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The mission of the Society for Technical Communication is to improve the quality and effectiveness of technical communication for audiences worldwide.

East Bay Chapter meetings are held on the second Thursday of each month (except for the February meeting) at Crow Canyon Country Club, 711 Silver Lake Dr., Danville, 925-735-5700.

Be sure to take advantage of our advance reservation discount ($22 by reservation, $26 at the door).

From 1999 through 2001, STC has been going through a process of identifying who we are and how we want to be perceived both internally and externally. We have identified our brand based on extensive research and have begun the effort of looking at how we govern ourselves. The next step is leadership, both within STC and in the industry and the world.

Judy Glick-Smith, president of STC for 2000–2001, will present the vision she had for her year as president of the Society and how she has moved our organization and ultimately our profession to a position of leadership in the 21st century.

Judy will be speaking at the Crow Canyon Country Club on Thursday, January 10, 2002.

T. R. Girill taught six sessions of technical writing to 100 tenth-graders at Oakland's Fremont High School (FHS) in November and December. According to the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), FHS serves a multiethnic neighborhood in which about 80% of students have no more than one parent in the home (often none), 45% qualify for AFDC payments, and 25% have had "contact with the criminal justice system."

Note: A link to the EBSTC Technical Literacy Program is now seen on the California Department of Education web site (www.cde.ca.gov/resources/support.html). It is listed under the "Educational Support Resources" page as Society for Technical Communication with about two dozen other sites that CDE recommends to California educators.

When the EBSTC Board met this summer, they realized that there was no central location for the chapter's historical archives. Through the years, chapter officers and volunteers have handed boxes of "stuff" to their successors, who often had no time to organize the contents.

After 40 years of box shuffling, it was clear the time had come to do some housecleaning. As a result, the Chapter Archive Project was born. June Schaefer, highlighted in this month's Member Spotlight, has graciously volunteered to chair this project. June has already collected and organized several boxes of newsletters and other chapter archives. The chapter plans to rent a secure storage space in which to store the archives once they are catalogued.

If you have items you think the chapter should archive, please contact June at jgsschaefer@earthlink.net.

The chapter board plans to meet next month to begin planning our 40th anniversary party. The party will be held in June, and is sure to be a great opportunity to celebrate with your fellow members. Stay tuned for the details!

The 2001 Technical Communicator Survey results are in. This article provides a summary of the results. The complete survey is available for free on the STC web site at stc.org/salary.html.

The average salary and benefits for technical writers and editors in the United States and Canada continues to increase. The average salary is $55,360 in the United States, up 6.8 percent from $51,850 shown in the 2000 survey. Notably, the survey shows a narrowing gap in salaries between men and women. The average salary for U.S. men is $56,310 while that for women is $54,860.

"The survey results show that female technical writers/editors in the U.S. earn 97 percent of what their male counterparts earn," Judith Glick-Smith, STC President, pointed out. "This smaller 'gender gap' points to financial opportunities for women in the growing field of technical communication."

The U.S. Department of Labor statistics for 2000 show that among full-time employees in all professions, women earn 76 percent of men's salaries (Labor Force Statistics from Current Population Survey, Table 37).

From the top of our mountain, we can see six active Northern California STC chapters. Each chapter meets on a different Wednesday or Thursday so you can attend all the meetings. Contact the respective presidents for more information or visit the chapter web site.

Membership Notes
If you receive a special award, promotion, or other professional recognition, please let us know. We would like to start printing this news to keep members informed of our chapter's accomplishments.
Our chapter is growing! We are welcoming the following new, transferring, and reinstated members into our chapter:

Tough Marketing for Tough Times:
William H. Thompson's Pep Talk and Marketing Tips for Technical Communicators

What significance does the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center have for technical communicators? The analogy began as a stretch of the imagination, but marketer William H. Thompson of the Thompson Group successfully interwove current national crises, his experience in the military, and his marketing savvy in a pep talk. With captivating stories, William illustrated certain "life lessons" to motivate us in marketing our businesses and ourselves.

William asked the audience to remember where they were when they heard about the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center, and to remember how they reacted. He shared that he was with his son, a Marine, on a military ship off the coast of California. The Marines immediately perceived that our nation was under attack, and acted. They knew the basics even in a crisis situation.

