LSC Notes and Committee Reports

In this section, you'll find the following committee reports by scrolling down:

• From Our Bylaws…
• LSC Competitions
• Mentor Program Committee
• Scholarship Committee
• Web Committee
• Member Recognition
• LSC Superstars
• Volunteer Committee

From Our Bylaws...
by Mike Hiatt , Parliamentarian

The official name of our local group is the Society for Technical Communication, Lone Star Community. You can refer to it as the STC Lone Star Community or STC LSC for brevity, but the STC should always precede the LSC. Never use LSC STC.

Our community has several committees—some of which are called for in the bylaws. The following committees are the current ones that we have:

Bylaws Community Service Competition Hospitality Job Bank Membership Newsletter

Nominating Program Public Relations Scholarship Seminar Student Web

LSC Competitions are on the Mooove!
by Kathryn Poe, Competitions Manager

Some folks have asked me, “Hey, what’s with the cow?” Well, I have named him Bert Best in Show, and he is here to remind you about the LSC competitions.

Got Entries? No Bull! The deadline is coming!

Cow design used with permission of the STC Phoenix Chapter

LSC will be judging our own entries in three categories:

• Online Communication
• Technical Art
• Technical Publications

Why should you enter? Have you or your company produced technical communication products that you think are worthy of awards? Would you like your work to be recognized by your peers? Would you like your boss or your company overall to realize what great work you do for them? An LSC award and a nice press release could be just the ticket.

Here’s the scoop:

Deadline for entries: 10/10/2007

Cost for each entry is:

• $75 per entry for professionals
• $25 per entry for students

If you enter a product into more than one competition or competition category, you must pay a separate fee for each competition or competition category entered.

Visit www.stc-dfw.org/pages/comp_main.htm to find entry forms and other information about the LSC Competitions.

Make checks payable to: STC LSC Competitions

Send your entries and forms to:

Kathryn Poe
c/o Corprasoft, Inc.
7557 Rambler Rd.
Ste. 1000
Dallas , TX 75231

Our Blue Ribbon Panel of Judges is waiting to see your best stuff, so:

Bring it on!!!

Mentor Program
by Ann Balaban, Associate Fellow and Manager, Mentoring Committee

Do You Need a Mentor?

Early in their careers, technical communicators in corporate environments often find that technical writing is perhaps the easiest and quickest of the many tasks they perform.

Probably the most difficult, time-consuming chore they face is locating the information needed to perform the writing task. First, the writer needs to find the person with the required knowledge and then find the right way to interact successfully with this individual while navigating within corporate cultures and politics.

How do new technical communicators find the best mentors to help them solve these problems? One way is to take advantage of the Mentoring program from the STC Lone Star community. As a new technical communicator or as a student in technical communication, you have valuable resources available to you through STC.

Research literature shows that mentors provide vocational and psychosocial support to protégés. One researcher found a link between these functions and the career mobility of protégés. Research also shows that technical communicators have relatively high job satisfaction, but that their corporate mobility and career development is relatively low. Mentors can help technical communicators become aware of additional avenues for career advancement because they often know what is required for other positions and how to prepare for assuming them.

Having a mentor can improve your skills in organizational communication and management, as well as increase your overall productivity and job satisfaction.

Resources:

1. Henrietta N. Shirk and Howard T. Smith, “Developing Effective Mentorships for Technical Communicators,” STC 1994 Annual Conference Proceedings.
2. Gordon, Thomas, Leadership Effectiveness Training, Wyden, New York, 1974.

Why Mentoring Matters

STC is always looking for new leaders. One way to locate and retain our next generation of leaders is by mentoring.

Mentoring can help STC develop new leaders while enhancing your career development and improving your technical knowledge. Besides all these great benefits, it really improves your self-esteem! The mentor’s growth occurs right along with the protégé’s.

The purpose for mentoring is to encourage growth of a less experienced person in their profession and within STC. Your experiences learning about and working with others qualifies you to be a mentor. If you had a mentor when you were starting out, imagine what a difference it would have made—if only I knew then what I know now! This is your chance to share your experiences, your enthusiasm for your work, and your interests with someone just starting out in technical communication.

