#22888
A Newsletter Competition Where Everyone Wins 
A competition where everyone wins--is it too good to be true? Not if the Society for Technical Communication (STC) Newsletter Competition Committee (STCNCC) has anything to say about it. This year we implemented the second phase of a three-year plan to increase participation and maximize constructive feedback in the annual STC Newsletter Competition. In this discussion session, the STCNCC would like to see judges and editors meet to discuss the effectiveness of the competition and the committee’s plan to improve it. Participants are invited to consider ways to improve the competition in the future.
Ames, Andrea L. and Cheryl Disch. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>Newsletters
#27657
Online Communities for User Assistance Professionals
Online communities have become a very valuable source of assistance for answering questions unique to our industry. This article provides an introduction to online communities and describes how to access a few of the most useful sites.
Martin, Chuck. WritersUA (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>Help
#28767
Online Communities, Member Maps, Virtual Chats, Sparkpeople, Intercom, and More
In this podcast, Heidi and Tom talk about online communities, member maps, virtual chats, Sparkpeople, Intercom, and more.
Johnson, Tom H. and Heidi Hansen. Tech Writer Voices (2007). Articles>TC>Community Building>Online
#21189
Online Intercultural Communication
Most professionals would agree that the Internet enables us to communicate more effectively with our colleagues, both locally and internationally. The ease, speed, and convenience of e-mail, bulletin boards, chat systems, and instant messaging have revolutionized our professional practice. But we often overlook one area of computer-mediated communication (CMC): How do cultural differences affect successful online communication?
Archee, Raymond K. Intercom (2003). Articles>Communication>Online>Community
#25595
Parody Blogging and the Call of the Real
If the problem with American public discourse is lack of access, then the blogsphere will do much to improve it. If, however, the problem is how people participate, if there is already too much stance-taking and not enough argumentation, the blogsphere will simply give more people easier access to a form of public discourse which actually has limited benefit.
Roberts-Miller, Trish. Into the Blogosphere (2004). Articles>Writing>Community Building>Blogging
#28108
Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute
In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. Your website's design undoubtedly influences participation inequality for better or worse. Being aware of the problem is the first step to alleviating it, and finding ways to broaden participation will become even more important as the Web's social networking services continue to grow.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Design>Web Design>Community Building
#21621
Planet Blog: Bringing Development Communities Together
Explains how RSS feeds from weblogs can be aggregated to enhance communication among groups of software developers, and how XML/RDF can be used to describe multiple communities.
Dumbill, Edd. IBM (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>Blogging
#27425
Threaded discussion forums for people working in digital image editing.
Planet Photoshop. Resources>Graphic Design>Community Building>Adobe Photoshop
#28503
Power from the People: Assessing the New Online Participatory Tools for Your Organization
New online participatory tools like blogs, YouTube, and MySpace can be powerful and valuable--if they mesh with your goals. Colin Delany walks through the benefits and costs of common participatory tools and suggests which are likely to be useful for you.
Delany, Colin. IdealWare (2006). Articles>Content Management>Community Building
#31537
As Leadership Community Resource (LCR) volunteers, we constantly receive requests to help a community with volunteer burnout. In the worst cases, we have seen entire councils walk away from communities, one volunteer doing all four elected positions, overworked volunteers snapping at each other, and many communities run by officers who have been in the same position for years. We want to help community leaders understand volunteer burnout and provide ways to help prevent it.
Stark, Mary Jo and Jackie Damrau. Tieline (2008). Articles>Management>Community Building>STC
#25018
Producing A Winning Newsletter
This workshop explores all the principles of newsletter creation--design, production, editing--with special emphasis on creating winning STC chapter newsletters.
McWilliams Johnson, Mary. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Publishing>Community Building>Newsletters
#27737
The Public Relations of the European Union: New Challenges in a More Integrated Europe
Communication between citizens and public officers is a fundamental aspect of public institutions’ planning. It is through an open and clear dialogue that positive public opinion is shaped. Furthermore it is a tool for creating a good reputation and stronger support. Currently the European Union is facing a period of low reputation, scrawny image and poor trust, which have direct influences in EU’s decision making. Different scholars impute this problem to the poor EU communication planning, the so called communication deficit. This paper seeks to examine whether public relations can help to solve the communication deficit of the European Union or not and which challenges public relations profession can open within the European context. Specifically the European societal approach of public relations is considered the essential bond to the European institutions. This study draws on theories and discussion in the fields of European public relations; reflective and educational approaches; a critical analysis of EU information and communication policies; and interviews with EU officers. It is followed by a discussion of the link between public relations’ reflective approach and public organizations, and suggests new interpretations and considerations of this profession within the European institutions.
