Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter June/July 2005

President's Notes and News
By Susan Becker

New Officers to Lead the Chapter

Congratulations to our new chapter officers elected in May for the year beginning July 1, 2005:

• President: Julia Cope
• Vice President: Tim Bombosch
• Secretary: Patrick Lufkin

Marc Smircich, our treasurer, has completed his term, but has agreed to continue until we find a new treasurer. If you are interested in nominating yourself or some other chapter member, email the nominating committee at nominations@stc-sf.org. For more information, see www.stc-sf.org/2005-electionstate.htm.

Chapter Accomplishments in 2004-2005

Since this is my last column as president, I'd like to herald some of chapter and member accomplishments this year.

• Award-winning newsletter. The ActiveVOICE won a Merit award in the STC Newsletter Competition, thanks to the hard work of Editor Marc Smircich, Assistant Editor Marilyn Latham, and Quality Control Manager Keith Albert.
   
• Touchstone lives! Chapter member Gilbert Gonzalez has volunteered, and been approved by the presidents of the six Northern California chapters (Berkeley, East Bay, North Bay, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley), to be the executive director of Touchstone, the Northern California Technical Communication Competition. Tim Bombosch has also contributed as a project management consultant to the competition development.
   
• Distinguished Chapter Service Award. Ben Johnson received a DCS Award to acknowledge his exemplary service to the Society through his dedication to our chapter.
   
• SFSU TPW Program award. The Technical and Professional Writing (TPW) Program at San Francisco State University, lead by member and past president Lu Rehling, received a Writing Program Certificate of Excellence from the Conference on College Composition and Communication.
   
• Chapter scholarship. Each year our chapter sponsors a scholarship competition for students in the award-winning TPW Program at SFSU. This year, our chapter scholarship committee, headed by Patricia Kalman, awarded a $1,000 scholarship to Shannon Seaberg.
   
• Award-winning documentation. Chapter member Stewart Florsheim's department (Learning Products) at Advent Software Inc. won several awards in the STC Willamette Valley Chapter's technical communication competition. Stewart arranged to have all the winning entries on display before our March chapter meeting. Accessible meetings. We moved our chapter meeting facilities to a wheelchair accessible site, the Elephant & Castle. Thanks to member Dana Chisnell and especially her husband Stewart Bloom, who put in hours of research in various downtown establishments!
   
• STC Board Member. Dana Chisnell has accepted an appointment to the STC Board of Directors for 2005-2006 as the Assistant to the President for Virtual Communities. Rechartering. Our chapter completed rechartering as a geographical community in the STC as part of the Transformation process, thanks to Reyn Johnson, who led our effort, and all our board members who contributed to the discussion.
   
• ATTW Annual Conference. Encouraged by Lu Rehling, our chapter and the Silicon Valley chapter provided an information table at the ATTW (Association of Teachers of Technical Writing) conference which was held in San Francisco this year. Chapter members Tim Bombosch, Anne Mehaffey, and I covered the table to promote the STC and to encourage interaction with people with similar interests. As it turned out, many ATTW members are also STC members!
   
• BayCHI meeting. Our chapter co-sponsored the BayCHI meeting User Experience: Why Do So Many Organizations Believe They Own It? with Don Norman and a panel of HCI Organizations. We provided a chapter info table, covered by Tim and me, and several chapter members attended the event.
   
• Chapter logo polo shirts. Larry Pastori, with Reyn Johnson and Marc Smircich, lead the effort to purchase shirts embossed with our chapter logo for chapter leaders and lucky door prize winners at chapter meetings.
   
• STC Annual Conference. New chapter officers, Julia Cope and Patrick Lufkin, attended the STC Annual Conference, including Leadership Day, supported by funds from the chapter to cover their registration fee. Several other chapter members also attended the conference.
   
• Leadership Day 3. Five chapter members (Patrick, Tim, Gilbert, Marc, and I) attended STC NorCal's Leadership Day 3 with STC members from the other five Northern California chapters.
   
• Monthly chapter meetings. Over 250 people attended our monthly chapter meetings this year including over 30 for our Holiday Party in December and for Joe Welinske's talk in January on "An Overview of Trends, Tools, and Technologies in Software User Assistance." Other highlights included "From Tutorials to Programmer's Guides" with Jim Bisso and "Structured Authoring, XML and Single Sourcing: An Update" with David Knopf, as well as presentations on information architecture, structured authoring, and portfolios. Programs are organized by our Program Manager, Tim Bombosch, with help from incoming manager, David Hulbert.

Lottie Applewhite

I also attended the STC Annual Conference and for me one of the highlights was meeting and talking with Lottie Applewhite. Lottie, who now lives in North Carolina and is a member of the STC chapter there, was one of the founding members of our chapter back in 1980. Lottie told me that before that, STC members had to drive down to the Silicon Valley to attend meetings of the Golden Gate chapter. When that group decided to become the Silicon Valley Chapter, they thought that Lottie and the rest of the San Francisco group would take the name Golden Gate. But Lottie said, "We wanted to be San Francisco," and so we still are today.

Lottie sends her greetings to the San Francisco chapter. If you would like to be in touch with her (and to send belated 80th birthday wishes), you can find her in the STC directory or email me.

The President's Official Farewell Message!

I am happy to announce that Julia's confirmation as president makes me, beginning July 1, the Immediate Past President, a post I have been looking forward to for some time!

I want to thank our officers from last year (VP Julia Cope, Secretary Larry Pastori, and Treasurer Marc Smircich) and all the other volunteers who contributed to the San Francisco chapter: Tim Bombosch, Patrick Lufkin, Dana Chisnell, Gilbert Gonzalez, Janet Bran, Keith Albert, Marilyn Latham, Patricia Kalman, Reyn Johnson, David Hulbert, Ben Johnson, Sophie Jasson-Holt, Annette Castro, and Jeff Scattini.

One of the values that we share as a leadership group is having fun. We want to enjoy working with our colleagues to accomplish something that we find valuable. So though we may find working with a volunteer board (and the board will tell you, a volunteer president) frustrating at times, we do enjoy it and hope that you all enjoy the results of our work.

Susan Becker is a technical communicator and online help developer. She has 16 years of experience working primarily as a contractor in software development for the financial services and human resources industries.

Copyright © 2005 by the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter (www.stc-sf.org). This article may be reprinted in another STC publication under the provisions of the chapter's copyright policy.

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