Breaking the Ice With SIN SIG

SIN stands for Shy, Inactive, or New. I admit that it wasn't my original idea--I appropriated the name and concept from another organization.

Miller, Elisa K. Tieline (2006). Articles>Collaboration>Management

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

A Bright Idea: Web-Based Surveys

If you’re looking for a quick, simple, and cost-efficient way to survey your members, you may want to try a Web-based survey service such as Zoomerang. Zoomerang offers users the ability to create and design their own surveys, send the surveys to targeted groups, and download the results, which Zoomerang tabulates.

McEwen, Kathryn. Tieline (2003). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Surveys

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 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

Defining Moment for the Eastern Iowa Chapter

The Define-a-Thon is a new word game from the editors of The American Heritage Dictionary. The idea is that you can spell a word without knowing its meaning. So why not develop a competition where the contestant has to pick the right word after its definition has been given?

Crawley, Charles R. Tieline (2008). Articles>TC>Community Building>STC

Developing a Chapter Career Day Program  

In the past few years, our chapter has presented three or four Saturday workshops per year, including the Career Day workshop. (We offer the Saturday workshops as an alternative to the usual monthly chapter dinner meeting.) We developed our Career Day program with two tracks—one for novice technical communicators (and curious laypeople), and another for persons with some experience in the field. Initially, we cooperated with a smaller, nearby chapter with many of the same employment issues.

Thomstatter, John H. Tieline (2000). Careers>Mentoring>Community Building

Effective Delegating Achieves Results

If you are not delegating properly, you are making your own life more difficult. In turn, your subordinates suffer because their interests and talents are being overlooked, however unintentionally.

Laurent, J. Suzanna. Tieline (2007). Articles>Management>Collaboration>STC

Focused Leadership in a Dispersed Environment

Society chapters often involve members who live and work in a very wide geographic area. Even members of chapters with smaller physical areas face long commute times from work sites to meeting sites. Often, the time spent commuting is enough to discourage even the most stalwart Society member from participation. Chapter leaders and committee managers are left with the problem of how to offer their members the means to participate in meetings more effectively.

White, Don. Tieline (2007). Articles>Management>Community Building>STC

Free Professional Development: Starting a Journal Club

Have you ever wished that someone would offer advanced training for technical communicators in your community? In Winnipeg, we certainly did. However, we found that most training is expensive. Our chapter would bring in workshop leaders, but have difficulty getting enough people to sign up. Those of us who wanted training often had to leave the city, but not all of us could get our companies to pay to send us for training, or even to annual conferences. About four years ago, the Manitoba chapter stumbled upon an easy, cheap solution: We started a journal club. Four times a year, several chapter members meet to discuss the contents of the latest issue of Technical Communication.

Campbell, Alexa. Tieline (2003). Articles>TC>Community Building

Hosting the Traveling Exhibits: A Primer

In April 2005 the Vermont Chapter STC hosted the STC traveling exhibits, which include award-winning entries from the five major STC competitions: the international technical art competition (ITAC), international technical publications competition (ITPC), international online communication competition (IOCC), Society newsletter competition, and Society public relations competition. If your chapter, like ours, is in a small market, you probably don’t get the opportunity to network with technical writers from different industries or to see documentation for other markets. Hosting the traveling exhibits is a great way to see what other technical writers are doing in the field.

Myers, Patricia. Tieline (2005). Articles>TC>Community Building>STC

How Can We Attract More Members to Our Meetings?

Make the meetings fun--after a long day at work, we need to relax. If you can help them relax at the meeting, you are a step ahead. Some chapters use a relaxation technique at the beginning of their meeting. One California chapter president responded on the listserv that he wears a Santa suit at his chapter's December meeting, so don't be afraid to try something new!

Laurent, J. Suzanna. Tieline (2008). Articles>TC>Community Building>STC

How to Find Volunteers

All STC community leaders know the difficulty of finding volunteers. In recent years, the Orlando chapter has seen steadily increasing membership counts and meeting attendance figures, implemented creative and successful chapter initiatives, and even won consecutive Chapter of Distinction awards. But when it comes to soliciting volunteers for chapter leadership positions, you may as well be asking them to wrestle the sharks at SeaWorld! On the other hand, there are some things you can do to at least lessen the pain.

