There’s an ongoing discussion within the Connecticut Chapter on how to better serve the needs of members, make the chapter more relevant, and ultimately increase membership.
The Connecticut Chapter, like other Chapters and the Society, has been slowly losing members, and many who remain do not attend meetings regularly. Several board members work very hard to put out the newsletter, arrange meetings, set up training (such as our recent Adobe Flash training and previous Dreamweaver classes), and set up annual events, such as Professional Day at the University of Hartford.
Training and meetings have been moved around the state, from the southern end of Route 8, to Orange, to New Haven, to East Windsor, and other locations. Meeting agendas have been planned to address a variety of interests, most recently at Honeywell Tech Pubs in Northford, including a tour of the manufacturing facility. Additionally, we have offered door prizes, such as gift certificates to bookstores and iPods to draw those who needed a little extra ROI.
It’s not working. What can we do?
Some reasons for meeting attendance have been put forward:
- There is a general apathy towards the STC in general.
- There is apathy towards technical writing in general.
- There’s a move towards Webinars, and Webinars would be more successful.
- There’s an idea that the STC had become increasingly focused on software documentation and Web site development and that many publication articles, conference presentations, Webinars, and other offerings held little relevance for folks who work in defense, aerospace, manufacturing, medical, and scientific fields (although our board has actively contacted technical writers in these fields to offer meetings tailored to their interests and promote their participation)
So, please blog your thoughts. Some ideas:
- Are you a member? Why? Why not?
- Did you let your membership lapse? Why? Why not?
- Are you coming to Professional Day? Why? Why not? (Non members are welcome, btw.)
- Do you go to Chapter meetings? Why? Why not?
- Are you willing to help host a meeting? Please let us know.
And so forth. Please, communicate and blog. What can the Connecticut Chapter do to motivate you to be more active? What can we do to help you professionally? How can we get you to renew your membership or, if you are an inactive member, become active?
Blog away!
5 responses so far ↓
Judith Herr // March 25, 2008 at 8:19 pm |
“There is apathy towards technical writing in general. ”
Who is apathetic about technical communication? I’m not — but, I’ve been known to be something of a cheerleader for the profession. I enjoy what I do although I do understand that some jobs some of us do are not as challenging and interesting as others.
I do think we need to define our body of knowledge to include work across the sciences, techology, and engineersing for technical and lay audiences — and, across many industires and disciplines. Furthemore, it seems to me unfortunate if our enthusiasm for our profession lags just as we gain visibility.
I believe our employers and clients are beginning to understand how valuable we can be to their programs and projects beyond our traditional role of editor/writer.
After all, we have unique talents, skills, sense of humon, abilities to innovate, and experience to lead efforts to communicate technical and scientific information of all types to our targeted audiences. We are exceptional communication project, program, and team managers. We know how to cooridnate and facilitate team collaboration. And, we know how to research and apply new information to assure that our products are accurate and complete.
And, we see the humor in the ironic — and, know how to meet deadlines — declaring our work “good enough” if necessary.
Milan Davidovic // March 27, 2008 at 3:49 pm |
Better serving the needs of members depends on what those needs are — what are they?
Making the chapter more relevant depends on who you want to be relevant to, and what sorts of things they find relevant — so, who and what?
Increasing membership may simply not be in the cards for you. Is there really nothing that you can do with a small group?
Donna Ford // March 28, 2008 at 3:41 pm |
Above, Sean has condensed the content of recent e-mails among board members regarding future chapter events.
I would like us to further pursue two options that have been discussed:
1) Webinars – what does it cost/take to get this arranged for at least one meeting next year?
2) Joint ventures with other organizations with a presence in CT such as AMWA and with other nearby chapters or SIG – can we arrange a meeting before summer with local reps of such groups to discuss one jointly sponsored event next year?
And the larger question: do we have chapter members willing to pursue these alternatives?
Stuart Culshaw // April 22, 2008 at 6:20 am |
Sounds like you STC CT folk are in pretty much the same space as STC France. We too have been trying to determine how to better serve the needs of our members and make the chapter more relevant.
We plan to explore these issues in more detail over the coming months by surveying our members directly to find out *who* they are and *what* their needs are. As always, Milan is right on the ball there!
@Donna: We at the France Chapter have also been looking into possible webinar solutions. The simply answer to your question 1) is “not as much as you might think”. It generally depends on the number of participants in your meeting, but you can get away with paying as little as $30-50 for a month’s subscription to a fully-featured webinar service. A monthly subscription means you can potentially hold as many webinars in a month as you like at no extra cost, and you can always cancel your subscription if you’re not planning any webinars in a particular month.
Here are a few solutions which I like the look of (though we haven’t tried any of them ourselves yet.)
Convenos:
http://www.convenos.com/index.html
Yugma:
https://www.yugma.com/
GoTo Meeting:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/
GoTo Webinar:
https://www2.gotowebinar.com/
Additional hidden or disguised audio conferencing charges seem to be the big “gotcha” with these services, so watch out for that, though some of these solutions have built-in audio via VoIP. The important thing is to try out a few of the services with a small group of volunteers before attempting to organize your first real webinar.
I’d be interested to hear if you make any progress on this front. Hopefully we’ll manage to try this out in the coming year also. I’m sure there must be many other chapters who have held successful webinars, so you might want to try searching the STC member forum for more tips and tricks… HTH
Donna Ford // May 8, 2008 at 5:23 pm |
Thanks, Stuart, for your information. I’ve been busy with chapter elections and this topic had slipped off my radar.