STC and other societies, esp. in Toronto (was other topics)

[mpriestl -at- ca -dot- ibm -dot- com]

Michele Davis wrote that most of the topics at her STC chapter meetings
were entry-level, and the meetings lacking in cool people, but that she
found what she was looking for through involvement at a national level.

I had a similar experience here in Toronto, where the STC chapter is
strong, established, and full of fine people, but did seem - based on my
limited attendance of chapter meetings - geared more towards networking,
consulting, and entry-level topics. I ended up bypassing the STC entirely,
and getting involved at the national level with ACM SIGDOC instead.  One of
the advantages ACM has is its more direct ties with the computing
community, which makes sense for me given that I work at a computer
company. Much of the attendance at a SIGDOC conference consists of the
usual PCS/STC/SIGDOC suspects, but there's also overlap with computer
science types from the ACM side, who I think add a lot. As well, the
smaller size at the conference gives me more of a local chapter feel (so I
can easily corner speakers to get additional info) but at the national
level (where we can get speakers like JoAnn Hackos, John M. Carroll, and
Edward R. Tufte). One of the disadvantages, however, is that most of the
interesting people I meet there don't live in Toronto.

Rahel Bailie wrote that STC gets economies of scale, and I definitely agree
- the quality of its journal and conferences speak for themselves. That
said, I would be very interested in seeing the comparisons he mentioned.
Comparing IEEE PCS or ACM SIGDOC to STC, for example, would be very
misleading - they are interest groups in tech comm within larger
professional communities, the inverse of an STC SIG in a particular
industry.  If instead you compare ACM membership with STC membership, the
economies of scale are similar (although ACM is larger), and the resources
of ACM in areas like human factors and information retrieval are both vast
and vastly relevant. The core difference between STC and SIGDOC is that the
STC looks at tech comm as a profession across industries, where ACM SIGDOC
looks at it as an activity within a particular industry. Both of these
viewpoints are valid - we learn a lot by looking at how other industries do
things, but we also need to understand how our activities fit the needs and
contexts of our own industry.

Now I'm going to attempt to tie these two threads together by suggesting
that, as the STC is nicely complemented at the national level by other
professional societies (such as PCS and SIGDOC), it would be great if we
could achieve the same effect at the local level by starting a Toronto
chapter of SIGDOC (I'd suggest PCS as well, but I just don't have the ties
to that group to bring it off).  I don't guarantee that SIGDOC chapter
members would be any more tattooed or pierced than STC chapter members, but
it would provide an alternate (if not alternative) venue for discussion of
issues, which might let us focus on professional and technical issues
beyond the entry level, at least in the computer industry.

Anyone interested?

Michael Priestley
IBM Toronto Lab
ACM SIGDOC member, past member of STC


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Develop HTML-based Help with Macromedia Dreamweaver! (STC Discount.)
**NEW DATE/LOCATION!** January 16-17, 2001, New York, NY.
http://www.weisner.com/training/dreamweaver_help.htm or 800-646-9989.

Take XML and Tech Writing courses online!  Our instructor-led courses
(4-6 hrs/wk) give you "hands on" experience at your convenience. STC members
get 20% off!  http://www.online-learning.com/index.html.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.