Murray, Mike. Tieline (2005). Articles>TC>Community Building>STC

How to Organize Educational Meetings for Community and Professional Organizations

Successful meetings are the end result of a∆ careful planning process. To successfully organize an educational meeting for a community or professional organization, you need to follow a series of steps.

Carliner, Saul. Tieline (2007). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>STC

Implementing a Community RSS Feed

After implementing www.stc.org's RSS feed, I decided to develop one for my own chapter's site. I researched RSS, copied an .rss example file, tweaked the code, and was able to successfully implement a chapter RSS feed.

Flaherty, Brian. Tieline (2007). Design>Web Design>Community Building>RSS

Increasing Your Membership

In order for chapters to stay relevant to their members, they must provide intrinsic value to their members and show themselves as professional and authoritative leaders in the field of technical communication.

Opsteegh, Michael. Tieline (2007). Articles>TC>Community Building>STC

Lead Volunteers to Superstardom

Thanks to the Orlando Chapter, we now have a program that our volunteers enjoy. Whether or not you decide to do something like this for your community is up to you. But remember this: someone out in the world of STC has tried something. Rely on their expertise. You don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Haughton, Mel. Tieline (2008). Articles>TC>Community Building>STC

Leadership Is a Relationship

One definition of leadership that I like is 'the ability to cause other people to act in desired ways for the benefit of the group.' Those of us who are managers often have the authority to make other people act for the good of a group, but that power doesn't make you a leader--it makes you a boss. The people who choose to follow you decide if they want you as a leader and thus want to achieve the goals of the group. In the long run, folks in a volunteer organization follow a leader because they believe it's in their own best interests to do so. Those interests could be recognition, advanced career possibilities, learning a new skill, altruism, or any number of other personal perks. Good leaders know how to tap into an individual's personal interests and feed those interests so the person both enjoys and gains from helping the group reach a goal.

Oestreich, Linda L. Tieline (2007). Articles>Management>Community Building>STC

The Mentoring Program at Silicon Valley Chapter

The Silicon Valley Chapter STC began its mentoring program in 1999. We developed the program in response to the many requests we were receiving from students, members, and practitioners in the local area for mentors within the local STC chapter. I hope to help other chapters meet their members' needs by describing how the Silicon Valley chapter established its program.

Fisher, Lori H. Tieline (2001). Careers>Mentoring>Community Building

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

Starting a Chapter-Level Special Interest Group  

STC's special interest groups (SIGs) provide a way for STC members to share their interest in particular areas of technical communication. Society SIGs at the international level may have hundreds of members, and many publish a newsletter, host an electronic newsgroup, and sponsor events and sessions at STC's annual conferences. Chapter SIGs usually have fewer members, but, because their members live in the same area, they can meet regularly and address members'local needs.

Taylor, Cheri W. Tieline (2000). Articles>TC>Community Building

Starting a User Group

I was having a hard time coming up with a program that would provide tangible member benefits and be easy to maintain at low (or no) cost. I finally found what I was looking for when a friend told me about a book review he was writing for O’Reilly, a technical publisher. When I asked how he got hooked up with O’Reilly, he filled me in on their user group program.

Wigser, Sarah. Tieline (2005). Articles>TC>Community Building

STC-U: Supporting Members through Education

How does an STC chapter address such a wide scope of skills and interests? The answer for us is an educational program called STC-U.

Nelsen, Kymm. Tieline (2003). Articles>Education>TC

Strategic Plans: Focusing Chapter Energy

If your chapter has never created a strategic plan, or if it has been a long time since plans were updated, it's a good idea to develop one now. Those first plans can require one or two years to create, but don't be intimidated by the commitment. The phases of the plan are easily broken down into small, manageable sessions for which you can set reasonable or flexible completion dates.

Silvi, Deborah H. and Jamie H. Diamandopoulos. Tieline (2005). Articles>TC>Community Building>STC