Notes from 49th International STC Conference
Nashville, Tennessee, May 5-8, 2002

The Tina-Xena Transformation: A Recipe for Professional Empowerment

Dan Voss and W.C. Wiese
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control – Orlando

Dan Voss and W.C. Wiese, with Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control-Orlando (LMMFC-O), have 24 and 30 years, respectively, with the world's largest defense contractor. Their experience includes technical writing and editing, proposal writing and production, marketing communication, interactive multimedia, and management/supervision. They are members of the Orlando Chapter, where Wiese is Immediate Past President and Voss manages the Education Committee.

Session Description: This session provides an overview on how to leverage integrated strategic communication to increase one's value and respect in the workplace and then gives teams of technical communicators the opportunity to put those principles into action working on communication plans to meet challenging business and technical communication scenarios.

Links to Presentation, Workshop Materials, and Paper

Note: Since we were conducting this presentation and workshop, I obviously couldn't take notes. However, based both on our own observations and upon feedback from the conference evaluation forms, most participants felt both the presentation and the exercise were valuable. Links to the presentation itself; the workshop description, instructions, and scenarios; and a tech paper on integrated strategic communication at LMMFC-O are provided below.

• "The Tina-Xena Transformation: A Recipe for Empowerment".
  Presentation by Dan Voss and W.C. Wiese. The presentation consists of three elements: (1) a discussion of how technical communicators can become more assertive on the job, leveraging their unique abilities to forge communication solutions that will increase their involvement and status in company operations; (2) an overview of integrated strategic communication, explaining how the presenters' department integrates its internal resources and develops strategic alliances with other disciplines within the company to add value in the pursuit of new business and defense of existing business; and (3) examples of communication products within an integrated strategic communication campaign within one product line at LMMFC-O (anti-armor weapon systems).
• "The Tina-Xena Transformation: A Recipe for Empowerment".
  Workshop Description. This is a one-page summary and overview of the presentation and workshop.
• "The Tina-Xena Transformation: A Recipe for Empowerment" .
  Workshop Instructions. This is a brief outline of the workshop procedures governing small group work in developing integrated communication plans in response to selected communication scenarios.
• "The Tina-Xena Transformation: A Recipe for Empowerment".
  Workshop Scenarios.. This provides the full text of the four scenarios:
   
1. Scenario #1: "In This Corner, the Marauder III"
2. Scenario #2: "The Valdez II, Nashville Style"
3. Scenario #3: "Champagne Taste, Beer Pocketbook"
4. Scenario #4: "Plan Your Future--in Miami"
• "Integrated Strategic Communication: More than the Sum of its Parts".
  Paper by Voss and Wiese, published in Proceedings to 47th STC conference in Orlando, 2000, and provided as a handout to this session.