Lesson 1: Know the basics so that when an emergency occurs, you will be prepared. If you don't know the basics, the problems you already have will accelerate.

Lesson 2: Prepare yourself for difficult situations by practicing repeatedly, so you will immediately know how to respond and respond well.

When William trained to be a Navy SEAL, he "learned" to swim by trying to swim with his hands and feet tied! He urged us to deliberately and repeatedly place ourselves in difficult situations, until those situations become "comfortable."

Lesson 3: After you have identified your special skills, get training and experience; increase your confidence and perseverance to succeed.

William described how 70% of the SEAL trainees could not endure the training and gave up. Only those who persevered completed the training, and as a result, their self-confidence increased to prepare them for the next challenge.

After demonstrating these life lessons and their parallels with our profession, William changed tactics and outlined the basics of marketing and how we can use it to our advantage:

The key to understanding and relating to clients is to learn to perceive yourself from the eyes of your clients. One way to begin is to research facts and not act on emotions.

William presented some data from a survey of East Bay businesses with more than 100 employees. RHI Consulting Services asked CIOs (Chief Investment Officers) if they were in a hiring slump. The results were:

His final suggestion was to look at how the market is changing and see what can work to your advantage. He emphasized that all the news is not bad; there are great opportunities.

As you read this issue celebrating the 40th anniversary of the East Bay Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (EBSTC), it should be clearly evident that the sustained success of this chapter can be directly attributed to strong, committed leadership and a supporting membership body.

The current leaders are just as strong in their commitment to the success of the chapter and to ensuring that the chapter serves its members well. They have located outstanding meeting venues after careful consideration of convenience, menu selection, and comfort. They have brought in exceptional speakers, whose messages are current, useful, and appropriate. They have developed a competition-worthy newsletter.

Now, it's your turn. You can demonstrate your commitment by renewing your membership today.

And don't forget the International STC (the Society) level, where there are even more benefits. Here are a few:

Visit the Society's web site (www.stc.org) for more information about these and other benefits.

The funding for the East Bay Chapter comes from dues rebated from the Society based on our number of members. Your timely support allows our chapter to continue providing all these wonderful benefits.

Thank you for your continued support of EBSTC. It ensures our chapter will continue moving toward another successful forty years.

Happy

40th anniversary to EBSTC! You might not know that around three dozen enthusiastic members founded our chapter in 1962. The chapter has been very active ever since and has grown to 220 members. We have been delving into past newsletters to learn about our chapter and its history. It is fascinating to read the newsletters to discover how our profession has changed, and, more interestingly, how it has remained the same. Over the next few issues, we will share some of these intriguing discoveries.

In our quest to find out how our profession has changed through the years, we asked several long-standing members (who are also past presidents) to reflect on their years in technical communication and to share their thoughts.

Gwaltney Mountford remembers working with punched cards and how the I/O desk was a center for socializing. Diana Wilcoxson talks about going from archaic languages such as Script/370 to the WYSIWYG world of FrameMaker. T. R. Girill discusses how the basics of technical writing have not changed even though the writer's workday has changed dramatically. Bill Ardis offers his usual wit in interviewing the creator of DOS, which is 20 years old! And finally, to keep us up to date on our skills, Scott Wallace is educating us about writing for the Web with the first article in a series of three.

One recurring theme we found through the 40 years of our chapter is how important it is to seek out the company of fellow technical communicators. They can help us grow professionally, teach us new ways of thinking and problem solving, and provide understanding when others at work can't do so. This is undoubtedly one major reason that our chapter has thrived for all this time. In assessing your plans and goals for the New Year, we encourage you to renew your membership (or make the decision to join), and to seek ways to become involved with the chapter.

Our sincerest thanks go to June Schaefer, chair of the chapter Archives Project. She was kind enough to help us prepare by organizing a large volume of past newsletters and letting us come to her home to do research. We hope you enjoy reading about our chapter as much as we did!

Hello, readers. Our very first online issue was a success, thanks to all of you! We received a number of congratulatory e-mail messages, and we loved reading them. Keep writing!

