I recently joined the board of directors of Writers and Books. It is a very kewl organization! I was quite surprised to learn that W&B is one of the largest literary organizations in the country—right behind NYC and Washington, D.C.

The November 30th event (scroll down) is a major fundraiser for the (non-profit) organization to help support its programs and scholarships. Come join us if you can! There will be some great stuff at the silent auction—a good way to get a head start on holiday shopping and to support a good cause. Details/admission price below…

Or check out the catalog www.wab.org/ and take a course—it’s a great way to tap the OTHER side of your brain!
—Margie

P.S. One item up for bid at the silent auction is a registration for the Rochester STC Chapter Spectrum conference this spring!

————- Original Message——-
From: Lezli White
To: wab_e-word@wab.org
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 6:11 PM
Subject: Come to Writers & Books 25th Anniversary Celebration

Only 13 days left
to buy your tickets for our
25th Anniversary Celebration!

In celebration of our 25th anniversary,
Writers & Books is holding a fundraising raffle
for a new Toyota Prius and a Silent Auction
in conjunction with our SENSE of PLACE and literary awards

featuring John Berendt,
renowned author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Thursday, November 30, 2006
5:30 to 9:30 p.m.
at the Rochester Academy of Medicine, 1441 East Avenue
Admission is $25 for members and $30 for the public
Reservations may be made by calling 585.473.2590 ext 107
Proceeds from the event will benefit Writers & Books’ many literary programs, events, workshops and readings
presented to youth, adults and seniors throughout Rochester.

Win a 2006 Toyota Prius
60/51 mpg Mid-Size Gas-Electric Hybrid
Fully loaded MSRP:$30,000
IntelliChoice 2006 Best Overall Value of the Year
Only 1,000 tickets will be sold
Great Odds!
Tickets: $100
Visit www.wab.org for details
or call 585.473.2590 ext 107

Silent Auction
memorable excursions, pampering services, gourmet experiences,
culinary delights, and other treats

including:

*Philip Seymour Hoffman signed Poster

*Adirondack Weekend in beautiful home

*Overnight for two at Esperanza Mansion
and cruise (http://www.esperanzamansion.com).)
and more!

Please spread the word:

The eBusiness Association (eBA) of Upstate New York will award two $1500 merit-based scholarships to outstanding undergraduate students attending a local academic institution or a to high school seniors with plans to attend an institution in the qualified geographic area.

The recipients of this award will exhibit strong academic achievement, leadership skills and thoughtful vision in the eBusiness arena. The winners will be selected in December 2006. The scholarships will be available for the school year beginning January 2007 and may be used for any academic related expenses, at the student’s discretion.

Applicants must visit the eBA web site and spend about one hour answering the online questions.

The deadline for this scholarship application has been extended to November 30, 2006.

Submitted by Bill Thomas, STC Senior Member, Rocky Mountain Chapter—-

Since I first joined STC in 1974, there have been discussions of whether Technical Communicators form a profession and whether certification would be a good idea. There have been roundtables, articles, recommendations, and hallway discussions in companies, chapter meetings, and presentations at STC conferences.

With the STC re-vitalization and transformation initiative, there has been renewed interest in certification and a new task force has been formed to look into answers. From STC President Paula Berger’s July Board Meeting Minutes, “I have asked Jonathan Baker and Dan Wise to lead a Certification Evaluation Task Force. The purpose is to investigate the issue of certification from all sides – value to employers and members, financial impact, feasibility of implementation, interest level – and report to the Society in May 2007 about their findings.” Jon Baker is a Program Manager within Technical Publications Operations within EMC Corporation and Dan Wise is an editor with the International Code Council.

Meeting weekly for the last month, Jon and Dan and a cadre of 18 STC members all across the country and in Canada have been meeting via conference call to determine the starting point and progress of this task. Once the questions have been hammered out and organized, the task force members will take these questions and attempt to get them answered in preparation for making a formal report to the STC board.

Questions typically asked have been along these lines:

• Is there a body of knowledge defining this profession?
• What would be the core competencies required?
• Would certification help or hurt the cause of the technical communicator in the field?
• How would employers react to certification?
• Would academia respond positively to a professional body of knowledge and teach standard courses to develop certified students?
• Would STC provide post-graduate, continuing education courses?
• Should certification be based on knowledge, experience or both?
• Would there be levels of certification (basic, advanced, master)?
• Will there be financial concerns on the part of STC, academia, employers, or practitioners that need to be addressed?
• Are there international or cultural considerations needing to be addressed?
• How would certification be marketed to sell the value of such a program and the profession to practitioners, employers, and academia?
• Would professional certification enhance the group or cause some to leave?

