Summer 2005

Volume 45, Number 6

President's Corner

by Marc Lee, STCRMC President

I write this column for the last time, as I come to the end of my year as president of the RMC. What follows is an informal assessment of the State of the Chapter from the perspective of a past president.

As a chapter we have had our challenges…and by far the greatest for my tenure was the loss of a program manager right at the beginning of the year. To me, meeting programs are the heart of what the RMC chapter is all about, because I view them as a major component of the member value that we deliver.

The effort we made to not only fill in for the loss but to project a sense of year-long program planning was the most productive aspect of my presidential year. In October, we published a list of the programs planned for the year and — for the most part — we stuck to the plan (with a lot of furious improvising along the way). I take this to be the biggest accomplishment of the year, and the comments I received from members seem to confirm this. As we stand now, the next administration will be carrying this idea to greater lengths with a much better planned year-long program agenda for 2005-06 than we had in 2004-05.

One of the greatest disappointments of the year was the loss of the competitions for 2004-2005, and there are dim prospects for getting back into the competitions business, at least in the near future. In some ways it was bound to happen — having relied on the same team of competitions managers for 10-15 years. They had done their duty extremely well but, alas, knowing the Herculean effort involved, no was willing to step up to fill their shoes. The competitions are a great loss because they are the one chance to focus on the really impressive accomplishments that teams of talented technical communicators can produce, shifting attention from costs and issues to the powerful benefits it provides when it's really good.

Financially, I inherited a very healthy chapter. We leave it (thanks to a great effort by our treasurer) in the same condition. We made moves to be more frugal with the chapter's money and reduced out-of-pocket expenses per meeting from upwards of $1000 to $500-700 per month. This will continue next year with the decision to consolidate all meetings to the Executive Tower Hotel in downtown Denver. This will provide economies of scale that come with an annual meeting-host contract as compared to single-meeting contracts.

Chapter membership has slipped significantly in the last 5-7 years, but began to remain reasonably stable for the last couple of years. We attribute this mainly to the loss of employment in the high-tech sector in the Denver market. Our recruiting and membership efforts this year were well done and successful. The current membership is just under 400 — down from about 470 at the end of 2004. I estimate that we will attain the year-end 2004 totals at the end of 2005.

On a personal level the most rewarding aspect of the presidential year was being able to experience a much broader cross-section of the profession by interacting and corresponding with a wide range of chapter members. One of the best aspects of this job is simply being able to meet and speak to a wide variety of technical communicators, during normal chapter work, at chapter meetings, or at chapter-sponsored seminars. Far from a scientific survey, the picture I receive is of a profession and a pool of professionals far from a state of equilibrium. Indeed, the profession seems to be in a constant state of upheaval, churn and job change. For people entering the profession, there is the question of getting the first job, knowing what tools to purchase and learn. For the mid-career pros, it's a matter of finding a specific niche to specialize in or making the decision to go out on one's own as an independent.

It also seems to me that we've entered an era of more highly defined sub-specialties…where even technical communicators have trouble explaining their current job function to other communicators. Everything from 'user experience designers' to usability professionals to project managers to information architects to instructional designers to multimedia developers to online help designers to web masters….all comprise our chapter today (and that leaves out the standard tech writer/illustrator job descriptions which are still well represented among us).

One recommendation I leave is to continue with efforts by the chapter to sponsor more in-depth-type professional development activities. The recent success of the Jane Smith instructional design seminars in May show that there is a 'market' for in-depth learning venues, given reasonable prices. The chapter should be in a position to sponsor such events at acceptable price points given our contacts and the pool of well-recognized content presenters within the chapter and Society.

Finally, I leave you with the thought that we, as a profession, have an important calling and niche within the greater society — that of making technology accessible to the average person. Each day, on the job, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture, but in an advanced technological society such as ours, it's important to provide the public with meaningful, accurate information about the technological wonders that intersect our lives each day. This is an important contribution: each of us endeavors to make the world a bit less confusing to the users of technology each day. It's worth the effort, folks. Hang in there.