Douglas

Dow, Managing Editor of Technically Write (STC Lone Star Chapter), writes:

Congratulations on your first HTML edition! NetObjects was a favorite tool of mine for some years, but when I became the Managing Editor of Technically Write, I turned to Author-IT. It has been very useful.

Thanks for the helpful tip, Doug. Our Production Editor, Don, has realized a long-standing dream with this issue—he did the entire project in Dreamweaver. He says that the conversion for the first page was a big job, after that he said the project became a lot of fun.

Thank you for posting the Devil Mountain Views online. It is excellent. Is there a link from the East Bay Chapter's home page?

This online newsletter is GREAT! You both have done a wonderful job in setting it up and in your choice of articles. Well done!

Nice work, very cool. My compliments to the chefs! I predict DMV will become a popular acronym in the Bay Area...

Well, Bill, your article did add the right touch of spice!
P.S. Keep looking for Bill's articles in our coming issues.

The newsletter looks crisp, interesting, and professional. I can hardly wait to read all the articles. You two have done a bang-up job, deserving of an award. I hope the international judges have good enough judgment to agree.
Keep up the good work. Thanks for your service to the chapter.

Congratulations on a job well done. A good publication just got better. It's especially impressive given that it's an all-volunteer effort. I know how much work goes into a project like this. You must be pleased with the outcome.

I first joined STC in 1976 and began technical writing in the Bay Area two years later. The East Bay Chapter's 40th anniversary thus affords a welcome chance to look back on what has and has not changed about local technical writing.

On the personal scale, the changes in a technical writer's work life since the late 1970s are dramatic. Copyediting a paper draft with red pencil for a compositor was standard practice then; I was among the first in my department to use newly invented Wang word processors to edit drafts online. Instead of bragging about software tools, technical writers touted their genre expertise: some specialized in proposals or presentations, while others stressed the design of a good journal article. And NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena had just begun circulating its (formerly internal) layered approach to publication revision, the widely copied "levels of edit" model (GPO, 1980).

Even in the late 1970s, however, the best technical writers recognized the intellectual kinship of their work with the psychological insights of instructional designers. But the idea that a technical publication's effectiveness involved global (whole-document), not just local (sentence-level), features was just beginning to shape practice.

On the professional scale, technical writing in the late 1970s began a growth phase that has yet to end. At that time, one STC chapter in San Francisco served mostly business writers, and another in San Jose focused on writers of computer documentation. A third single chapter, Pacifica, serviced the entire area from Fremont through Oakland and Berkeley north to Napa and east to Livermore. Now three chapters cover that territory, plus another in Sacramento.

Most employers of technical writers in the East Bay during the 1980s were large engineering or "research and development" firms or government agencies, which explains the prevalence of science writing jobs. Only later did many software companies and biotech firms migrate northward to create employment opportunities in documentation and medical writing. The balance has now tipped so far toward documentation that science writers have had to create their own STC special-interest committee to be able to find each other at national STC meetings.

One notable side effect of this change in professional emphasis, both locally and nationally, concerns access to information. Indexing, taxonomy, and accessible Web design issues are now common topics at STC events. But when I joined STC they were largely ignored.

Now that I am introducing high-school students to technical writing through the chapter's community outreach project, I am reminded again of the underlying communication principles that have not changed over the last four decades. Despite our altered software tools, job titles, and employers, technical writers are still primarily audience advocates, and usability still requires threefold attention to ease of understanding, ease of access, and reader (or user) relevance. Tangible confirmation of this occurred recently when Bay Area author F. J. Bethke's pioneering triple analysis of usability (IBM Systems Journal, 1981) reappeared as a reprint with retrospective commentary in the September 1991 issue of ACM's Journal of Computer Documentation. It was then transformed into a book-length treatment, enriched with ample modern examples, in Developing Quality Technical Information by Bay Area author Gretchen Hargis (IBM, 1998).

A second enduring theme is that effective publications must still respond to the constraints of human nature. The threshold of short-term memory is still "the magic number seven plus or minus two" (George Miller). We still prefer spatial cues to help us find and use important relationships in text (Edward Tufte). And there is still no single perfect way to name or classify things for reliable retrieval without extensive aliasing (Thomas Landauer).

