Hyperviews Online

The text of this article and the latest news from the STC Certification Task Force is posted on the STC Forum: http://stcforum.org/viewtopic.php?pid=2470#p2470

The Society for Technical Communication (STC), the world’s largest association for technical communicators, has announced its support for World Usability Day (http://www.worldusabilityday.org), Tuesday, November 14, 2006. Primarily sponsored by the Usability Professionals’ Association, World Usability Day is a series of events that promote the values and benefits of usability engineering and user-centered design. The events will take place over a 36-hour period in more than 30 countries around the globe.

 “STC’s involvement in World Usability Day is a logical extension of technical communication,” says Paula Berger, president of STC. “Everything that technical communicators do is about usability, whether making instructions more usable through better writing, interfaces more usable because of better labeling and navigation, or products more usable because of user testing. It’s all part of the same continuum.”

As part of World Usability Day, STC and CM Pros (http://www.cmprofessionals.org), an organization of content management professionals, are organizing a global online card-sort exercise. The exercise is made possible by the donation of WebSort software (http://www.websort.net) from Parallax, LLC.

Card sorting is a quick, inexpensive, and reliable technique for determining how people categorize information. This knowledge helps information architects and usability professionals create structures for print and online information that make products and technologies more usable.

STC’s card-sort exercise will be carried out by participants on five continents. The exercise will provide insights about regional variations in the ways people organize information. Anyone interested in participating in this valuable exercise can sign up at http://www.stc.org/wud.

The Region 5 Conference, sponsored by the STC Lone Star Community this year, is coming to Addison, Texas on November 2–4. In honor of the Lone Star Community’s 50th anniversary, the conference theme is the “50 Facets of Technical Communication.”

Sessions are organized into three broad stems: Usable Tools; Standards of Practice; Learning and Leading. There are almost 30 sessions, including four half-day workshops on Saturday afternoon. The conference has an exciting program, including the keynote speakers. (more…)

Information provided by Mark Hanigan, STC Fellow, Manager Florida Technical Communication Competition

Have you created a publication, online communication, or technical art that you are especially proud of?

Are you developing communication that is perhaps not following industry best practices and you aren’t able to convince management to do otherwise?

Would you like to get solid, constructive feedback from three of your peers about your work in technical communication?

If you answered yes to any of these three questions, no matter where you are, there is an STC community-sponsored or regional-sponsored competition waiting to hear from you! To find a competition, please visit http://www.stc.org/comp/internationalCompetitions01.asp where this year’s announced Online, Technical Art, and Technical Publication competitions are listed. (more…)

The new members of the STC Board want to hear from you. They have sent introductions to us, posted in a PDF document on this site.

by Cindy Currie, STC Fellow and Region 1 Director dir1@stc.org

Cindy encourages us to volunteer, review the monthly newsletter from STC President Paula Berger, attend fall conferences, nominate members for Associate Fellow, and particpate with allied organizations. (more…)

In her July 31 newsletter to members, STC President Paula Berger reports that the Website Committee and the STC staff are working together to redesign the stc.org website. They are looking for volunteers with extensive expertise in usability, accessibility, project management, gathering requirements, and/or content management systems. For more information, please see www.stc.org/membership/cfv01.asp.

by Cindy Currie
STC Fellow and Region 1 Director

It’s a brand new STC year! Our new President, Paula Berger, has chosen the slogan “The New World of STC” for this year. And a new world it is!

We have a brand new Executive Director! She is Susan Allen Burton. Susan accepted the position just days before our Annual Conference in May and was able to be in Las Vegas. She was introduced to attendees during the conference opening program on Monday, May 8. She is dynamic and engaging, with a wealth of association management experience. Susan is the new “face of STC” we’ve been hoping to find! She will officially join STC by early August. Visit http://www.stc.org/membership/initiatives01.asp for more information. (more…)

STC has an RSS feed, so you can stay up to date with news from the Society all the time. You can subscribe from the home page of the STC website, http://www.stc.org/. (more…)

The STC Lone Star Community is proud to present the Region 5 Conference for 2006 “The 50 Facets of Technical Communication.” Lone Star is celebrating its 50th year as a chapter and we’re taking this year to look at the many different types of technical communications professionals.

You can find information at
http://region5conf.com/CallforProposals.htm

For questions, contact:
Elisa Miller, Program Chair
email: program@region5conf.com

Reports prepared by each committee for the May 2006 STC Board meeting are posted for STC members only at http://www.stc.org/stcmembers/commReports01.asp

This year STC has expanded use of the web for communication in many ways. Navigation on the STC website, http://www.stc.org has been improved and the content expanded. An RSS feed is available for news. Minutes of the Board meetings are posted at http://www.stc.org/about/boardMinutes01.asp

We have the STC Forum, http://stcforum.org. Members can also submit questions at Ask STC: http://www.stc.org/FAQ/ask.stc.aspx

Visit the STC website to see other ways communication has expanded and improved this year, and check the report of the Technology Committee to see future plans: http://www.stc.org/stcmembers/commReports01.asp

This is Region 7 Director John Hedtke’s column, reprinted from the April 2006 newsletter of the UK Chapter of STC.

I wasn’t on the Board when the Transformation effort started up, but I have read all the materials and early documents. I found most of them to be dense, confusing, not overly clear, and full of jargon. Frankly, I didn’t hold out a lot of hope for whatever we were doing simply because it wasn’t being explained very well. However, in the last year, I’ve been able to find out a lot more about the Transformation. In this month’s column, I’m going to give you a quick look at what’s been happening with Transformation and why it’s so cool. (more…)

The STC Annual Conference will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, May 7 to 10, 2006. There are opportunities at the conference to meet fellow members of the Online SIG face-to-face.

A guide to online-communication related sessions is posted on the old Online SIG website (pdf).

You will find complete information about the conference on the STC website.