Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC
November/December 2004 | Home

President’s Message

by Becky Rude
EBSTC President

Membership Drive Kickoff

Membership Drive Promos

Bring a guest to Nov and Dec meetings and receive $5 off the meeting rate.

Get your guest to join EBSTC by Feb 2005 and enter to win Dreamweaver!

Every time you attend a meeting between Oct and May, you can enter to win a one year membership to STC.

We kicked off our annual membership drive in October and we need your help to recruit new members. You, our current members, are probably the best resource for recruiting new members as you work with technical communicators that may benefit from joining our chapter. We hope that you can convince your colleagues to try a meeting to see what the chapter offers. In November and December, we're offering the following promotion:

Bring a guest to the November or December meeting and both you and your guest will receive $5 off the cost of dinner.
If your guest joins the East Bay Chapter by February 2005, your name will go into a drawing for a free copy of Dreamweaver!

New Membership Categories

The Society has announced new membership categories for 2005, which promise more flexibility for members as you have more options. For example, you can opt to join a chapter or not, or to receive online only access to STC publications (Intercom and Technical Communication). For a summary of the categories, see Society News in this newsletter.

These options are good for members, but there will be an affect on chapters. Of particular concern to chapter leaders is the option to not join a chapter. This means that the chapter will not receive funds for those members that do not join a chapter. Because STC estimates that 40% of members never attend a chapter meeting, the chapter leaders' concerns are real that large numbers of members could opt to not join a chapter, which will have a significant impact on chapter budgets. The results are yet to be seen, but chapters, including EBSTC, could be making many changes such as changing meeting venues and holding fewer meetings.

Of course these changes are all part of the STC transformation effort that was discussed in the last issue of DMV. Soon all chapters will be going through a re-chartering process to determine what our mission and goals are in an effort to make sure we're meeting member's needs. The results of this re-chartering will be valuable so that chapters can focus on what's important to members.

Meeting Your Needs

EBSTC is already taking steps to make sure that we're meeting member's needs. We just completed a member survey to see what type of programs you want, what kind of meeting format you want, and many other issues. We will soon publish the survey results, but in the meantime are working on scheduling programs that you want and other issues that came out of the survey.

EBSTC is also taking steps to provide more value for your chapter membership. We are lucky that we have a fairly active chapter with many volunteers to help conduct chapter activities that provide value (of course, we can always use more volunteers as there are lots of other activities we would like to do). Here are some of the benefits of belonging to EBSTC:

Access to the upcoming members only jobs board.
Email notice when the award winning newsletter is published.
A reduced chapter meeting rate.
NEW: 20% discount when purchasing books at O'Reilly. (See the details in this article.)
NEW: Discount to attend seminars sponsored by O'Reilly.
Educational and networking opportunities provided at chapter meetings.
Membership in an award winning chapter that works to benefit you.

Members enjoy the meal at the chapter meeting

Receive a Discount on O'Reilly Books

Recently EBSTC became a user group registered with O'Reilly Media. As a member of EBSTC you can now receive a 20% discount on any O'Reilly, No Starch, Paraglyph, Pragmatic Bookshelf, SitePoint, or Syngress book you purchase directly from O'Reilly. You can also get a discount on their conferences.

Just use code DSUG when ordering online or by phone 800-998-9938.

Stay Tuned

Stay tuned for more activities and updates on our transformation. If you have any suggestions, concerns, or questions, please send me an email.

Becky

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