Third, the insights of Frederick Brooks Jr. (The Mythical Man-Month, a book that I wrongly avoided for years because of its strange title) are just as relevant now as they were when he first penned them. Rapid prototyping followed by generous amounts of usage monitoring, user feedback, and iterative design still enable the best publications. And writing the documentation before writing the software (as Brooks advises) is still a rewarding path to success if you ever have the chance to do it (as I have).

Finally, technical writing in four decades has taught me to appreciate the enduring truth of Margaret Mead's often-quoted remark: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

I began my career in the technology field thirty years ago as a programmer aid at National Semiconductor in Santa Clara. Over the years, I have used a number of different writing tools. Here are my experiences with some of them.

At National Semiconductor, I was responsible for entering programs that the more senior group members had written, compiling these programs, and debugging them when necessary. When I advanced to the position of applications programmer, I began writing my own internal and external specifications. This is where my technical writing began.

Due to company restructuring, I was transferred into the technical publications department. (Note: applications programmer = technical writer!) At the time I was using Script/370 to write any necessary documentation. For those of you who have never heard of Script/370, it is an embedded language (similar to HTML tags) that ran on an IBM 370 mainframe. Once the scripting was compiled, it generated a scripted file with the formatting that I had specified. If there were errors in the scripted file, cryptic error messages were generated in the finished file, which made finding these non-specific errors like looking for a needle in a haystack.

I left National Semiconductor for the computer languages lab at Hewlett-Packard. It was here that I got my technical writing training. I became very familiar with TDP/MANU which was also a very archaic embedded language. Just like Script/370, TDP/MANU also used embedded commands and generated a file with non-descriptive error messages if there were problems. During the six years that I spent at HP, I can remember generating final copy for manuals that had not been proofed because of the problematic text generating process and printer problems. It always amazed me that a prestigious company like HP would have such elementary tools to produce the many manuals that were generated every year.

When I left HP, I took on a long-term contract in Silicon Valley. It was here that I first used FrameMaker. What a relief! The concept of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) was totally foreign to me at that point, but I had no problem adjusting. I learned to use FrameMaker on the job and cranked out around thirty-two "product briefs" within a short period of time as compared to the tedious process I'd used previously. I was hooked!

When my husband landed a job in Berkeley, we made the decision to move to the East Bay. I began working for a medium-sized company in the East Bay that was using Nroff/Troff to write their documentation. This was quite a step backward for me. It was certainly not WYSIWYG. Compared to FrameMaker, using Nroff/Troff was like sweeping the carpet with a broom when you've been used to using a vacuum cleaner.

Since these early experiences, I have been contracting at many different companies. I have used Word and FrameMaker extensively. I must say that the tools that were available in my early career do not compare to those available today. Even the more recent versions of MS Word are a lot more reliable than earlier ones. For example, I can remember having to generate a table of contents by hand when a newly written manual consisted of more than one hundred pages. And don't even mention online help or HTML. These would take another whole article to write about.

As the 40th anniversary of the East Bay Chapter of STC draws near, the editors asked me to write about technical writing 40 years ago. Alas, at 15, I didn't even know such a profession existed.

I didn't stumble into technical writing until 23 years ago, but I have been associated with data processing since 1970. The tools then were quite delightful: huge mainframes, dumb terminals, data entry forms, punched cards, input/output (I/O) counters, where you dropped off your punched cards and picked up your printouts—usually with a little red wagon. Punched cards were a challenge—especially if you dropped the pack, or if a trickster added a punched card with a picture of a cockroach. The I/O desk was better than the water cooler for picking up the latest gossip or maybe a date for Saturday night.

In 1979, I got my first technical communication job. We still had mainframes and dumb terminals, though I no longer got to play with the punched cards. And we had word processing, of sorts. The software I used was called Script VS. When I first saw HTML, I thought "Time-warp! Time-warp! They've brought back Script VS!" Actually, it is more like "Grandson of Script VS," since the HTML codes are more sophisticated.

In 1981, as manager of user training and documentation, I had my first encounter with real technical writers.

