Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter
April/May 2010
| Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter April/May 2010 |
The April meeting is on Wednesday, April 21, 2010, from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm at the Elephant & Castle in San Francisco's financial district. For details about the location and instructions for purchasing tickets, visit www.stc-sf.org/stc-meetings.htm.
Each year, Touchstone, the Northern California Technical Communication Competition, provides a showcase in which to honor local technical communicators who have done outstanding work. The competition is part of a worldwide network of local STC competitions. Each local competition sends its top entries to Society-level competitions in the areas of technical (print) publications, online communication, and technical art. This annual process helps STC to fulfill its mission: to promote and further the art of technical communication.
Touchstone is well known for its high standards. The entries it sends to the Society-level competitions always do well.
The presenters have been involved with Touchstone for many years. Between them they have performed almost every function that goes into a successful competition, from promoting the competition, to gathering entries, to designing judging materials, to recruiting, training, and managing judges, to conducting the awards ceremony.
They will discuss the background and history of the competition, the competition management and judging processes, and the qualities that go into making a winning entry. Some winning entries from this year's competition will be on display.
Richard Mateosian is an STC Associate Fellow and president of the Berkeley Chapter. He is treasurer of the STC Management SIG and serves on the Community Funding Task Force led by STC Second Vice-president, Hillary Hart. Richard has written the Micro Review column for IEEE Micro since 1987.
Richard has been involved with the Touchstone competition since 1995. He managed Touchstone in 1996 and has been part of the Touchstone leadership for almost all of the succeeding years.
Patrick Lufkin is an STC Associate Fellow, past president of the San Francisco chapter, and chair of the Kenneth M. Gordon scholarship for Technical Communication. He is membership manager of the STC Management SIG and a frequent contributor to the book review section of Technical Communication, the STC Journal.
Patrick has been involved with the Touchstone competition since 1992. He has been a judge, a lead judge, a trainer of judges, and a quality control judge. He has also handled competition publicity, and in recent years, has served as competition co-chair.