September 2006: Open House - Tech Comms Competition - Region 2 Conference - Chapter News
Submitted by Stuart Culshaw on 3 September, 2006 - 21:42.
STC France newsletter
Welcome to the new STC France community newsletter!
You are receiving this email in connection with your membership of the France Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication or because you created a user account at www.stcfrance.org. To unsubscribe, use the link at the bottom of this message.
In this Issue:
- Help us kick-start "la rentrée" at the STC France Open House and Cocktail Evening
- 2006 STC Trans-European Technical Communications Competition kicks off!
- Top level STC Regional Conference in London in October 2006
- Making the most of your STC membership - There's never been a better time to get involved!
- STC France Chapter Financial Report - September 2006
- STC France's New Community Website - a Work in Progress
Help us kick-start "la rentrée" at the STC France Open House and Cocktail Evening
by Jennifer O Neill, STC France President
"La rentrée" is a time for new beginnings. Here at STC France, we have a brand new website, a new newsletter, a revitalized leadership team and a whole bunch of new ideas to drive our chapter forward. We even have a new slogan, "Vive la Communication!"
Our Open House meeting in Paris on Thursday September 21 (from 8.30-10.30pm) will be a wonderful opportunity to network with fellow communicators and to hear what we have planned for the coming year, including celebrations for STC France's 15th anniversary, hosting of this year's Trans European Technical Communications Competition Awards Event, and an ever-expanding program of seminars, special events and workshops.
But we also want to hear what you yourself want from your chapter. You can get a lot of personal satisfaction and growth from your professional organisation by getting involved in a committee. So come and hear how you can get involved. It promises to be a stimulating and enjoyable evening.
Looking forward to seeing you, your friends and colleagues pour prendre une verre ensemble on Thursday, 21 September 2006, from 8.30pm onwards at FIAP, 30 rue Cabanis, Paris 14.
This event is free and open to both members and non-members, but to help us plan for the number of attendees, registration is recommended. We will be sending a direct email invitation to members and those on our mailing list very shortly. If you don't receive this email invitation from us, please send a quick email to secretary@stcfrance.org stating your name and letting us know you plan to attend.
Come and join us at Open House and let's all toast to communication!
2006 STC Trans-European Technical Communications Competition kicks off!
By Jennifer O Neill, Competition Manager
Once again all the European STC chapters are getting together to hold our annual competitions for publications and online publications. It's a great opportunity to get feedback on your work, particularly if you don't have many opportunities at work for feedback or would simply like an outsider's viewpoint. And then there's the chance of winning an award for excellent work.
Entry to the competition costs just 50 euros for STC and INTECOM members, and 90 euros for non-members. We're the only STC competition that accepts entries in five languages.
If you're an experienced communicator then please consider being a judge. It's a wonderful opportunity to work with other technical communicators from across Europe. As a judge, you'll see some of the best work in technical communication, help set the standards for excellence in our profession, and add prestigious experience to your CV.
This year's competition awards event will be held in Paris in January 2007. We'll be holding a one-day conference that day and the awards event will be in the evening. A time to celebrate excellence in communication!
You can find all the details and application forms at http://www.stc-europe.org/
IMPORTANT: Deadline for entry to the competition is Monday, 16 October
If you have any questions about entering or judging, don't hesitate to contact the competition manager, Jennifer O Neill, at competitions@stcfrance.org
Top level STC Conference in London in October 2006
By Nick Rosenthal, First Vice President, STC UK
Several Region 2 STC chapters are actively involved in organising a top level international STC in London in October. This is your perfect opportunity to make a weekend of it and to enjoy some time in London, whilst also keeping your own professional skills sharp.
We have recently updated the web site for our October STC Conference in London on 13/14 October 2006. This exciting conference has now attracted sponsorship from leading names such as Adobe, AuthorIT, Scriptorium Publishing, Ovidius and Clifford Sells. With big names like that behind the conference, we'd recommend you take a look at the conference programme at http://www.stcuk.org/R2conf/ConfProg.html.
The first delegates have booked their places already. You can use the online booking form to book your place at http://www.stcuk.org/R2conf/ConfBooking01.html, and there are special discounts for people who book early. In fact, book before 15 September and you can attend this 2-day professional conference for just £165! (about 250 Euros). We have had a superb response from sponsors for this event, which is enabling us to keep the price this low. But do hurry, because the Early Bird booking discount expires on 15th September and tickets will cost more after that.
Or you can book for just one day: We're running the conference on a Friday and Saturday. So if you're not able to give up part of your weekend, you could just come along for the Friday. Or if workload stops you getting out of the office during the week, you can join us for the Saturday sessions.
We have a range of top-level speakers. Leading names such as Sarah O'Keefe of Scriptorium analysing the business case for XML implementation, Ian Larner of IBM telling us about DITA, James Lawrence of McAfee telling how his tech authoring team work as a business unit, Patrick Hoffmann examining the Return on Investment aspects of usability and information design, and we even have the inside track on the new Windows Vista operating system...
And besides the straightforward "it makes sense to invest in your own future" aspect of this conference, the amount of new stuff you will learn, the fact that the conference will validate your existing knowledge and remind you how much you know, how much you are worth, there is also the social side to consider. Conferences are wonderful places to make contacts, to extend your social and professional network.
And this STC conference in London will have delegates from across Europe, and around the world. We can guarantee this because the whole of the main STC Board of directors will be over from the US and will be mingling with delegates in London. We are currently working on a spectacular evening event for the Friday night, and we'll announce details of our evening social programme soon.
The conference theme is "Making Cents of Making Sense: Technical Communications and Business". This is going to be a hard-hitting conference that will help YOU deliver good value for money within your organisation, or to your clients. Can you afford to not be there?
Go on... Book now. You know you want to!
Making the most of your STC membership - There's never been a better time to get involved!
by Theresa Cameron, STC France Membership Manager
Hallo! My name is Theresa Cameron and I'm the new STC France Membership Manager. I was an STC member for several years, then left until the opportunity to join the France Chapter board as Membership Manager came up. I specifically wanted to have a role where I could be in touch with the members and participate actively in supporting the technical communication community, so had to jump at the chance when the vacancy was announced!
We have currently 77 members in our chapter, of whom only 60% are based in France. Other members come from 10 European countries, with the remainder based in the USA and Canada. This year we have nine new members and one student member, so a special welcome to you all. I hope that we will have the chance to meet at one of the meetings coming up over the next nine months. The board is planning several diverse and exciting events as you will see in this newsletter and on the website, which we hope most of you will be able to attend.
Also on the website, you will find an invitation for you to introduce yourself to the Chapter. Due to geography, workload or other reasons, many of you may not have been able to attend an event or meet fellow members. Now we would like you all to spare a few moments to let us know something about yourselves.
By the way, did you know that ex-members can re-join and maintain their seniority? If you were a senior member (or nearly), you will have the same status if you come back into the community. Senior members receive recognition and additional benefits such as the right to be a judge for the US-based international technical publications competition. You will also find that there are plenty of opportunities for you to share your experience and knowledge with other members - and perhaps pick up a few new tips too!
And if you have colleagues who are not members, please let them know that if they join the STC in October, their membership benefits will start immediately. This means that they will have 15 months of membership for the price of 12! See the membership page on the website to read about some of the advantages of being a member and for full details about joining. Or come along to our Open House event on September 21, where you can pick up a membership pack along with lots of other information about getting the most out of your membership. The drinks are free too!
Looking forward to meeting you all virtually or in person soon!
STC France Chapter Financial Report - September 2006
By Ellen Lebelle, Treasurer, STC France
The STC France Chapter is in good financial health. As a non-profit association, we operate on a very limited budget. Careful financial planning is therefore essential for us to be able to organize a full program of member events, while still balancing the books.
We did spend slightly more last year than we took in, but we did invest in the purchase of a video-projector for our meetings, which frees us from the cost of projector rentals. We also held more meetings last year that were either free or below-cost for member attendees. Through some creative planning and careful control over expenses, our full-day conference in March represented excellent value for members. We had over 40 participants at the conference and were just about able to break even.
A. Cash balance at beginning of fiscal year (July 1, 2005) €4 698.89
B. Income
Dues refund from Society €1 684.39
Meetings €3 999.00
Publications and art competitions €1 244.50C. Total Income (total of B) €6 927.89
D. Expenses
Meetings €5 035.34
Publications and art competitions €2 313.06
Other: € 452.44
Projector € 579.00
Miscellaneous € 232.39E. Total Expenses (total of D) €8 612.23
F. Surplus or (deficit) (Total income less total expenses: C - E) €1 684.34-
G. Cash Balance at end of fiscal year (June 30, 2006 ) (A + F) €3 014.55
H. Funds held on behalf of Publications and art competitions € 400.00
I. Net cash balance as of June 30 2006 (G - H) €2 614.55
As shown in the table, we ended fiscal year 2005-6 with a bank balance of just over €2600, once funds held on behalf of the Publications and arts competitions are deducted.
Membership was slightly down last year, which means that this year's STC member rebate will be a little less than last year's (as an international STC chapter, we also lose out on the exchange rate with the dollar, and extra bank charges).
We have opened a savings account so that funds not needed for immediate operating expenses can generate a little interest to offset the bank charges we incur.
Our aims for the coming year are to continue offering great value through free (or low-cost) member events. We have also invested seed money in the STC Region 2 Conference, which is taking place in London on October 13-14, 2006, and which we strongly encourage you to attend (see http://www.stcuk.org/R2conf/ for full details and program). If it is a successful conference (and it looks like it will be), we will get our seed money back and a share of any money left over. We also want to develop corporate sponsorship opportunities this year to help offset some of the cost of our chapter activities. If you're interesting in volunteering to help with that effort, please contact me directly, or come along to STC France Open House event on September 21 and find out more.
STC France's New Community Website - a Work in Progress
by Stuart Culshaw, Webmaster, STC France
If you've visited the STC France website recently, you'll have noticed that we have a brand new look. You might also have noticed that some features or sections that were on our old site have disappeared or don't work quite the same as before. Please bear with us, as we are still working hard to get the website fully operational after a somewhat hasty overhaul during the Summer.
Our new website is based on Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS) that is specifically designed to support community-driven websites. While we had begun to investigate Drupal with a view to replacing our previous CMS (Mambo), we were forced to make the switch sooner than planned after our Mambo-based website became the target for an attack from hackers in late July. The hackers managed to exploit a vulnerability in one of Mambo's installed modules to launch denial of service (DOS) attacks on other websites and so our web hosting provider had no option but to shut down our web account until the security hole was repaired.
As it was unclear exactly what security weakness the hackers had exploited, and not wanting to run the risk of a similar attack in the future, the STC France leadership team took the decision to rebuild the site using Drupal, knowing that we would at first be forced to put up with reduced functionality until we could implement and test all of Drupal's new features.
In particular, we have not yet implemented user accounts for members on the new site until we get more features in place, and the current job bank service is functional (but only just). We hope to improve that part of the site and add many new community-drven features over the coming weeks and months.
I was able to retrieve most of the content from our backups and have the new site up and running within about 10 days, before leaving for vacation in August. With the rentrée upon us, there is still a lot to do to figure out where and how to take the website from its current state to a fully functional community-driven website. If you're interested in helping with this effort, please contact me at webmaster@stcfrance.org or come along to our Open House event on Thursday September 21 and find out more about how you can get involved.
Thanks for your patience and understanding and look out for further updates about the STC France website in the near future.
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