How were they different from the technical writers of today? In basic skills and process, not much. Organizational, analytical, and verbal—but not visual—skills were key. The process was similar: identify audience, purpose, scope, and organization of the document; research, write, and verify content; illustrate, publish, and distribute the guide. Missing was formal usability testing.

A major difference between then and now is the tools. Then, the company was starting to use Wang word processors. Some writers learned it and wrote their documents on Wang. But there were those who felt that word processing was too secretarial. They wrote their documents longhand and gave it to a word processor to key into Wang (and then had to review it for accuracy).

We cut out screen examples and other illustrations and pasted them into the document (Exacto knives and glue stick were important tools for us). We sent the master to the production department who copied it and put it into binders. The graphics department provided covers. For quick reference guides, they did the page layout as well.

Large shops still have this breakdown of job functions, but I haven't seen it since the early 90s when the personal computer changed my job description. Suddenly, my computer could do it all. Layout, design, graphics, and publishing have been the norm for me for 10 years and it is hard to remember a time when someone else did it. The change required new skills, such as visual communication, and more technical ability to "program" macros and troubleshoot problems. But it also gave me more control and the freedom to execute my ideas for better communication without relying on someone else's opinion.

Which brings up what I think is the biggest change in technical communication over the last 20 years: our perception of the profession and what we, as technical communicators, have to offer. We have broadened the definition. We no longer provide only user guides, system references, and reports. We identify communication gaps and find the solutions to fill them, whether the gap is between the company and the client, the developer and the user, or within the development team. We have a clearer understanding of what constitutes successful communication. We enter the process early and provide our expertise to develop user-centered products. And we have been training our companies (or at least trying to) to help them better understand the value we add to the company, the product, and the client.

Looking back, I realize how much fun this profession has been and how much I've learned because I'm in it. Looking forward, I am aware of how exciting the possibilities are.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary

of the release of DOS (for "Disk Operating System"), I interviewed Daniel O. Schtukemunder, who secretly created the original program which was, rumor has it, purchased and released by Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen—who claimed that they developed DOS—in 1981.

Daniel: I needed backslash way to communicate with backslash our mainframe computer backslash, so...

Daniel: So, because I needed to communicate with our backslash computer—it couldn't understand plain English, y'know—I developed a "code" that I could use to give the computer commands.

Daniel: Yes, thank you. The way colon the code worked, it used certain symbols and colon English word abbreviations as a simple way of "input" and "output" to and from colon the computer. ATTRIB [d:][path]filename [/S], for example...

Daniel: Oh, you mean ATTRIB [d:][path]filename [/S]? Well, I was referring to the ATTRIB command in the code, which displays or sets the search path for data files...

Daniel: ...furthermore, the buffer is used in the CONFIG.SYS file to set the number of disk buffers (number) that will be available for use during data input. Also, buffer used to set a value for the number of sectors to be read in advance (read-ahead) during data input operations....

Daniel: ...furthermore, if you want to copy text strings, you may COPY [/Y|-Y] [/A][/B] [d:][path]filename [/A][/B] [d:][path][filename] [/V] or COPY [/Y|-Y][/A][/B] [d:][path]filename+[d:][path]filename[...][d:][path][filename] [/V]....

For almost 50 years, June Schaefer, an East Bay STC member, has worked off and on as a technical communicator. During this time, she has witnessed the birth of computers and the Internet.

In 1952, June graduated from H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, the women's division of Tulane University of Louisiana, as a chemistry major.

Shell Development Company, a large research lab in Emeryville, was searching for female chemistry graduates to work in the Technical Information Department. Shell needed someone to read, index, and abstract its research reports. Because she wanted to return to California, June accepted the job.

June worked as a Chemical Abstractor for about six years, and then took a hiatus to raise a family. During the early 1970s, June worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a secretary in the Theoretical Physics Department. She also began attending STC meetings in hopes of getting a technical editor position.

In February 1978, M. B. Associates in San Ramon hired June as a Technical Writer to write a final report on a coal-mining vehicle. The technical writing process back then was laborious. June wrote the entire report in longhand and then passed it to a secretary to type. June would then proof that draft and return it back for corrections.

