Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter
October/November 2009

Letter From the Editor

Dear Readers,

It's October, and fall has arrived! One hallmark of fall is the new school term and opportunities to learn. Typically, technical communicators must learn about new products as part of the job. (I love this aspect, it lets me be a professional student.) We also need to learn in other areas, such as new or updated software, techniques for reaching our audiences, and even how to learn about our audiences. In the Bay Area, we're lucky to have a wide variety of learning venues that include the UC Extensions (Berkeley and Santa Cruz), San Francisco State, and many community colleges. Also, our parent organization now offers online courses and access to webinars. But sometimes we just don't know what we want to learn about, so there's the local, monthly learning opportunity at our local chapter's meeting. For example, this month's meeting on technical reviews has a particularly broad audience; virtually every technical communicator must send work into review. What a great -- and inexpensive -- way to learn something that can make all our jobs a bit easier and more effective.

Fall is also time to consider the chapter leadership. This edition of ActiveVoice includes a job description for a critical chapter post, the President. It can help you to become informed before you vote in the chapter elections this month. You can also access recent editions of ActiveVoice to learn about other chapter leadership positions.

I'm looking forward to seeing you at one of our upcoming meetings.

Marie McElravy, Editor