post jobs on our Web site.

Our webmaster, Anne Halsey, created a Web page with links to all STC Web sites with job lists, and a page with links to all STC Web sites with newsletters. We shared these two pages with the Region 7 Presidents listserv.

The new Usability and Information Design SIG has been very successful in helping members learn more about usability. Laurence Hoess and Laurie Lamar, the SIG co-managers, held two UID SIG meetings this year.

Helen Tuttle and the membership committee held a membership drive at our November Chapter meeting and asked members and students to bring a friend. We raffled software, books, and STC memorabilia.

We updated our new member orientation and chapter guide documents, Angela Estes Rank and Julie Welander held two seminars that provided reasonably priced training for members and nonmembers, and Ron Arner reinstated the honoring of new senior members in our newsletter.

Kathy Ramsey, Marella Colyvas, Linda Gallagher, and Marc Lee started an initiative to move our stand-alone competition database to a web-based database that will permit competition managers to enter and extract data whenever needed. Formerly, competition managers had to pass the stand-alone database from person to person and only one manager could access the "live" database at a time. This new web-based database will also provide a template for additional database initiatives.

Joel Meier and Anne Halsey worked on an initiative to archive chapter information on our Web site in a password-protected area for Council members. This will help our transition to new officers and committee managers at the end of the year.

Chapter leaders attended and presented at STC Conference Leadership Day. Kathy Ramsey and Marella Colyvas showed the competition database we use to manage competitions and demonstrated how it makes their work more efficient.

Distinguished Chapter Service Award

Linda Gallagher received the Distinguished Chapter Service Award, which acknowledges the work of chapter members who provide exemplary service to the Society through their dedication to the chapter and its activities. I mentioned this in a previous article (www.stcrmc.org/technicalities/june_july_2003/current.htm). Linda has contributed a lot to our chapter over the years and we appreciate her contributions.

President's Awards

The chapter President's Award honors chapter members for their service during the past year. The following people earned President's Awards, and the notations for each award are presented here:

Ron Arner

Ron Arner stepped into the role of newsletter editor last fall. Or should I say Ron was baptized by fire? Ron has done an excellent job gathering articles, writing his editor articles, and creating the HTML and PDF versions of the newsletter. In addition, Ron was an instrumental volunteer for the chapter's annual online, print, and art competition, sending most of the correspondence to participants and assisting in printing the award certificates. I am proud to have Ron as one of our tireless volunteers and hope he continues to help the chapter in the future.

Gail Bernstein

Gail is the co-manager of the Consulting and Independent Contracting SIG, with Linda Gallagher. In this role, Gail and Linda initiated two separate CIC SIG meetings to help independents in addition to the two CIC SIG meetings scheduled before our regular monthly meetings. She also managed the SIG last year and has handled updating the Web site meeting pages for the last few years. Gail is always willing to volunteer and is an incoming member of the Nominating Committee next year. Congratulations, Gail.

Jeanie Fogwell

Jeanie has been the Program co-manager for two years. During this time, she has scheduled speakers, coordinated transportation and housing for them, and ordered, transported, and set up food for regular meetings. In fact, Jeanie coordinated John Hedtke's trip and brought him here tonight. In addition, Jeanie coordinated between our management company and STC RMC for two years. Jeanie has always been willing to help and follows through with whatever is asked of her. It is with great pleasure that I give Jeanie this President's Award.

Anne Halsey

Anne has been managing the Web team that maintains our chapter Web site for over three years. What I have appreciated most during the last year is Anne's responsiveness. Whenever anyone sends her information for the site, she acknowledges receipt immediately and posts the information or passes it on to the proper team member promptly. I've enjoyed working with Anne and know that I can count on her to update the site in a timely manner. In addition, Anne manages the job bank, and she created a page with links to all other STC job banks. These are but a few things that Anne provides our chapter. It is with great pleasure that I congratulate Anne.

Mike Livsey

Mike has also been the Program Co-Manager for two years. Mike has scheduled speakers, introduced speakers, and ordered, transported, and set up food for regular meetings. While many of you might think this is trivial, it requires considerable planning that demands a lot of time. Because we have been holding meetings at companies to save money over the last few years, Mike or Jeanie have to leave work early, pick up and transport the food, and stay until everything is packed away and cleaned up. This takes a lot of perseverance and we all appreciate Mike's hard work. Mike is an incoming member of the Nominating Committee next year. I am proud to present Mike with this President's Award.

Molly Malsam

Molly Malsam is on the Nominating Committee this year. In this role, she initiated our first official online voting survey and continued her efforts by sending a volunteer appreciation survey to our volunteers. Molly has also been instrumental in our salary surveys over the past 5 years. In addition, Molly was the STC RMC secretary for two years and has helped out on many other events, publications, and efforts. Molly is always willing to provide excellent editing for our chapter and consistently contributes original ideas. Thanks, Molly, for your innovative ideas, excellent editing, and tireless efforts.

Carla Mead

Carla has unselfishly provided her expertise in publicity and marketing to our chapter. Not only has she stepped in as a new member, but she also took on the role of managing the Publicity Committee. She successfully guided this committee to finalize the chapter brochure "Why Hire a Technical Communicator," finalized slip sheets and covers for our media kit, and provided monthly meeting notices to the media in the form of newspaper submissions and press releases. In addition, Carla was instrumental in creating the awards reception brochure, program, press releases, and other information related to the event. She has provided excellent leadership to the Publicity Committee. It is with great pleasure that I introduce Carla Mead as a winner of this year's President's Award.

Helen Tuttle

Helen Tuttle is our Membership Manager. In this role, Helen has provided new member orientations at each monthly meeting and contacted new members by letter or telephone to welcome them. She is always a great source of information and is willing to help in many ways. For the last two years, Helen was our volunteer coordinator and helped us match volunteer needs with interested members to fill volunteer positions. Helen took on this role as a relatively new member and has continued her efforts with enthusiasm. I heartily congratulate Helen on a job well done and welcome her as a winner of this year's President's Award.

Looking to the future

Thanks for allowing me to serve you this past year. I hope it was as enjoyable for you as it was for me. Maybe these accomplishments and awards will inspire those of you who aren't currently active to become involved with your chapter—it is only as good as you make it!

Frank Tagader deserves your full support as he takes the helm for his second STC RMC presidency. Thanks again for the wild ride!