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Joint SIG Progression Session Conference Proposal
Call for Presenters in Philadelphia 2008
Dawnell K. Claessen, Co Manager, P&P SIG

Next year’s STC conference will be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania June 1-8, 2008. The Policies and Procedures Special Interest Group (P&P SIG) will propose a “Progression Session” to the 55th Annual Conference Program Committee.

P&P SIG is looking for presenters (and their topics) for this session. If you plan to attend the conference, and have an idea for a topic, we’d like you to develop your topic and present as part of our progression session.

Subject matter for Topics

Naturally, we will be looking for topics of relevance to members of our SIGs. But we will also be interested in related and relevant topics such as compliance, content management, career development management for those in our fields, documentation management, and the tools and technologies that we all use in our profession. (more…)

Please welcome the 127 members who have joined since the last membership report. On June 30, the QPI SIG had 815 members, with 14,139 members in STC. On July 31, the SIG had 831 members, with 14,333 in STC.

Please welcome our 56 new members who joined in March. We hope that our non-renewing members will stay with STC, and wish our members well who departed to select other SIGs during the renewal period.

As of March 31, 2007 the QPI SIG has 714 members and STC has 12,768 members.

Congratulations to Thomas Neuburger, a long-time member of the Quality SIG, who received the Distinguished SIG Service Award from the STC Board this year for his contributions in getting STC started using the Lyris email lists some years ago. Thank you, Tom, for all your help and support.

As of February 28, 2007 the Quality and Process Imrpovement SIG had 1040 members and STC had 16,802 members.

During the renewal cycle, 60 QPI SIG members made other selections in Feburary, as did 84 in January, and 54 in December. We wish our departing members well.

We welcome the 59 QPI SIG members who joined in December, the 89 members who joined in January, and our 67 new members who joined in Feburary.

Long time QPI SIG member and past STC President Andrea Ames was elected a Fellow of STC at the February Board meeting. Congratulations Andrea!

We await new membership information which will be available when renewals have been processed. If you have joined recently and want to be in touch, please write to any of the SIG leaders. Contact information is on the leadership page.

by Sharon Lynn, Manager QPI SIG 

Does anyone have an opinion or an interest in discussing or solving this problem?

What if my company built a power plant 20 years ago for X Company and now they come to us and say they want up to update the facility?

We don’t know where to find the plans for that 20-year-old plant. In addition, X Company was bought out by another company and now goes by another name.

What can we do today to prevent this from happening 20 years from now? How do we store information today (CADD and Word and other files) so that we can retrieve it 20 years from now?

Also, are there other questions like this that we might discuss this year?

Please welcome the 45 new members who are listed as joining the QPI SIG in November. We wish the 46 members shown as departing well. The QPI SIG now has 1023 members.

 by Sharon Lynn, incoming 2007 QPI SIG manager

To all in the Quality and Process Improvement SIG, let me introduce myself. I have always been a writer. 

For the past 15 years I have found a niche in technical writing and editing, first with Martin Marietta/Lockheed Martin in Houston, editing and publishing acoustic, thermal, avionics, and structural analysis reports for NASA’s international Spacelab/Life Sciences missions, including Spacelab Mir, Neurolab, and Spacelab Life Sciences 2. Since 1998, I have been technical editor with The Shaw Group in Houston, Texas, where I edit technical reports and plans that document environmental remediation work performed for government and commercial clients. 

At Lockheed Martin we used to say jokingly that the engineer-author and I were the only ones to read each report in its entirety. But I saw how critical the reports were when I got to work as a ”go for”  on the night shift at Johnson Space Center during the Neurolab mission. When a piece of equipment was in trouble during the mission, the mostly mathematical reports held the key to solving the problem.  

At Shaw I have been able to contribute to the technical life of the company, co-chairing a national monthly teleconference on Technical Publications since 2002 that promotes professional development of document production, editorial, and publications staff throughout the company. I serve as author, peer reviewer, and editor of local and corporate scientific, geologic, and editorial SOPs, and contribute to the corporate style guide. I’m also author of a local style guide for the Houston office that incorporates the company guide.

I joined the Quality and Process Improvement SIG (and the Policy and Procedures SIG) because I have always been able to rely on a good process to produce a quality product. And when something goes wrong I can revisit the process and discover how to improve it, thus, continuing to assure the quality of the product. 

Please welcome the 37 new members who joined the Quality and Process Improvement SIG in October. The QPI SIG has 1026 members; STC has 15,451 members. By recollection, this is the first time in the 15-year history of the Quality SIG that it has had more than 1000 members. For the second year, the Quality and Process Improvement SIG is the fastest growing SIG in STC.

Please renew your membership in STC. The renewal form is posted at https://www.stc.org/duesrenewal/ Dues for SIGs have doubled to $10.00. As always, please choose your options carefully to obtain the best value for you. (more…)

This site has the Survey Fly plugin. A site administrator can use the plugin to create a survey and then post it by including the text [ s u r v e y _ f l y ] without the spaces in the post or page.

The following is the current (November 1, 2006) survey, replacing a sample one posted in October. You are welcome to respond, but there is no one assigned to analyzing the responses at this time.

The QPI SIG experimented with the other survey plugins available in October, 2006, and found they do not work with this version of WordPress. (more…)

Please welcome the 30 new members who joined the Quality and Process Improvement SIG in September. We regret three members departed. The QPI SIG now has 987 members; the STC membership count will be reported when available.

Growth of the QPI SIG continues at a rapid pace. During the past year we have been the fastest growing SIG.

If you are a member, I hope you will take a moment and leave a comment to let us know what your expectations are as a member of the SIG. What do you want to learn about? Are there projects you’d like to see done, or work on?

Sharon Lynn and Elizabeth McQueen forwarded the proposals received by the QPI SIG for the progression at the annual conference to Rachel Houghton, who is insorporating them in the proposal for the Online SIG progression. The proposals related to accessibility and software development, and a document log in a Sharepoint system.

Sharon and Elizabeth continue to plan for annual conference activities, and we will be cooperating with other SIGs in various ways. If you are planning to attend the conference and make a presentation please let us know.

Development of a customer satisfaction measurement survey for the QPI SIG is tentatively scheduled to begin in November, provided we can find a way to administer the survey. This is being discussed on the STC Forum.

We continue to post information about publications standards on the STC Forum and to support members in finding information on standards. Subscribe to the RSS feed from the Forum to see information as it is posted.

Please welcome our 34 new members who joined in August. As of August 31 the QPI SIG had 960 members and STC had 15,202 members.

Sharon Lynn and Elizabeth McQueen have been working on plans for QPI SIG activities at the 2007 STC annual conference. There was some response to the call for participation in a progression, so we will be collaborating with some other SIGs to have quality-related presentations in more than one progression.

The QPI SIG continues to gain members. The list is quiet, and so are the Business process and Standards forums on the STC Forum. If you are a member, I hope you will post to the list or on the forum, or write to me, and let us know what you would like to learn and experience as a member of the Quality and Process Improvement SIG of STC.

The Standards forum on the STC Forum is updated continually by the QPI SIG, and attracts posts from members who are experts on standards. Please visit the forum, and post information that you have available to share.