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Dick Margulis notes: <<The idea was always to develop a draft proposal and
circulate it back on techwr-l for further comment and refinement. It's just
a discussion; we do not claim to be any kind of authority, nor are we all
enamored of the idea that STC would take over at some point.>>
Though I'm a long-time member of STC, they're hardly the only people who
should be involved in this--though given that they count somewhere on the
order of 20 thousand members, depending on the state of the economy, it
wouldn't make much sense to exclude them from the discussion and
implementation. Among other things, they've already got some good people
thinking about certification, and it would be foolish to discount their work
and reinvent the wheel.
IEEE's PCS (professional communication society) should obviously be involved
too. And if we broaden the scope of technical communication, there are many
other organizations that could provide useful input; for example, the Board
of Editors in the Life Sciences (www.bels.org) offers a reasonably rigorous
certification program (click the "certification" button on their site to
reach information on BELS certification) that should help you by providing a
starting point. The BELS certification is not yet widely known outside the
editorial community, but it's getting to be known.
The Canadian Translators and Interpreters Council also has a certification
program (http://www.synapse.net/~ctic/e_certif.htm). I'll note in passing
that a few of my colleagues who have achieved CTIC certification have also
commented privately and at great length on the subjective and highly
political nature of the certification process. That's something to keep in
mind in your discussions; as demonstrated by the ongoing exchange between
Andrew and John, tempers tend to run hot, and it's hard to be objective
about the issues.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"Wisdom is one of the few things that look bigger the further away it
is."--Terry Pratchett
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