Notes from 50th International STC Conference
Dallas, Texas, May 18-21, 2003

23 New Ideas from STC's 50th Annual STC Conference

W.C. Wiese
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control - Orlando

Description: W.C. has traditionally gleaned 10 to 25 nuggets of bleeding-edge professional development information from STC conferences and brought them back to share with colleagues. Here is the latest installment...

STC

• The Society for Technical Communication is the largest professional organization devoted to the practice of user-oriented communication in print and electronic media.
• With 20,000 members, STC has more than 150 local chapters around the world, as well as 18 special interest groups serving the STC membership.

At Leadership Day

• Beth Tanner, Middle Tennessee, was introduced as our incoming Director-Sponsor.
• Orlando was identified as a Chapter of Excellence – positioned to gather all the marbles on Tuesday night. Suncoast received Merit.
• Outgoing President Ed See described 2002-3 as a hard year. There was less company support, this year's conference is again smaller.
• He noted that the society is going to adapt to the trends in the year ahead. STC now embraces many professional skills, and we are beginning to see ourselves as "communities of practice." We may operate more as our present SIGs, and less like geocentric chapters.
• Thea Teich was introduced as the incoming STC President.
• The Society's Executive Director Bill Stolgitis will retire after 21 years in the position. Peter Herbst will become the new Executive Director. Stolgitis will remain in the office in a legal consultant role.
• The Frank Smith Outstanding Journal Article Award went to Moving from Information Transfer to Knowledge Development published in August 2002. The article asks whether we create or only transfer knowledge in the technical communication profession.
• Local Impact – Alicia Fellure managed the International Online Communication Competition; Karen Lane was Stem Manager for Writing and Editing, and Dan Voss was manager for the AccessAbility SIG.

Conference

1. Volunteerism in a Busy World – Mary Merrill – Lack of time is the key barrier to volunteerism. In a world that runs with a whitewater pace, we live in a state of time poverty.
   
   People prefer “episodic volunteerism” in which commitments are short-term and time-specific. Corporations model this in their community action campaigns (United Way campaign).
   
   The book Bowling Alone notes that leagues have disappeared as a social phenomenon. People don’t come together today in the old ways.
   
   Generational differences are impacting professional societies. Membership doubled in societies up through 1965, then began to decline as a percentage of people in the profession. Today, to continue to attract members, membership no longer requires involvement.
   
   In 2002, among Americans 16 and older, studies found 27% volunteer an hour a week. More actively involved volunteers often face burnout from doing too much.
2. Generational Characteristics – In the Vet Generation (pre-1944), civic duty runs strong, and even today, they fill the void left by their children. Baby Boomers (1945-64) are me-oriented. They give more to their jobs and have built leadership team concepts. The Gen-Xers are results oriented and don’t like groups, structure, or politics. They grew up as latchkey kids, so they are OK with being alone. They trust technology and don’t want management positions. They like what they do as long as it doesn’t involve leadership. They do respond to personal issues (like Columbine High).
   
   Today's newest generation, the Nexters, also appear to be civic-minded. They like speed and variety, and they need immediate reinforcement – such as instant SAT scores. Because they have had rich opportunity, they see themselves as equal to their elders.
   
   Professional societies and volunteer service organizations must target benefit statements to each group.
3. Adapting Volunteer/Membership Opportunities – To successfully involve today's busy people, organizations must adapt their expectations. Form ad hoc rather than standing committees to ensure that there is an endpoint to the activity. Joining the leadership means making a long-term commitment, so organizations must avoid succession approaches – no one will make this kind of commitment today. Reward systems need to change. We have tended to recognize years of service rather than quality of service.
   
   Organizations need to recruit in new ways. Focus on personal ROI rather than what the organization wants from its members. An effective organization talks about its vision, not short-term needs. Volunteering should be a place that allows you to take risks, try something new, learn new skills, and experience personal growth.
4. Building Community – Americans now instinctively test volunteer opportunities against a set of core workplace values:
    
   • Is this a noble cause? Does what I’m doing have value?
   • Does this provide personal growth, self-development, new skills?
   • Will I form new partnerships?
   • Can I participate in a workplace community?
   • Can I balance this effort with time for my personal life?
   This means that organizations need to be more flexible and avoid creating traps. Offer short-term roles, teamed leadership. Use technology (conferencing, netmeetings) to avoid meeting travel. Find ways to build community. Offer "30-minute volunteer workouts" to engage beginners and let them try it on for size – make it non-threatening.
5. A Marvel – Despite the generational changes and concerns about organizational participation, the rest of the world marvels at volunteerism in America. We are the model.
6. How to e-Publishing a Chapter Newsletter – Patricia B. Wade – The Northwest Arkansas Chapter uses WorldMerge to send its newsletter from an Excel spreadsheet of email addresses. They find that it's hard to put html files into Outlook. They prefer to send a link. It also satisfies those few members who don't choose to read the newsletter.
   
