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Greetings, fellow East Bay members. As the economic news continues
to be bleak, your STC staff and volunteers are implementing our
“recession strategy.”
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Celebrate Our Members’ Accomplishments
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- Congratulations to our chapter’s Touchstone technical communication
competition winners, Gina Gotsill
and Ashwini Tharval. Bay Area
winners were recognized at a dinner organized by Berkeley chapter
members, led by Richard Mateosian.
Ashwini’s entry, Chevron Mobility Services Promotional
Email and Poster won a Merit Award. Gina is a member of the
team that created TechProse E-Learning for the University of
Michigan School of Public Health. Her entry won a Distinguished
Award. Winners in the Distinguished category go on to the Society-level
competition where they compete with entries from around the world.
The Society winners will be announced at the STC conference in
Atlanta, in May.
- Congratulations also to Ken Evans,
our Distinguished Chapter Service Award winner. Ken received the
award at our March meeting in recognition for being a staunch
supporter and long-time, active contributor to the East Bay chapter
as our newsletter Copy Editor, Membership Manager, and Employment
Manager.
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Drop Those Prices
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- At our most recent staff meeting, the East Bay leadership voted
to suspend the $10.00 “program only” charge for STC
members. We hope this will encourage our members to come to the
presentations. With the break in the price of gas, this creates
an affordable opportunity to keep in touch with fellow STC members.
- The Early Bird discount of $200 for the national conference
has been extended. Details are on the STC
Web site.
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Reach Out
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- Judy Herr and Melody
Brumis will represent STC on “Literary Row”
at the 8th
Annual Pleasanton Poetry, Prose & Arts Festival on April
4 and 5, 2009.
- Gwaltney Mountford will
attend the April 29 Diablo Valley College job fair to talk to
students about careers in the technical communication field. The
invitation to participate in the job fair came as the result of
a long-term effort by May McCoon
of our College Connection committee.
- At both of these events, we will be identified by our beautiful
new chapter banners. Many thanks to Janet
Gray for managing the printing and delivery of the
banners.
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Provide Learning Opportunities
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- On Thursday, May 28, UC Berkeley Extension will offer an open
house and information session about its Technical Communication
program. The open house is in the evening in San Francisco. Prospective
students, program alumni, and instructors will be there to discuss
the program.
- At our March meeting, Liz Fraley
offered insights to help attendees evaluate and communicate the
benefits of a single sourcing strategy. Those at the meeting also
learned that the awarding of the door prizes is much more dramatic
when accompanied by the musical stylings of Keith
Borman of SDL. (Keith has offered to make a presentation
at one of our Fall meetings. I don’t know—perhaps he
will bring a brass band next time.)
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Network, Network,
Network!
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- Susan Granzella, Documentation
Manager at VISA, will be speaking at our April meeting.
- Our May meeting will be moved to the second Thursday of the
month. We will be hearing reports from those who have returned
from the national STC conference in Atlanta.
- In June, we will have our annual “Trends in Technical Communication”
panel. Gwaltney Mountford,
who is organizing the program, would like your input. Who would
you like to see? What questions do you have about the future of
our profession? Email her at mgm@mountfordgroup.com.
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Final Words
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Don't forget to renew your membership. We hope to retain everyone
and maybe even grow. We know that pocketbooks are squeezed this
year, but please don't fail to make the investment in yourself.
To join or renew, do so at http://www.stc.org/membership/join01.asp
.
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If you have any articles that you would like to contribute
to our next newsletter, contact our managing editor, Alliene
Turner (hairston.turner@gmail.com).
Deadline is April 2, 2009.
- The Yahoo! Groups discussion board is available to our members.
This is a forum for you to share your ideas and concerns. To sign
up, click the East Bay STC Network
link in the upper right corner on the home page of the website.
- We are always looking for volunteers. Check out the openings
by clicking on the Volunteers
link in the left sidebar of the website's home page.
- Lynette Phillips, our January
speaker, shared one of her strategies, which is to stop reading
all the bad news.
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Even the Contra Costa Times felt it necessary to dispatch Tony
Hicks to think of 25
Reasons to be Happy. Tony is actually one of the people
I rely on to keep my spirits up.
No matter who got your vote last November, we all need to do our
part to help President Obama fulfill his vision, as communicated
in his early March address to Congress:"We will rebuild. We
will recover."
Together we can all get through this. See you next time.
Ann
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