In a mentoring relationship, the mentor and protégé:

• Identify objectives, goals, and development needs
• Define and establish a plan to accomplish goals
• Meet regularly in person, by phone, or through e-mail to review and evaluate progress

Mentoring is all-inclusive—no one is excluded who wants to participate. You do not have to be a student to be a protégé. Whether you are new to technical communication—just starting out or making a career change—or you have been a technical communicator for awhile and need guidance to jump-start your career, you can be a part of the mentoring program. Success is based on what you want to do. A mentor can suggest methods for advancement, recommend books and other resources, and offer résumé assistance and career guidance. As a protégé, you have requirements to fulfill, too. You should ask questions, listen and be open to suggestions, and keep the lines of communication open.

The STC Lone Star community is continually looking for mentors and people who need mentors. This is a wonderful program that benefits all involved.

Resources:

1. About.com: www.about.com
2. The Mentoring Leadership & Resource Network: www.mentors.com
3. The Resources Agency Mentor Program
4. Catheryn Mason and Elizabeth Bailey, “Benefits and Pitfalls of Mentoring,” STC 2005 Annual Conference Proceedings.

Scholarship Committee
by Robert Carr Harris, Manager, Scholarship committee

The Lone Star Community kicked off its program year last month. Many helped the Scholarship Committee raise money for the LSC scholarship fund through our monthly door prize raffle.

September Meeting Raffle Recipients

Fortune favored three lucky attendees at the September meeting:

• Chris LaPorte received an STC Region 5 conference tote bag stuffed with an Adobe t-shirt, LSC coffee mug, and other goodies.

• Kathryn Poe was the lucky winner of the Starbucks gift basket, which contained an iced-tea pitcher, tumblers, Tazo® Passion™ tea, and two T-Mobile HotSpot cards.

• Catherine McKinney won the Adobe Captivate book pack, which included an STC conference tote, STC leather-bound notebook, and the book “ Macromedia Captivate: A Definitive Guide,” graciously donated by STC Fellow, Brenda Huettner.

The Scholarship Committee congratulates the winning trio. We also want to warmly thank all those who participated in the raffle and also those who sponsored the prizes—Brenda Huettner and her publisher, WordWare Publishing (www.wordware.com), Starbucks®, T-Mobile®, and members like you.

Fall Scholarship Deadline Nearing…

As a reminder, the scholarship deadline is Friday, October 26. We are awarding scholarships for our Traditional Education Scholarship and our Continuing Education Scholarship.

Visit www.stc-dfw.org/pages/schol_main.htm for application guidelines and eligibility requirements, or e-mail me at scholarship@stc-dfw.org with your questions.

Thank you again for all your support. Here’s to the beginning of a great program year and to a wonderful year for scholarships!

Web Team Committee Report
by Paul Holland , LSC Web committee

Over the last month, I have had a unique opportunity, for me anyway (I understand other members of our community do this on a regular basis), and that is to work for two STC communities in a similar role. It has been interesting to see how different communities conduct projects.

The Northeast Ohio Community (NEO) is hosting the Region 4 Conference this fall and, having seen how the LSC so successfully hosted the Region 5 Conference last year, I was able to share with the NEO community much of what Jackie Damrau and her team had directed so effectively. I also offered to assist with the Region 4 conference Web site, because I had the opportunity to work with Elizabeth Bailey on the Region 5 Web site.

The NEO community organizes its Web team a bit differently than we do in LSC. We designate one person on the Web team to take the point position. This person then delegates tasks to the other team members. The end result, which may be unintended, is that one person carries the majority of the effort to sustain the Web site. The one exception is the additional functional role of managing the job board portion of the Web site.

The NEO community does a similar thing where they have one person who is responsible for the Web committee with the balance of the team including a number of members who take responsibility for specific portions. After their team leader was satisfied that I would not bring the site down and he was sure I had some clue of what I was doing, I was given access to the site. As I said, they divide the tasks fairly specifically so I was given the responsibility for the folder that held the conference site files only. That was effective for me because it kept me from being overwhelmed by the prospect of managing an entire site for a community where I really did not know anyone and would have minimal resources for getting answers. It also let me focus on a task, that, just because of the Region 5 experience, was one with which I was reasonably familiar.

The other community I support as Web master is the Marketing Communication (MarComm) Special Interest Group (SIG), www.stcsig.org/mc/, which is a very different experience because it is a virtual community. Consequently, I pretty much manage the site alone, but ping the community for ideas and thoughts. Since a virtual community does not have monthly meetings to augment and build the community experience, the Web site is even more important. Its main function is part of our only type of communication.