Later June accepted a contract with Science Applications in Pleasanton. However, the contract June was working on—a contract with the Shah of Iran for chaff dispenser training manuals—was abruptly cancelled when the Shah's government was overthrown by the revolution in Iran. So June's job was cancelled as well.

June then turned to Coralyn McGregor, who was the Pacifica Chapter's Employment Manager at the time. Back then, the Employment Manager collected letters from headhunters, clipped ads from newspapers, and then distributed this packet to members requesting job information. June sent her resume to one of the headhunters, and got an interview with Dalmo Victor in Belmont, a division of Textron.

June accepted the position at Dalmo Victor to document their threat warning system for military aircraft. She worked there for 10 years.

June has been very active in STC. She has held the positions of Treasurer and Arrangements Manager. Because she wanted to document sources of technical writing courses or training for technical communicators, she created the position of Education Chairman and held that position in the chapter for several years.

In 1992, she organized the Northern California Chapters Dr. Kenneth M. Gordon Memorial Scholarship program. The program continues today and is funded from proceeds from the yearly Northern California Technical Communications Competition. June chaired the scholarship fund committee for three years and then served as Treasurer for three years. June currently is the chapter's History/Archives Project Manager.

This article is the first in a three-part series titled "Online Writing." Here is a synopsis of what's to come:

Parts 2 and 3 will include book recommendations and links to articles, courses, newsletters, e-mail groups, blogs, organizations, and other online resources.

As anyone who reads STC publications or trolls the Help Wanted ads knows, the world of technical communication is changing: Paper is giving way to pixels.

As more companies of all types and sizes move more of their operations online, more tech writing positions involve developing content for Web sites, intranets, and extranets—positions that require knowledge and skills many print-trained writers don't have.

Publishing online is not a matter of wrapping print documents in HTML and uploading them to a network.

Web content is different, because people read online content differently than they do print content. Web users have different needs and expectations. Writers creating documents for online publication need to be aware of these differences and to factor them into every aspect of their work.

When they think of the Internet, most people think of the World Wide Web, and when they think of the Web, they think of the stupefying proliferation of technological innovation that's transforming communication and commerce at the root level.

Yet the Internet is not essentially about technology (gasp!). It's about information. The Net is a way to move information more expediently from one point to another. Web design and associated technologies are means of enhancing and presenting information more effectively and making it more accessible to the user.

Content is what visitors see, hear, and can do at a site. Graphics and multimedia can be integral parts of the content (charts, illustrations, demonstrations) or they can be packaging, the ribbons and bows that give a site its eye (and ear) appeal. On most sites, however, the most important information is communicated via text—editorial content.

It's largely through editorial content that site owners acquaint visitors with their products and services or educate them about the subject matter of their sites. Thus while stunning artwork and technological wizardry may dazzle visitors initially, in most cases it's ultimately the editorial content that determines how effective a site is as a business or information tool.

For this is reason, a well-designed site is developed around its editorial content. The structure of the information serves as a template for the structure of the site itself.

The major distinction between print and online documents is the inherent interactivity of hypertext. Interactivity opens up vast new realms of possibility by putting users a mouse click away from content residing elsewhere on the same site or on a computer halfway around the globe.

Due to their interactive nature, hypertext documents differ from print documents in fundamental ways, extending from the way the information is organized to the wording of microcontent.

The overriding consideration in both the structure and content of an online document—and in the design of the site itself—is usability. Usability refers to factors that affect visitors' ability to locate information within a document or on a site and to understand what they're reading once they've found it.

A thought for the New Year: maybe

it's time to expand our scope of what’s happening in technical writing. To this end, a series of STC-sponsored telephone seminars are scheduled in the first three months of 2002. Another training/learning opportunity is the annual WinWriters Online Help conference. Some information about these events and their dates follows.

2002 STC telephone seminars

STC is offering two seminars each month through March 2002. Telephone seminars have been very successful in bringing cost-effective training to STC members seeking to improve their skills and knowledge. Online registration is offered at www.stc.org/seminars.html. This web site also explains how telephone seminars work and provides more details on the subject matter.

