Action Research and Wicked Environmental Problems: Exploring Appropriate Roles for Researchers in Professional Communication    

The authors report on a 3-year action-research project designed to facilitate public involvement in the planned dredging of a canal and subsequent disposal of the dredged sediments. Their study reveals ways that community members struggle to define the problem and work together as they gather, share, and understand data relevant to that problem. The authors argue that the primary goal of action research related to environmental risk should be to identify and support the strategies used by community members rather than to educate the public. The authors maintain that this approach must be supported by a thorough investigation of basic rhetorical issues (audience, genre, stases, invention), and they illustrate how they used this approach in their study.

Blythe, Stuart, Jeffrey T. Grabill and Kirk Riley. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Risk Communication>Community Building>Environmental

AIGA Design Forum: Information Design

ebster's Dictionary defines information as: "The act of informing; the communication of knowledge". Information design is a highly specialized area of design that involves making large amounts of complex information clear and accessible to audiences of one to several hundred thousand. This section of Design Forum looks at characteristics and issues connected to this interesting and often misunderstood area of design. It contains articles both general and specialized that address issues, constraints and characteristics and attempts to formulate a working definition for those who are new to the subject. Is information design the best example of 'form following function' in graphic design? Designers usually love it or hate it...why?

Irwin, Terry. AIGA. Design>Information Design>Community Building

Ajax for Chat

Learn to build a chat system into your Web application with Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) and PHP. Your customers can talk to you and to each other about the content of the site without having to download or install any special instant-messaging software.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Ajax

Ajax for Ratings and Comments

In the age of the people-powered Web, allowing your readers to rate and review content on your site is critical. Discover just how easy it is to add rating and commenting features to a site with Ajax.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2007). Design>Web Design>Community Building>Ajax

Anonymity and Online Community: Identity Matters

While anonymity may allow people to feel more free and disinhibited to discuss otherwise embarrassing or stigmatizing topics, it can also be a community's biggest enemy.

Grohol, John M. List Apart, A (2006). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Arrows in Our Quiver

On mailing lists, at conferences, in conversations at cocktail hours, I'm starting to see a growing awareness of how our various disciplines form a community of practice.

Olsen, George. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Assessing Community Informatics: A Review of Methodological Approaches for Evaluating Community Networks and Community Technology Centers  

This paper analyzes emerging community informatics evaluation literature to develop an understanding of indicators used to gauge project impacts in community networks and technology centers.

O'Neil, Dara. Georgia Institute of Technology (2002). Articles>Communication>Community Building>Assessment

Behind the Scenes of Creating Value

There's a lot of volunteer work that that goes on behind the scenes by chapter members to create value. Today, I'm inviting you to get involved so you can take part in and benefit from creating value.

Koster-Lenhardt, Victoria 'Vici'. Carolina Communique (2004). Articles>TC>Community Building>STC

Belonging and Diaspora: The Chinese and the Internet

The Internet has become a new global phenomenon, enlarging new democratic discourse and has helped to foster new empowerment and learning experiences. It has also been argued that the Internet can be used for social and political mobilisation. In the case of ethnic groups, the Internet can be used to create new communities or to re-create past knowledges, enabling the maintenance and cultural reproduction of 'old' communities. In the case of the Chinese community, it has been pointed out that the Internet while has been useful in creating a Chinese presence, it nonetheless privileges essentialism and communal hegemony. This has been specifically the point made by some cultural theorists. In their study of the Chinese and Chinese-ness, cultural studies theorists have criticised the hegemonic formation implicit in discussions of the Chinese. They point out that the search by diasporic Chinese for an authentic Chinese meaning is inherently flawed and futile. In deconstructing the notion of Chinese and Chinese-ness, they argue that identities are contingent, often multiple and evolving. This paper takes seriously this criticism proffered by cultural theorists. It seeks to examine and locate their claims in the context of the relationship between diasporic politics, communalism and the Internet. The paper starts with a brief overview of the Chinese diaspora; it next examines the relationship between the new information and communication technologies and the Chinese diaspora. It will also look at how this new technology is shaping and changing the way Chinese diasporic lives are experienced. In so doing, it examines the claims advanced by cultural theorists, in particular their analysis of identity and its relationship with diasporic politics and essentialism.

Wong, Loong. First Monday (2003). Articles>Cyberculture>Community Building>Online

Benefits Too Great to Miss

To get the most out of your STC membership--take action. Join a committee, write an article for the newsletter, go to a workshop, volunteer for the chapter conference.

Feldman, Diane. Carolina Communique (2006). Articles>TC>Community Building>STC

Beyond Markets and Firms: The Emergence of Open Source Networks  

Although hierarchies and markets (i.e., autonomy) have been subject to extensive study, heterarchies represent different modalities of organizing that have been little researched. Drawing on complexity theory and the main features of complex evolving systems (CES), this paper sets out to remedy this imbalance by showing that heterarchies feature highly decentralized and relatively stable interactions which are coordinated through an emergent process of parametric adaptation. Implications in terms of learning are discussed casting a new light on the delicate issue of motivation in Open Source software development.

Iannacci, Federico and Eve Mitleton-Kelly. First Monday (2005). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>Open Source

Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Community in the Julie/Julia Project

We must understand, first, why virtual communities are considered important, and, second, what the characteristics of a virtual community are. Then, we must determine if at least some blogs have these characteristics.

Blanchard, Anita. Into the Blogosphere (2004). Articles>Communication>Community Building>Blogging

A Bright Idea: Online Financial Transaction Services

Looking for a quick, simple way for your members to register and pay for chapter events? Many chapters are turning to online services that facilitate financial transactions over the Internet (also called P2P, or person-to-person transactions).