While I work with the NEO and the MarComm SIG, I continue working with Alan as he begins his LSC tenure as Web master. It is very interesting to work with Alan, Elizabeth, and this new team, and contrast the different ways there are in getting things done between the three models. Meeting and working with new people is always a rewarding, growing experience, but I also learned how comfortable and terrific my friends are in the LSC.

 

Member Recognition
by Mel Haughton, LSC immediate past president

Nominate a Bright LSC Star for the BALA!

Do you know an LSC member who displays enthusiasm, seeks difficult challenges, inspires others, and enhances the reputation of LSC? Then get ready to nominate this person for the Binion Amerson Leadership Award (BALA).

The BALA recognizes LSC members who provide great leadership and service to the LSC. Any member in good standing with the LSC may nominate another member.

Nominate someone today!

November 14 is the application deadline. We will announce the winner at the Awards Banquet on January 10.

Questions?

• Visit http://stc-dfw.org/pages/awards_Amerson.htm for more information.
• E-mail volunteers@stc-dfw.org .

Are you a Superstar?

Do you like making a difference and stepping up to help? Do you need a few more samples for your portfolio? Do you want to work on your networking skills? How about get your head around a new piece of software?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then dive in and start volunteering today. You’ll be on your way to becoming a Superstar!

You automatically receive points each time you participate in LSC activities. Points are based upon the activity and its point values and are listed in the table below.

LSC Activity	Points
Attend a monthly meeting	1
Attend a council meeting	1
Volunteer at an event	2
Contribute to a community service effort	1
Judge competitions	3
Contribute an article to newsletter	1
Bring a guest to meeting	1
Be a mentor	5
Present at an STC event (Local, regional, or international)	2
Speak to a student group about Technical Communication and STC	2
Convince a guest to join	5

Our Volunteer Wrangler will keep score from August 1, 2007 to June 1, 2008. Collect a total of 20 points to become an LSC Superstar. All Superstars will be recognized at the September 2008 meeting.

So, start volunteering today and become a Superstar and become part of the Superstar team. Winners receive a unique LSC Superstar shirt. The only way to get this shirt is to get involved and earn those points.

Send an e-mail to volunteers@stc-dfw.org to learn more about volunteer opportunities.

LSC Superstars Flying High
by Kathryn Poe, Competitions Manager

We in the STC Lone Star Community are lucky to have many great members who believe in STC and the advantages it can provide. Through the years, many folks have volunteered their time and talent to benefit the LSC. We thought it was time to set these folks apart in style. It was my great pleasure to present the LSC Superstar class of 2007 at the September 6th meeting.

Recipients (front row): Kathryn Poe, Doug Dow, Mike Hiatt, Dale Erickson;
(middle row): Louellen Coker, Jackie Damrau, Susie Lynn Fox, Jeanne Foster;
(back row): Chris LaPorte, Elisa Miller, Paula Robertson

Each of these folks received award points for activities such as attending meetings, volunteering at events, writing for the newsletter, and being a mentor. They all achieved the total of 20 points from the period of August 1, 2006 to June 1, 2007 to become the first group of LSC Superstars. When you see someone in the Superstar shirt, tell them congrats!

 

Volunteer Committee: Want to help a little?
by Mel Haughton, LSC Volunteer Wrangler

Have you thought about the difference you can make in someone’s life just by offering a bit of your time? How does it make you feel when you need help and someone actually comes through? Does it bring you happiness? Does it feel good to get something done as a team?

Where I come from we have a saying: “One hand helps the other.” If you give a bit of your time to help someone, one day someone will help you out as well. That’s how we like to work here at the LSC. We’re a big happy family, and we’re always looking for talented individuals to help us out!

We currently have the following opportunities that would take a limited amount of your time:

• Edit our Web site (a two- to three-hour job)
• Be a greeter or help at the Registration desk (a 30-minute job) during our monthly meeting
• Write, edit, and print programs for our monthly meetings (a two-hour job)
• Writie articles for our online newsletter, Technically Write. (The time commitment depends on how much you write!)

So it doesn’t take that much time! And if you think you can spare more time than this, think about organizing half-day workshops or serving as an assistant to a committee manager.

E-mail me at volunteers@stc-dfw.org if you want to make a difference in LSC.

What’s in it for you, you ask? Think about how you will increase your network! Think about the additions you can make to your résumé and your portfolio! Think about how many people will appreciate you for your efforts.

Send your e-mail to me right away, and let me know where you can help. I look forward to hearing from you!