You Be the Judge

on the LSC Competitions Committee

by Rob Brown, 2004-2005 Competitions Chair

The Lone Star Community of the STC needs volunteer judges to help with its 2004-2005 Technical Publications competition. You get to perform a valuable service for your colleagues while your technical communication industry perspective is enhanced. Working with other Lone Star judges, you have the opportunity to see new techniques, design models, and ideas for developing technical communications. As you judge competition entries, you learn quality control guidelines that can be applied to your company or client documentation.

Commitment

All judges must be present to pick up entries that have been assigned to you. We will distribute the entries to judges at the Judge Training sessions to be held in mid October. (We are still working on finalizing locations for these. Watch your IPIC Lone Star Community News for more information.) If you can't make one of the training sessions you may pick them up from one of the competition judges the week of October 18. Again, as we get closer to October, more details will follow on the IPIC, through e-mail, and at http://www.stc-dfw.org/pages/comp_judge.htm.

As a judge you need to be willing to spend several hours carefully reviewing your entries and writing a detailed critique for each.

This year, the Lone Star Community will be exchanging entries with the Puget Sound Community.

All judges are required to attend the Consensus Judging day Saturday, November 6, from 9 a.m.—12 noon to reach consensus with other judges on your team, and to return publication entries/judging forms to the Competition Managers.

For more information on judge's duties, see the Lone Star Community web site at http://www.stc-dfw.org/pages/comp_judge.htm.

Requirements

To be a judge, you must meet at least one of the following criteria

• Five years experience as a technical communicator
• Award winner in a past STC Competition
• Taught courses or given presentations in the field of technical communication
• Published papers or articles in the field of technical communication
• Degree or certification in Technical Communication, Instructional Design, Graphical Arts or Design or related field.

To volunteer as a Judge

If you meet the defined criteria as shown above, complete the Judge's Application Form found at http://www.stc-dfw.org/pages/comp_judge.htm and return it to one of the competition manager's e-mail addresses as found within the form.

If you have any questions after reading the web site information, contact Rob Brown at competitions@stc-dfw.org.