   They also use a Yahoo account to notify members of upcoming meetings and capture RSVPs via a click reply feature.
7. Keynote Observations – Natalie Angier – On the Challenges of Scientific Writing – Clarity matters most of all. The writer must understand it! Angier recommends letting the text alone for a couple hours and then reading it aloud to make sure it makes sense. She says that the public doesn't seem to understand much about science. It has a basic understanding of sports (everyone instinctively seems to know what "ACC" means and how a "field goal" is scored in football). On the other hand, science writers have to explain everything.
8. On Scientific Anonymity in a World of Sports Heroes – Angier noted that a scientist can win the Nobel Prize and somehow remain anonymous. Scientists know they should communicate more and explain their work to make their contributions more accepted. Yet, within the community, public explanation somehow diminishes their perception of the quality of the work. Sagan and Gould were less technically respected by their peers because of their work with the public. A quandary is that we can't get 10th graders to go to the science museums that amazed them in elementary school. The head of the National Academy of Science is obsessed with science education to address this problem.
9. The Technical Communicator as a Strategic Consulting Partner – This Hewlett-Packard presentation noted that we are normally the first users of a new product. Therefore, we can become a business partner that leads to product and policy changes that affect sales. Get to know your customer’s business, and find out how your product gets the customer to where he needs to be.
   
   The result can be development of your role into a consultancy with your management and development of your own business skills. Learn about organizational design and operational effectiveness. You need to be able to state your value proposition – what you contribute to the bottom line – and validate it to management.
   
   And take risks to beat your competitors. Have you heard about the Michigan body shop that repairs your car overnight and drops it off to you at your home?
10. The Trusted Advisor – This book by David H.Maister (http://www.trustedadvisor.com/writing.html) explores the trust relationships we build. Our offerings may be service-based, need-based, relationship-based, or trust-based. We first offer a product, then a process to manage it, and ultimately grow to an advisory role on other issues. Your length of time and quality of service opens doors to trust relationships and more creative roles.
    
    Everyone has personal power – you just need to learn what yours is and how to use it. Can you reduce cycle time? Organize information? Convince customers?
11. Technical Communication in the Year 2013 – A San Jose State professor looked at trends for the future as a member of the World Future Society (http://www.wfs.org/). The way writing is taught has changed substantially from the 1970s when you were told to start with a thesis, build an outline, then write. The current trend relies on self-expression. The professor credits Apple Computer as being the best explainer of technology in the 1980s with its emphasis on graphics-intensive writing. Now we design information for online consumption, including PDAs.
12. Dog-Eat-Dog – In 2013, you will wake up nowhere near the business you support, but you will be able to work anywhere and anytime. You will compete globally, even as an individual, and be more self-reliant. As a result, certification will become more important as practitioners have less direct contact with those who employ them. A new position, the Chief Information Officer, will evolve to control the DTDs and standards that control policies and procedures throughout an organization.
13. Information Process Maturity Model – JoAnn Hackos (http://www.comtech-serv.com/) – This update on earlier work reflects a Software Engineering Institute-like process model applied to publishing organizations. Hackos says that we need to remember that our departmental organization is actually part of a larger organization, and it's hard to be very much ahead of the whole. But, the more an organization defines standard processes and uses them, the better its products are likely to be.
    
    ISO basically tells your organization to write what you do and then do what you write. They don’t tell you how. So what makes a publications organization effective? Where are the standards? Work was done with 15 companies in the mid-1990s to identify which organizations were working at higher levels.
14. You Need Metrics – Especially important now. As economic conditions cause staff reductions and retirement removes corporate memory, companies now need better process controls. The Harvard Business Review carries this theme: to survive the downturn, you needed effective management back when times were good. You need metrics, you need to know what things cost, you need to know ROI. As worst, you become an immature organization that reacts to crisis, compromises quality, and has little focus on customer needs.
    
    Inefficiency comes from silos of responsibility. Outcomes are unpredictable and writers work for the engineer.
    