If you have comments or recommendations that this task force might consider, please send your information to STC_CTF@yahoogroups.com. If you would like to participate in the research the task force will be doing, contact Jon Baker, jbaker2525@earthlink.net, or DWise@iccsafe.org. We look forward to representing you and the profession to the Board in May 2007.

Member Recognition Programs

It’s time to consider the individual contributions of your community members and identify one or more members for a Distinguished Community Service Award (DCSA)! This program acknowledges the work of chapter members who provide exemplary service to the Society through their dedication to the chapter and its activities. Please visit http://www.stc.org/recog/awards01_DCSA.asp for more information, including the program guidelines, nomination form, and list of previous winners. I know there are many deserving members out there, so please take the time to nominate them!

STC also recognizes the exemplary dedication by student members to a student or professional community and its activities through the Distinguished Service Award for Students (DSAS) program. Please visit http://www.stc.org/recog/awards01_DSAS.asp for more information, including the program guidelines, the nomination form, and the list of previous winners. I’m sure there are deserving student members out there too, so let’s get them recognized!

*** The deadline for both DCSA and DSAS nominations is November 30, 2006. ***

Please send completed nomination forms to me at dir1@stc.org by November 30. I will review all region 1 nominations and make my recommendations to the board as to the members from region 1 who will receive the awards. As long as all submitters do a thorough job of completing the nomination form, I foresee no issues with putting forward your candidate(s) to the full board, which will vote on all DCSA and DSAS recipients for 2007 in December or January.

Community Recognition Programs
I’d also like to encourage all communities to plan to apply for a Community Achievement Award (CAA,) and be recognized for your accomplishments this year. The program has recently been revamped to bring it more in line with STC’s new strategic priorities. In addition, a new base level category of award (“Fundamental”) has been created to recognize communities that are clearly meeting (but perhaps not exceeding, for whatever reason) the baseline criteria for running a successful community.

As I reviewed the community reports just prior to the October Board of Director’s meeting, I was concerned when I saw that most communities were not planning to apply for this award this year. I realize that many communities are experiencing challenges, but most of you are doing some really good, creative things to keep your communities going and you should be recognized for those efforts!

So, be sure to check the www.stc.org website for the updated information on the CAA program. I looked just before sending this article out, and I did not see that the new information has been posted yet. The deadline for these awards is in the spring. More on this as we get closer.

Region 2 Conference Report
Kudos to the Region 2 conference planning committee for an outstanding conference! Some highlights are called out below:
•Great collection of presentations and expert speakers – a really good program with lots of globally recognized speakers and hot topics! I participated on a panel discussion called “Technical Communication Meets Business: Where Do We Go from Here?” which seemed to be very well received.
•Sponsorships – the conference planning committee did a fabulous job of covering their costs through corporate sponsorships! Many lessons to be learned from their successes in this area.
•Town Hall Meeting – Our new Executive Director, Susan Burton; President, Paula Berger; First Vice President, Linda Oestreich; and Second Vice President, Mark Clifford held a Q&A session with Region 2 conference attendees to that provided a forum for members and others to meet these influential STC leaders and get answers to their most pressing questions. This event was very well attended.
•Chocolate Raffle – Yes, a personal favorite of mine, and I won a nice assortment of European chocolates! The Transalpine chapter (aka the “chocolate” chapter) has been doing this for a number of years now. All monies raised were donated to a local charity. (Tip: Consider doing something similar to raise money for a charity near you or to raise money for your community. You could split the proceeds, donating half to a charity and retaining the other half for your community.)

Here’s how it worked: many who attended the conference brought an assortment of chocolate from their city, region, or country. These were all displayed on a large table near the conference registration desk for all to see (and drool over), and I spent a great deal of time here. Committee members sold (a limited number of professionally printed with the conference logo) raffle tickets throughout the conference. Mid-way through the conference, they SOLD OUT of raffle tickets! And, a black market for Chocolate Raffle tickets sprang up!

At the end of the final day of the conference, all the chocolate was bundled into a number of small assortments and raffled off during the closing reception (complete with champagne, hors d’oeuvres, and cakes!). Executive Director Susan Burton and former Region 2 Director Vici Koster-Lenhardt acted as Emcees for the raffle. It was quite a lively affair and seemed to be thoroughly enjoyed by the whole crowd!

Board Meeting Report
The Board met in London on October 12-13, with a workshop day on the 12th and our official face-to-face fall board meeting on the 13th. The board’s focus during this time was on membership, marketing, partnerships, and the 2007 budget, which we have now finalized.

