Entirely American Leadership for a "Global Society"?

I arrived at to office this morning to find notification that the STC Society level committee level election season has begun.

Up for grabs are the positions of Vice President, Treasurer, Nominations Committee member, and Director.

The first thing I noticed was that each candidate for leadership in this purportedly global society is that the entire field of candidates is American, living in America.

This is not surprising given the origin of the society in America, and the number of technical communicators residing and working in that great country.

Surely though, in 2013, we can start looking at leadership that recognizes the international nature of the Society by including candidates from outside of North America? We are, after all, the people who work to demystify technology by reducing it to procedures.

Can't we use a little technology to include European, Indian, or even Australian technical writers in the running for Society level leadership positions?

I am looking forward to using the Q&A forum that the STC has set up to question each of the candidates about their thoughts on supporting and enhancing the global nature of the STC.

Join me in a dogpile!

Resiliance versus Resiliancy

I came across this sentence in my own writing:

"Resiliency is accomplished through properly configured..."

I thought it looked weird. According to the grammarist, I wasn't wrong.

"Both nouns mean the ability to recovery quickly from illness or misfortune. But resilience is far more common than resiliency, especially outside the U.S. and Canada."

Wrong or not, I decided to go with the herd and use resilience.

STC Australia Chapter... whats the point?

We're now well and truly into the new year. I just renewed my membership, and was sure to pay extra and nominate Australia as my regional chapter.

Have you renewed? Are you thinking of joining? Have you ever wondered "what is the point of joining a chapter?"

 $25 is, after all, $25.

I thought it was a good exercise to start off the year with a look at the promise of chapter membership.

The STC Australia Chapter's official website has this to say about what we aim to provide:

A link about writer errors, to whet whistles.

Here is a good "check-box"  post of common writer errors to look for when you are about to publish something.

The title of the post is link-bait of course. Did I get you?

And... we're back.

Happy (belated) New Year everyone.

I found this post about what people hate about open source documentation, and I thought sharing it would be a good way to get back into the habit of blogging.

I've missed you.