    Effective publication organizations perform well in 6 areas: organizational structure (highly distributed or centralized), quality, cost control, planning, hiring, and training.
15. The New Offshore Trend – There is a growing incidence of creating documentation overseas. Because other countries speak English (India, the Philippines), companies believe they can save money by having their product documentation written elsewhere. This becomes an unmitigated disaster when the US staff is laid off.
16. Levels of Performance:
     
    • Level 1 is like cottage industries in enclaves.
    • Level 2, procedure descriptions have begun. Also applies to mergers – implies bickering and internal conflict.
    • Level 3, procedures are organized and repeatable, and processes are followed. However, this stage is manager-driven and the work is easily lost when the manager leaves.
    • Level 4, processes are managed and sustainable, culture has changed. What's difficult is that there is not a tradition of technical communication to influence actions. Structured writing, collaborative teams, content management cannot occur until this level is reached.
    • Level 5 is utopia. Everyone is on board, continuously improving, innovative, agile.
    Hackos' advice: keep up the pressure to do it right. Cut your losses and go for wins with the technical managers who support better work practices. Bring in outside groups to overcome strong personalities. Practice pushback behaviors and gather testimonials from internal customers. Reward those who use the system.
17. Fish Book – Hackos recommended the book Fish! A Remarkable Way To Boost Morale and Improve Results by Stephen C. Lundin Ph.D., Harry Paul, and John Christensen as an example for management. A good organization is managed, and everyone in it knows what quality means. (Review at http://www.qm2.com/breviews/5.html.)
18. Focus on Intellectual Capital – A 1990s study of technical communication organizations found that groups need to acquire intellectual capital to be perceived as valuable. We are in a unique position to provide insight on user behavior. Find a way to use it.
19. STC Impacted by 2001 Events – The STC Forum included a discussion of economic impact on the Society, whose situation parallels that of a number of professional organizations in the United States. Conferences, once lucrative enough to be a major funding source for the Society and reduce membership dues, have been shrinking. STC's membership peaked in 2001, then dropped following 9/11. Fortunately, 2003 membership is up by 17 percent. But the annual conference continues to shrink.
    
    Participants noted that the 2004 conference will fall during many college graduations, and finals week for others – students otherwise look to the conference as a recruiting opportunity.
20. Student Voting – Why can't students vote in Society elections? They can! The catch is that they must pay a full membership price. Most organizations do the same because they lose money at the student rate.
21. New President's Initiatives – Incoming President Thea Teich says she sees STC members as customers. She wants to find services that resonate with the membership and provide them. Her focus will be to sell the organization to employers and to new members.
    
    A research grant is addressing return on investment in professional communicators, which updates the study published in the February 1995 issue of Technical Communication.
    
    As the society begins to evolve along the lines of communities of practice, it's not clear how our chapter/region structure will be affected. The society will communicate its vision of this transformation in an upcoming issue of intercom. A subset of the existing board has been empaneled to make recommendations.
22. Storytelling as a Design Technique – Saul Carliner – You can't get enough information about your audience when you prepare user documentation. Take the time to probe Marketing for more information, and talk to users directly if you can. You need to understand the context of use to make technical description effective. More likely than not, your company is not user-centric.
    
    If you tell your user's story, the information is easier to recall, and your reader generally relates to the individual in your example. Oftentimes, the user’s direct comments give you the ability to persuade upper management to make product improvements.
    
    Best of all, spend a day in the life of your user client. Take a logbook to write in, create a diary (or have them do it for you). Consider using the apprentice model – have your client teach you to do their job. People enjoy telling others about what they do, and they will give you a "back story" about how they came into the business.
23. Talk to an IM Bot – Walter Campbell, AOL – Apparently almost all of us have used instant messaging, and now it has become an excellent customer support method. There will be 100 million Instant Messaging users by 2005.
    
    For customer support, IM is cheaper than telephone support, and one representative can cover multiple conversations at once. Users also hate the endless "press 1" menus and long wait times telephone service requires to be able to ask a simple question: "Has my order been shipped?"
    
    Many organizations are involved in personalizing this interface using avatars and software that communicates as if it were an actual person. A basic bot can respond to user queries, provide information, promote products, and shoot the breeze, all anytime and anywhere on nearly any device. They're still in development, so there are bugs. But they have also evolved into the world of entertainment. "SmarterChild" is a bot you’ll have to pay for, but is a good illustration of the potential if you would like to chat. This link is at http://www.smarterchild.com/.