Valentini, Chiara. Chiara Valentini Communication Management (2006). Articles>Communication>Community Building>Government
#25479
Running a project Weblog is a great way to collect, organize, and publish the documents and discussions that are the lifeblood of the project and to shape these raw materials into a coherent narrative. The serial nature of the Weblog helps you make it the project's newspaper of record. This kind of storytelling can become a powerful way to focus the attention of a group. The desire to listen to a compelling story and find out what happens next is a deep human instinct.
Udell, Jon. InfoWorld (2003). Articles>Project Management>Community Building>Blogging
#25389
The Pulse of the Usability Community: Transformation and UUX
When you renew your STC membership, be sure to select STC Usability and User Experience (UUX) as one of your communities.
Bachmann, Karen L. Usability Interface (2005). Articles>Usability>Community Building>STC
#32000
Putting Our Hot Heads Together
The web is a conversation, but not always a productive one. Web discussions too often degenerate into whines, jabs, sour grapes, and one-upmanship. How can we transform discussion forums and comment sections from shooting ranges into arenas of collaboration?
Wood, Carolyn. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Community Building
#26255
Rechartering: Taking the Pulse of Your Community
Rechartering, as many of you know, means examining and refining your community’s purpose, mission, goals, and plan for delivering value to your members. Through the recommendations of STC’s regional directors and of the communities transformation committee, the board approached about thirty communities and asked them to participate in the pilot program. Twenty-four communities (eighteen professional chapters, three student chapters, and three SIGs) agreed to the experiment.
Oestreich, Linda L. Tieline (2005). Articles>TC>Community Building>STC
#20837
What will be the key to web-site survival in 1996? My bet is the establishment of relationships between the site and its users.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1996). Design>Web Design>Community Building
#30740
Community collaboration has become an influential interorganizational phenomenon that provides innovative solutions for social problems. This critical case study uses dialogic theory to investigate how collaboration stakeholders negotiate creative and democratic outcomes. Findings demonstrate how a dialogic moment, although embedded in a homogenous partnership that facilitated discursive closure, constituted meaningful organizational change. The study empirically extends the theoretical claim that diversity resides in the communication situation and reveals that collaboration practices and stakeholder models are better understood when grounded in dialogic theory.
Guarrello, Renee. Management Communication Quarterly (2007). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>Organizational Communication
#24313
This workshop gives you a structured way of thinking about your newsletter. We’ll go through the key questions you need to pose, both to yourself and to your colleagues. What goals do you have for the newsletter? Who is the audience? What personality do you want to project? What’s the name, and what’s in a name? Who will write the articles? Who will edit them? Who will design the newsletter? How will it be distributed? Which tasks will you do yourself; which will you delegate; how much time will it all take?
Grodsky, Susan J. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Publishing>Community Building>Newsletters
#24943
Running a Chapter Employment Information Service
This panel discussion summarizes various methods of distributing employment information to chapter members, including necessary equipment, advantages and disadvantages, and helpful hints for each method.
Masse, Roger E., Michael V. Sharp, and Jan D. Shelton. STC Proceedings (1995). Careers>TC>Community Building>STC
#30566
To run a successful STC Employment Information Committee, you need methods for matching job seekers and employers. You need to obtain information on the qualifications of job seekers, find available jobs, and inform employers and job seekers. You also need to advertise your job bank. The job bank for the Lone Star Chapter provides examples of the methods.
Masse, Roger E. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Management>Community Building>STC
#31851
Showcase Your Talents in STC: Reflections from a Leadership Day 2008 Panel 
Once you prioritize time for involvement in STC activities, you have good opportunities to show your talents to your peers. Yes, it is scary. The technical communication community is a very difficult audience. But isn't that a fantastic learning opportunity?
Mardahl, Karen. Tieline (2008). Articles>TC>Community Building>STC
#25596
Slashdot and the Public Sphere 
Jurgen Habermas's theory of the public sphere provides a model of idealised democratic debate. Three major features of this model can be identified - universal access, rational debate, and a disregard for rank. This essay analyses the Slashdot model, and use it to examine Slashdot, a popular Web site, as an actualisation of public space.
Baoill, Andrew Ó. First Monday (2000). Articles>Technology>Community Building>Blogging
#24093
Social Intercourse: A Community-Based Design Initiative 
This paper introduces a model for operating in a socially relevant manner within a space that makes design an instigator of activity and response.
Abendroth, Lisa. University of Alberta (2000). Design>User Centered Design>Community Building
#31271
Social Media Is Changing Everything
When Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwarz needs to communicate with the world, he doesn’t necessarily call a press conference, issue a press release, or even convene a webinar or videoconference. He blogs. His online diary gives him an unfiltered channel leading to the employees, customers, analysts and resellers who represent the first wave of perception formation regarding important company products and service initiatives. Sun is leading a transformation of the communication profession, as the Web transitions from an information repository to a platform of collaboration and community building.
Gronstedt, Anders. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking
