Introducing SIG Activities at the Local Level
by Sylvia Miller, Senior Member

Author’s Note: You may wish to read “STC’s Communities of Practice—Networking with our Peers” in this newsletter before reading this article.

Have you ever found yourself wanting to talk with a fellow technical communicator about a question you faced with formatting a document, approaching a new project, or perhaps even dealing with a unique technical communicator in a group that you were managing? Perhaps you were lucky enough to know a few fellow STC members you could call or email for advice. Unfortunately, if you’re fairly new to the chapter or just haven’t attended many chapter meetings, you might not yet have established that peer network. This is where the STC Special Interest Groups, or SIG’s, are invaluable. With SIG newsletters, SIG Web sites, and SIG listservs at your disposal, you have a better chance of conferring with colleagues doing the same type of job, writing the same type of content, or developing in the same medium that you do.

Goals
Perhaps you’ve been reading that part of STC’s Transformation is the development of communities of practice, of which SIG’s are one important element. When your SWO-STC board met this past July, we decided to do more with local SIG’s this year in order to align our chapter with the new direction of STC. We recognized the existing Creative Writing SIG of our SWO chapter, and figured we could expand on that idea. Recently, you should have received an online survey designed to ascertain SIG’s represented in our chapter, member interest in attending local SIG meetings, etc. From this survey, we identified the following goals for this first year of local SIG activity:

  • Identify SWO chapter members who belong to STC SIG’s. (STC provided us with this information, so this goal has been met.)

  • Survey SWO chapter members to assess their interest in local level SIG activities. (This one has also been met.)

  • Identify local SWO members not currently in an STC SIG but who are interested in participating in local SIG activities.

  • Identify one liaison from each local SWO SIG who would work with the SIG

  • Coordinator (yours truly) to schedule small, informal get-togethers and invite members. (More about liaisons in a moment.)

  • Facilitate the organization of three to four local SIG get-togethers for the 2004-2005 year (tentatively, October, January, April, and possibly July).

  • Publish a list of local SWO SIG members and participants for networking and conferring as needed.

Liaisons
To help with organizing and managing local SIG’s, the SWO chapter is kind of like the Marines right now: we are in need of a few good men (and women). There are 19 STC SIG’s currently represented in our chapter, and it would be almost a part-time job for one person to organize and manage 19 Local SIG’s, so if you’ve ever wanted a chance to get involved in SWO-STC without a huge commitment of time, here’s your chance. Here is what a liaison will do (just three to four times this year):

  • Preferably, you are currently a member of an STC SIG and are on the SIG’s listserv .
  • This is not a requirement, but should help with “discussion fodder” at SIG gatherings (see the fourth bullet below).

  • Locate a restaurant, church, school, community center, or other facility where a small SIG gathering could occur. Refreshments are not necessary—that’s totally up to you and/or the group. Meetings could run 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 or 8:00 p.m., or they could be held on a Saturday morning over coffee somewhere.

  • Send a quick announcement email to 10 to 25 people in your SIG about one month in advance to notify them of the date, time, and place of the gathering.

  • One to two weeks before the SIG gathering, email your SIG members to ask for topics that they want to discuss. If you get little or no response, cull your STC listserv and bring a pertinent topic or two to stimulate discussion (this is the “discussion fodder”).

  • At the gathering, be the moderator to be sure no one person dominates or the gathering does not turn into a gripe session.

  • Send a short email to the SWO SIG Coordinator (yours truly) after the gathering summarizing topics discussed and how everything went.

You could even get a friend to be a co-liaison to split the above tasks with you. For this first year, our SIG gatherings will be informal discussions—a sharing of ideas and experience among peers. At the end of this year, we’ll evaluate the plausibility of arranging guest speakers for SIG gatherings. Also, next year this concept could evolve into Dayton gatherings and Cincinnati gatherings, but for this year, we’ll use the combined approach.

Important Notes
In case you didn’t notice it in the goals, our goal is to open up local SIG gatherings to include our members who aren’t STC SIG members. That is, you do not have to already belong to an STC SIG in order to participate in local SIG gatherings. We want these gatherings to be beneficial to all SWO members who opt to participate. However, we do ask that you be a member of the SWO chapter (or a neighboring STC chapter) in order to participate. You can bring a non-STC guest to any SIG gathering, but we ask that you do not bring the same guest twice.

Here are some other notes:

  • Please refrain from meeting in bars over a “tall one,” as some peoples’ belief systems would predispose them from participating.

  • Try not to let the discussions turn into gripe sessions. Very few people take away value from listening to others vent about poor working conditions, difficult managers, or less-than-desirable salaries. Asking for suggested solutions is fine, but we suggest that participants not dominate a gathering with venting.


What’s in it for You?
In the ‘90s I was assigned to develop some computer-based training (CBT) for a large corporation. Although I have a teaching background, the methods and technology for developing CBT were foreign to me, and there wasn’t time to take a course. But I didn’t panic. I figured there had to be people in this new STC organization I had joined with some CBT development experience. I got some names from someone, opened up my chapter membership directory, and called a couple of folks to pick their brains. I got some great advice and won awards in our local competition in the long run. That experience sold me on networking to find out what I need to know. Getting involved in local SIG activities holds the promise of making your STC membership more relevant and worthwhile. I hope you’ll not only consider participating, but also being a liaison. Please email me at sylviamiller@woh.rr.com with any questions about this new SWO venture and to volunteer as a local SIG liaison. (Be sure your email editor doesn’t autocorrect woh to who in my email address.) Can I count on hearing from you soon?