The cost for each seminar is $125.00. An additional $10.00 will be charged for registration received less than five days before the seminar. Please contact Buffy Bennett (buffy@stc.org or 703.522.4114 ext. 251) if you have any questions.

WinWriters 10th Annual Online Help Conference—February 10–13, Seattle, WA

With over 60 sessions dedicated to software user assistance, you'll get the latest on Help for Web Sites and Web Applications, Cross-platform Help, Management, Windows Help, Information Design, Content Development, Usability, Single-sourcing, Dynamic Server-based Help, and Authoring tools. You’ll learn and benefit from exciting keynote speakers, in-depth seminars, and a comprehensive exhibition for products and services. For more details, visit www.winwriters.com.

Susan's note: The WinWriter’s web site has outstanding resources for all tech writers! Check out their Web Resources link which includes web sites of interest to Help authors, technical communicators, and programmers.

During the December meeting, East Bay members completed a job survey to determine the current employment situation. The results show that 1/3 of our members are out of work, 1/3 are employed in a secure work situation (contract or permanent), and another 1/3 are in contracts that end in the next three months.

Before getting depressed by these percentages, you might consider modifying your job searching strategy. The survey shows that agencies and web sites assisted approximately half of our members in locating jobs, while networking was successful for the other half of the group. If you've relied primarily on agencies or web sites before, try networking as an alternative approach. Or, if you have always networked for jobs, then check out some web sites and talk with an agent.

Agency representatives are invited to our monthly meetings, so you can bring several copies of your resume. Web sites that have been successful with posted resumes include Dice, Monster, and BrassRing. Networking can be done in any number of ways; exchanging information with fellow STC members was cited as the best way in the survey. Others have found that networking with friends, contacts, or co-workers has also brought job leads. The key to successful job-hunting is to keep trying!

In this column

we will share excerpts and other trivia from past newsletters. Here are some excerpts from newsletters in the 70s that illustrate how things are different or the same. You decide!

Recently I was assigned to edit computer documents "online." Although I was familiar with computer documents, editing online gave me a "work shock." …

I first felt the shock when, instead of being given a typed draft of a document from an author, I received a "copy" of the document transferred from his file in a local computer (not connected to the network) to my file in the same computer….This was a new experience. I had no draft in my hands! I carried the tape to the network computer, and typed a message to the operator to read the tape into my computer file….I then typed a message to all network users that the document was now available.

This document—a user's manual for a computer program—was published from "draft" to final copy with no typed draft, no composition, no layout, no last-minute Sno-pake corrections, no printing plates, and no clerical processing and distribution.

A Wall Street Journal article (November 3, by Burt Schorr) from Washington, D.C., carried the headline, "Computers' Marriage to Communications to Yield Big Benefits—if It Ever Occurs."

Slanted principally to business applications, the report observes that such a marriage "would allow instant, world wide delivery of computerized business messages, from sales orders to interoffice memos," and also would give instant credit information and transfer of bank funds.

…The principal roadblock to widespread marriages of the two, in the U.S., is the weighty and complex "permit" problem now before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

…Former FCC chairman Richard Wiley has offered a radical solution that AT&T may not like. He advocates Congress deregulate all communications terminal equipment thus putting other equipment suppliers on equal footing with AT&T and stripping all phone companies of present regulated-monopoly advantages.

At our February meeting, Rick Meyer of Processor Technology Corporation led us through the not-too-intricate passageways of automated document management. Rick displayed the text from a floppy-disk file on an ordinary TV as he demonstrated the new text-processing system he is developing with ADAPT, Incorporated. Using one of Processor Technology's own microcomputers (about as big as two bread boxes), Rick showed us how he can manipulate and change text, insert corrections and indentions, and specify type sizes and leading. As Rick changed the text, the editor program in the microcomputer automatically moved the existing words from line to line and page to page…

Then, Rick and Lloyd Goodwin, of ADAPT, fed the processed file through a pay phone to ADAPT's computer in San Francisco. There the text is phototypeset according to Rick's commands, and the finished galley is mailed back to Rick in Pleasanton.

--Pacifica Log, February 1978, Bob Bradley, Technical Writer and Editor at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory