This one’s mostly for the tech writers who read this site.
Since starting my own company, I’ve given up on my membership to the Society of Technical Communicators. Sure, the publications were kind of nifty, but I wasn’t really reaping much benefit from the organization. One of their major functions is to post jobs and find work for their members. Since I’m not seeking fulltime work, it’s not of much use to me.
An STC committee has started a new weblog, with a most uninspiring title: STC Transformation:
STC is 50, and a lot of things have changed in those 50 years. And while STC serves our needs in some ways, there are other ways that it doesn’t. It’s time for STC to change, to catch up with the times. We can’t do it without our members, so please join the conversation and contribute to the transformation!If we were going to start a Society today and call it STC, what would it look like? Would we have chapters? Would we organize it as a bunch of SIGs? If we were starting today, how much would we charge for membership? How would we structure our board? Would we want to be a charitable organization or a professional association?
While I applaud the STC for embracing a collaborative technology like weblogs, I do have one small complaint. The entries have no names associated with them. So, instead of readers having conversations with individuals, they’re talking to a non-corporeal body called ‘The Team’. It’s a little off-putting, and suggests that there isn’t (or can’t be) dissent among the committee members. After all, I’m most interested in what individuals on the committee think, so that I can engage with them as individuals.
And actually, now that I see how random the comments on first entry are, I think they’ve gotten it wrong. This should have been a discussion forum, with committee members posting specific questions and ideas, with a threaded conversation to follow. I find several comments that I want to reply to, but have no easy way to do so given the 75 comments in the thread.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Interesting observation. What’s happened is that the entries are a collaborative effort. For these two entries I did some drafting, based on conversations we had and issues we raised, and several people edited. We really are a team, and the questions posed are not reflective of me, but of the team as a whole.
Personally, I didn’t expect the amount of feedback, and the range of feedback. I thought we’d get a trickle of comments, with the content directly related to the posting topic. The responses tell me that we were overdue for communication with our members in this type of forum. We may need to reconsider our technology, but give us a break … we’re only on day 2!
BTW, Darren, the networking value of STC is what other business owners (like me) value about STC. We’d welcome you back at any time. 😉
darren: emoticon alert!
Yeah, I remain unconvinced that the ROI (and Rahel, you ought to be familiar with this) on the STC meetings. I think I’m better off going to software functions as opposed to tech writing functions. In my experience, especially for contracting, few technical writers hire other technical writers. In fact, for the contracting work I’ve done, which is roughly with 12 or 14 companies, I’ve never been hired by a tech writer. It’s always the CTO or project manager or somebody.
I’m sorry, Darren, but as a technical writer, sometime editor, and senior member of the Society FOR Technical COMMUNICATION, I must rise to correct your expansion of the initialism.
As to the networking issue, technical writers do not hire technical writers, but some technical writers turn INTO managers who then DO hire. Some managers belong to STC; Silicon Valley has a new SIG of them, and it has been palling around with a long-established body called BAPMF — Bay Area Pubs Managers Forum. Many technical writers are willing share info about jobs for which they, themselves, are not qualified, when they find out (or already know) that YOU ARE. Some will be able to give inside information about the group or company or manager or recruiter offering the job. Not all technical writers are as down-and-dirty-technical as we are (I am a reformed systems programmer, and now document APIs).
First off…’your expansion of the initialism’, dude, that’s so far above my head it’s back below my feet. What does that refer to? Surprisingly, I’ve been able to make a decent living on technical writing for more than six years without knowing what it means.
As for the STC networking, when it comes to contractors, I would include documentation managers within my aforementioned rule. I’ve never been contracted by a technical writer or documentation manager.
Sigh… S T C is pronounced as a series of letters, the initials of the name. You expanded, or interpreted that series of letters incorrectly. The name is Society FOR Technical COMMUNICATION. HTH.
Silicon Valley Chapter has, for years, had one (and sometimes two) SIGs for consultants and independent contractors (http://stc-siliconvalley.org/sigs/sigs_consult.htm). If you have never been contracted by a documentation manager, who HAVE you been contracted by? A middleman? We have a number of them in the SVC (that’s Silicon Valley Chapter, dude), and in some of the other San Francisco Bay chapters. Recruiters, too, have been members. They attended many of our meetings, but in this economy they have not been present, and may have not renewed.
I have to admit, I only join the STC when my membership is included in the price of attending one of the conferences. Therefore it happens only about once every three years. I don’t get much use out of the publications, but the regional conferences are usually really good. In fact, even though you take great delight in bashing technical writers as “frumpy and grumpy”, you gave a pretty good talk at the region 7 conference a few weeks ago so you’ll be forgiven this time.
Guy, thanks for the grammar help. To do a brief review of my contracting clients, the hiring person has been:
2 VPs of marketing
5 CEO/Presidents
1 VP of product development
2 Software engineeering project managers
1 VP of product management
These were universally small software or biotech companies with less than 100 employees, so the senior executives were generally pretty hands on. As you can see, not a single Doc manager in the bunch. Even the in the case of the last fulltime position I had, I was ultimately interviewed and hired by the engineering manager.
Alison, indeed, the conferences are pretty good. In truth, though, as I get more experienced, I find my ROI on them is lessening.
> Sigh… S T C is pronounced as a series of letters, the initials of the name. You expanded, or interpreted that series of letters incorrectly. The name is Society FOR Technical COMMUNICATION. HTH.
Oh, the burden you bear, having to correct and educate.
Guy’s comments are a good example of what drove me away from joining the STC: the frumpy, grumpy, persnickety and holier-than-thou attitudes that seem to characterize so many tech writers. Why do so many tech writers complain about not being taken seriously by the software teams they work with? Why is Dilbert’s Tina the Tech Writer such a bitch? Maybe this condescending attitude that seems to be so pervasive in the profession is something to consider.
That said, I know and have worked with tech writers who do and do not fit that characterization. Like any group, there is the majority and then there are those who don’t fit the mold. The latter are the ones I have known and worked with most productively.
The recent strategy determinations by the STC has it moving its focus towards non-documentation management and away from the TW and TE. This won’t happen immediately, but it’s in the plan.
My local chapter is using only titles, not names, in sending e-mails. I might hear from The President and mistakenly delete it on sight. The jobs postings were the main reason why I joined, and there hasn’t been much lately.
Darren – Sorry, but I can’t click on your Contact menu. I have Visual Studio on this machine, and it’s giving “object expected” errors at lines 150 and 158.
Check out this introduction article on Technical communication:
http://www.articleworld.org/Technical_communication
Content:
1.Professions
2.Formats
3.Tools
4.Resources
Darren, you know better than anyone what works for you and your business. There’s no rule that says you have to be a member of the STC to succeed in our field.
My experience with the organization has been somewhat different from yours. I have had a number of referrals that started with my STC network. And most of those referrals were through fellow writers. I served as the Washington, DC chapter president a few years ago, and that opened a few doors, too. The experience also helped me to further develop my leadership skills.
That said–and I’ll probably regret stating this in writing–I don’t believe that the STC is as relevant as it used to be for tech comm pros–especially the more experienced ones. The organization has been having an identity crisis for some time now.
Our profession now comprises a number of specialties: information architects, content strategists, usability experts… And those specialties have spawned other organizations with a stronger focus on each of the respective disciplines. The STC cannot hope to be a one-size-fits-all organization.
At this point, the STC has become much too political for my tastes. I prefer to attend other conferences these days (e.g., WritersUA and the now defunct DocTrain series) because they are are more focused on practice and craft and less on organizational politics.