STC Competitions call for entries
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.
By entering one of these competitions, you will be submitting your piece for award consideration for one of three levels:
- Distinguished Technical Communication (DTC)
- Excellence
- Merit
Those who win DTC are eligible for entry into the STC international competitions, a competition among the “best of the best.”
Naturally, not all entries in a given competition are going to be award winners. However, all entries will be evaluated in detail. Further, that detail will be provided to you in the judge’s comments. To give you an idea of the feedback you’ll receive, here are one judge’s comments about two different Help system entries:
- The Help system is designed, structured, and presented beautifully. Throughout, there are navigation aids and links to useful information at greater detail levels. Well done!! I had one little problem in that the tree structure on the left did not always indicate correctly the topic page that was displayed at that time.
- This Help system is well organized, detailed, and cross-referenced. There is no explanation about the organization at the beginning of the Help system, so readers are left to their own devices to figure it out. This(system) is hampered further by the lack of consistency and lack of parallel construction applied to the topic titles themselves. Nevertheless, everything else seems to be consistent; further, the Help system is backed by a solid search configuration.
In the case of the first example, the entry won an award of Excellence. In the case of the second example, the entry won an award of Merit. Note that these examples are based on comments from a previous Florida Technical Communication Competition (FTCC). This type of commentary is provided by judges in all of the competitions.
Regardless of whether your entry wins an award, independent corroboration of your work can help you in some one or more of the following ways:
- Improve your work
- Demonstrate to your management that your work is well done
- Point out to your management that some aspects of your publications practices are not industry best practices.
Are you wondering which competition to enter? Here are some guidelines:
- If a geographic community to which you belong is holding a competition of interest to you, then you should enter that competition.
- If you belong to two geographic communities and they are both holding competitions, then the choice is yours. However, you may want to consider the one in which you physically reside first.
- Note that you may not submit an entry for the same category to more than one competition. If you do, then your piece will be disqualified in both competitions.
- Finally, if you wish to enter a competition and none of your geographic communities is hosting one, then you are free to enter any competition that you wish.
Again, find the announced competitions listed at http://www.stc.org/comp/internationalCompetitions01.asp In addition, the Rochester Chapter is holding its 45th Technical Publications competition, the longest running in STC, and an Online competition. Contact Jan Peartree, jan@novatekcom.com. If you would like to enter the 15th Florida Technical Communication Competition (FTCC) please visit the following link: http://stc-suncoast.org/ftcc.
Don’t delay — the deadline for receiving FTCC entries is October 14, 2006 and deadlines for the other competitions range from September 15, 2006 through October 21, 2006. Good luck!