Tieline (2003). Articles>TC>Community Building

A Bright Idea: Technical Communication Week

If you’re looking for ways to boost your chapter’s profile, consider having your state declare a technical communication week. Currently, about a dozen states celebrate the event. One of the first was Arizona, where Thomas P. Barnett, a senior member with the Phoenix Chapter STC, has been manager of Arizona’s Technical Communication Week for several years. Last October marked the thirteenth year that technical communicators in Arizona have celebrated their profession.

Barnett, Thomas P. Tieline (2001). Articles>TC>Community Building

Bubba Awards: Recognition on a Shoestring  

This paper is an explanation of a low-cost and high-fun method used by the Lone Star Chapter to recognize officers and committee managers for their work during the past year.

Skinner, Judith N. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>STC

Building a Community of Professional Communicators by Mapping Needs and Assets    

For an institution with a regional focus, part of program building involves identifying resources in the region the program serves. This effort can be complicated in regions that generally lack the kind of high-tech industry that draws technical communicators. One cannot easily find a ready-madecommunity of professional communicators in such places, leaving some to wonder whether a professional writing program would be able to thrive. Nevertheless, communicators are ubiquitous, even if most of them don’t identify themselves as such.

Blythe, Stuart. CPTSC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Business Communication>Community Building

Building a Virtual Community: A Case Study of Professional and Technical Communication  

The Diploma of Professional and Technical Communication is an Internet-based course, developed and taught by Christchurch Polytechnic in conjunction with University of Western Sydney, Nepean. Developing a student community is essential in an effective learning environment. The diploma is designed to encourage online student participation with the aim of promoting a virtual community. Elements of effective online course design include clear learning outcomes, tutors who motivate, activities to encourage participation, and prompt feedback. The analysis of student online interpersonal communication showed a successful virtual community was in fact created.

Draper, Richard, Kathy Knight and Alison Sanders. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Education>Community Building>Online

Building an Online Learning Community

We decided to explore alternative methods for incorporating discussion into a distance-learning course in an attempt to facilitate the sense of community found in more traditional classrooms. Our goal through this study was to uncover factors that enable and hinder discussion between students in online learning environments and to determine whether the level of class discussion leads to an increased sense of community.

McDowell, Mindi, Stephanie Trunzo and Kristin Vincent. Orange Journal, The (2003). Articles>Education>Community Building>Online

Building Online Communities: Interview with Svi Ben-Elya about Elephant.org.il

In this podcast, I talk with Svi Ben-Elya about Elephant.org.il. Elephant is an online community he and others created to empower technical communicators in Israel (originally in the city of Yokneam) with relevant salary information to make them more market savvy when they negotiate jobs.

Ben-Elya, Svi and Tom H. Johnson. Tech Writer Voices (2007). Articles>Interviews>Community Building>Online

Building Web-Based Scholarly Communication Forums

Scholarly communication is the root of scientific progress. Research on how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the scholarly communication system is being carried out worldwide, particularly with respect to electronic journals which can and should be constructed as communication forums. Refereeing new contributions for these forums is a major means for their quality control and for the acceptance of the new media. We have implemented a web-based electronic refereeing system for an electronic journal (RIS - Review of Information Science) whose many value-added features are described in detail. Faster communication and enhanced interactivity between referees, editors and authors will be achieved by the use of this Web based electronic refereeing system. In order to ease access and browsing, articles already published will be integrated and managed in a database-based open hypertext system, in this case in KHS (Konstanz hypertext system). Finally, we describe the advantage of a real time communication system for authors, referees, editors and the domain-specific public. Further research will focus at improving the communicative features of this preliminary web-based communication forum and at evaluating it from a user point of view.

Kuhlen, Rainer and Zhongdong Zhang. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>Online

But I Don't Know Anyone: Networking 101 for Introverts

'But I don't know anyone is a common response when I give people the advice to build their professional networks. What they really mean is 'I don't know anyone who can give me a job.' This protest and response is missing the point. Networking is not justabout finding work. It's about building a professional network of peers who keep in touch on a professional level, who can help each other out from time to time, share pertinent information, and keeping your mind in shape.

Hamer, Emma C. Hamer Associates. Careers>Collaboration>Community Building

Cargo Cult Websites

A cargo cult website is a site that has all the bells and whistles of a dynamic community facing website but might as well be hand coded HTML for all the difference it really makes. The sites that imitate other sites and wonder why they too are not earning billions. A fine example of Cargo Cult CMS is Drupal. It is an overweight and underpowered system that tries to incorporate every kind of template system and every kind of website type in order to summon the gods of cool websites, community or success.

Lordmatt.co.uk (2007). Articles>Content Management>Community Building>Drupal

Celebrate Technical Communication

he recognition activities of STC generate a key component of the value provided to its members. Establishing a Technical Communication Week celebration can help boost your community’s profile and the perceived value of our work.

Barnett, Thomas P. Tieline (2005). Articles>TC>Community Building>STC

Chapter Development Stem Overview  

The Chapter Development Stem offers sessions for all conference participants, not just the STC leadership. We have broadened the scope of the stem to create room for some new and innovative topics that compliment our traditional mix of chapter-related sessions. So take a look at what we have to offer and think about how you can include several Chapter Development sessions in your conference plans.

Hoyt, Thomas B. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building

Chapter Presidents Share "Bright Ideas"

A list, organized in alphabetical order by chapter name, of the best sixteen tips from STC chapter leaders in 2000.

Laurent, J. Suzanna. Tieline (2001). Articles>TC>Community Building