Council Meeting Recap:
November to January

by Carol Lawless, Secretary

We’re official! Council has been working on applying for registered not-for-profit status since this summer, to align with Head Office directives. We’ve officially received our registered status and are now embarking on the next phase of the journey, to complete our affiliation agreement with the international STC. A significant portion of the last Council meetings have involved hammering out the details of our draft bylaws, which will be presented to our chapter membership later this year for a vote. You can read more about this journey in the Southwestern Ontario Chapter blog (http://stc-soc.blogspot.com).

Competitions have also been on the agenda. We’ve been working with our Toronto neighbours on the publication competitions, and fielded a team of judges for that event. The Student awards are also underway with the entry deadline looming. There have been some entries, but the numbers are down this year.

Education Evenings are in full swing, with the December Education Evening offered both in person and through the magic of webcasting. We’ve also organized an Employment Progression for the February night, which will be moved to the second Tuesday. March will be back to the first Tuesday of the month and be a presentation on Trademarks and Copyrights. We’re also working on the April wine and cheese Awards night, so circle April 6 on your calendar now. We’re looking ahead to the June meeting to find a dynamic speaker as we hold our first Annual General Meeting as a new not-for-profit corporation.

Our Education days are booked for April 19-20 with Neil Perlin and Bernard Aschwanden. Neil will run a workshop on topic-based and structured authoring. Bernard will run a workshop on an introduction to DITA. Council has also been working with Toronto to co-host this event, so both workshops will be available in Richmond Hill and Waterloo, with both presenters. We’re still looking for a good, but inexpensive, venue so stay tuned.

We’re also investigating various ways to communicate, including Google Groups. We have the groups in pilot with council right now, and plan to introduce them for announcing and commenting on various events of interest to us, as technical communicators. In the same vein, we’re looking at migrating our newsletter into a blog. You can read more about this in the Quill. In fact, the Quill editor, Evan Jones, is now our new technology investigator. He’s researching various forms of social media and web technology to see how our chapter can use them to provide more services to all our members. If you have any suggestions, please contact him at quill@stc-soc.org.

In January, we welcomed two new volunteers: Gwyneth Evans and Katherine Heyland. Gwyneth is our new Public Relations Manager, and Katherine is helping out with the newsletter while she learns more about the STC and technical communication.

Our finances are under control and our Treasurer is keeping an eagle eye on the budget. Our membership, however, is sliding as fewer members renew. In January we discussed a membership drive and that will be on the radar for our next meeting.

About Carol Lawless

Carol has been a member of our profession since 1993 and is a senior STC member. She is a founding partner of KCA Consulting, specializing in web usability and usability testing. She's also an independent contractor, when a suitable project arises. She is our official secretary at council. Outside of the STC and work, Carol's special interest is Ancient Civilizations, and still does not tire of visiting ruins (her favourite is Delphi with Karnak a close second). In her spare time, she runs Mom's taxi and loves to read (while waiting for the next taxi run!).