New name needed for Interco

[Liz Babcock <Liz_Babcock -at- JDAM -dot- CHINALAKE -dot- NAVY -dot- MIL>]

Mail*Link(r) SMTP               New name needed for Intercom

Here's an opportunity for you to do a little brainstorming and help STC in the
process. We need a new name for _Intercom_, and I hope you can help.

Here's a little background. The two publications that all STC members receive
regularly are _Intercom_, a monthly newsletter designed to keep members
informed about chapter and Society events and decisions, and _Technical
Communication_, our quarterly journal.

During the program year just concluded, a Blue-Ribbon Panel composed of seven
of our most knowledgeable members, studied the journal and made
recommendations about ways in which it could be improved. One of the
recommendations was that the regular columns that had been appearing in the
journal should be reviewed on a column-by-column basis for appropriateness,
with some of them perhaps to go to the newsletters of our Professional
Interest Committees, some of them to appear in _Intercom_, and some of them to
be canceled.

That review has now been done by Roger Grice, the journal's current editor,
and Carol Barnum, Assistant to the President for Publications, and the result
is that many columns will be moved to _Intercom_, where they can appear in a
more timely fashion and where they will not overlap with material that was
already being presented there.

What will happen to _Intercom_ as a result is that it will become much more
like a magazine and less like a newsletter. So . . . we need a new name to go
with the new content. Bill Stolgitis, our executive director, has asked for
all suggestions by May 15 so that he can whittle them down to a short list to
present to the Executive Council of the STC Board for action. His goal is to
make the new magazine happen as soon as possible, perhaps as early as
September.

My challenge to all Techwhirlers, then, is to come up with a great new name
for our new magazine. Please send your suggestions to me, not to the list.
I'll compile all suggestions and send them along to the STC Office. If there's
interest in having this compilation posted to the list, let me know, and I'll
do that too. And I can let you know what the final decision is.

I don't have any criteria for what the name should be, but when the board
discussed it, we realized that an intercom is now not a very high-tech piece
of equipment. If your brainstorming runs along that line, please remember that
STC represents many types of technical communication specialties (as well as
writing and editing).

I'm looking forward to seeing what you creative folks come up with.

Liz Babcock
Immediate Past President, STC
liz_babcock -at- jdam -dot- chinalake -dot- navy -dot- mil