Please visit http://www.stc.org/PDF_Files/101306_BoardReport.pdf to read the official meeting minutes. You can also access a slide presentation containing status updates on all STC committee work, as well as summaries of regional community reports from the Director-Sponsors at .

Making life easy!
t’s almost here! World Usability Day (WUD) is November 14, 2006 and promotes the value of usability engineering and user-centered design and the belief that every user has the responsibility to ask for things that work better. The Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) (www.usabilityprofessionals.org) is doing that by encouraging, organizing, and sponsoring 36 hours of activities at the local level around the globe, all occurring on this day. The UPA, UPA chapters, and allied organizations (of which STC is one!) will all hold events revolving around the common theme – “Making life easy!” The focus this year is on accessibility and inclusion.

Organizing STC’s participation in this event are Rahel Bailie and Jerome Ryckborst. As we get closer to the day, look for more information about how STC is participating and for events in your area. For more information, visit www.stc.org/wud.

Out and About
My chapter visit plans for this year continue to take shape and look like this at the moment:

Tech Valley Chapter, November 15, 2006 Northern New England Chapter, January 2007 Boston Chapter, STACIES, February 2007

And, I’m working with the Canadian communities (Eastern Ontario, London Ontario Student, Southwestern Ontario, and Toronto) on a possible joint visit or “sweep” through Ontario province to visit all of these chapters in a single trip sometime next spring.

Please let me know what your program plans and events are for this STC year and if you’d like to me to visit your chapter or attend a special event. I will continue my visits as your interest and my finances and schedule permit.

PERSUASIVE 07 - The Second International Conference on Persuasive Technology
26-27 April 2007, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California

Can a web site persuade you to be politically active?
Can a mobile phone motivate you to exercise?
Does instant feedback on gasoline use change how people drive?
Do online rating systems inspire people to behave better online?

PERSUASIVE 07 will focus on how digital technology can motivate and influence people. This event will bring together researchers, designers, and developers interested in computers designed to change human attitudes and behaviors in positive ways.

Key themes of PERSUASIVE 07 include health, education, sustainability, productivity, social relationships, trust, credibility, ethics and more. Technologies of interest include web sites, mobile phones, video games, and electronic devices, among others.

Call for Papers
Submission Deadline: December 15, 2006.

Academics and practitioners are invited to submit their work for presentation at PERSUASIVE 07 at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California on April 26-27, 2007. The conference welcomes original papers based on empirical studies of technologies designed to change attitudes or behaviors. Also welcome are papers that advance theoretical understanding of persuasion dynamics, methods for research, and related ethical issues. We also seek case studies of the highest quality that give insight into the design or distribution of persuasive technology products. We will select papers using a blind peer-review process.

For more information, see http://www.persuasivetechnology.org/ or contact:

Dr. BJ Fogg (conference organizer): bjfogg@stanford.edu or
prof.dr. Cees Midden (paper review chair): c.j.h.midden@tm.tue.nl

Nonprofit organizations often stand on the sidelines during election season. Fears that they could violate IRS regulations and lose their nonprofit status are the primary reason, but the law actually allows 501©(3) nonprofits to engage in a wide variety of election activities including voter education, voter registration, and get-out-the-vote activities. There is only one one restriction: the activities must be nonpartisan.

What does that mean, exactly? A nonprofit organization can’t campaign for or against a particular candidate or party, or express a preference for or against parties or candidates who have stated particular positions on issues.

So, what can we do, as a chapter, to get involved in future elections? Here are a few ideas. It may be too late to pursue some of them this year, but we can keep these in mind when setting our chapter goals and programs for next election season.

• Post a voter registration link on our website.


• Encourage our members to volunteer, support, and vote for candidates of their choice.


• Participate as a group in non-partisan voter registration campaigns and ‘get out the vote’ efforts.


• Encourage our members (freelancers, retirees, and those who are able to take a day off for volunteer programs) to work as election inspectors at their local polling places.


• Solicit input from our membership on issues of local and national concern such as health care, social security, small business regulation, and other issues of interest to our members, and send a summary to platform committees, campaign staff, candidates, media, and the general public.


• Issue a candidate questionnaire to foster discussion among candidates, public officials, and voters about the issues that affect us.


• Attend candidate debates and pose questions about those issues.


• Organize educational events in cooperation with other local organizations to raise awareness of issues that affect our members.


• Sponsor a candidate forum at one of our fall program meetings, or as a special event.

None of these activities, conducted properly, will violate our nonprofit status. They do, however involve thought and hard work. Why should we bother? We live and work in a local community, a region, a nation, a world. We share the responsibility to help make those places better.