STC Board Meeting

February 6, 2006

Present: Joe Devney, Deborah del Mazo, Richard Mateosian, Jessica Livingston, Ben Lukas, Jean Lundquist, Eunice Malley, Linda Urban

Bylaws Violation

Joe has heard from STC Int’l that by serving a 3^rd term as Chapter President he is violation of the STC Bylaws. (!) He will find out from an STC Int’l officer if he needs to step down now or continue as President until the next elections.

Chapter Re-chartering

Our Chapter has been re-chartered. Joe will ask Jim where this is mentioned on the website.

Meetings

The January party was a success. Some people who won in the local pubs. competition came to see the entries that were on display. We think we should have a party meeting every January.

Hospitality

Jean Lundquist is out new Hospitality/meeting logistics volunteer. Thank you Jean!!

General Purpose Meeting Location

Linda Urban would like to survey the members regarding interest in finding a meeting location for various purposes, such as STC phone seminars, which has access to the Internet, ability to use a printer, and a phone. Suggested locations are in a company’s conference room (where security access is not necessary or easy to acquire), at a UC extension facility, or in a member’s home office. The Silicon Valley Chapter has set one up for their members. Our Chapter would be the facilitator, not the organizer, for these meetings. Jessica may bring up this issue through the STC forum online group. We may also conduct the survey through our website.

Meeting Survey Results

Linda reported that so far 40 (yes, 40!) people have responded, almost all being Berkeley Chapter members.

Nine use public transportation to get to meetings, 35 learn about the meetings through our email blast, 34 are very interested in speaker presentations, and 17 are very interested in networking. Most want the meeting to start at 6:00pm, and the speaker at 7:00. Ten would like the meeting to end by 8:30, 12 would like the entire meeting to be 1.5 hrs. long. 11 people count on having dinner at the meeting; 11 said they didn’t care. Food seems to be less of an issue than the cost of the meeting.

Preferred meeting topics:

• Financial, legal, medical writing
• FrameMaker
• Info. Mapping
• Setting up a consulting business
• STC organization
• API
• Environmental

Some of the comments are:

• Don’t like the meeting location.
• One person used to come 6 times a year, but comes less often now because the meetings are not as lively and the meeting room in dingy.
• Wednesday night is not a good night to hold the meetings.
• Only light food should be served during the networking.
• Prefer simple meals
• The meeting should have less emphasis on food.
• Too much time is spent on Chapter housekeeping – maybe have it follow the presentation
• Have networking happen after a combo dinner/presentation

The Board will digest all of this and then determine what/how to transition. We’ll also wait for more results. Linda asked the Board members to complete the survey as well.

Website Restructuring

Linda reported that a website template may be available for Int’l STC soon. This is being discussed on the STC Forum. She thinks it might be a good thing for our Chapter to use. Jim has been concentrating on keeping the content current vs. the format at this time.

Feb. 8 Meeting Charges

Joe said the meeting owes us a refund, so he asked Deborah to make sure we are not charged for the Feb. 8 meeting. Twelve people so far have signed up for this meeting.

MS Software from TechSoup

Per Jessica we can order up to 6 titles with multiple licenses every 2 years. We reviewed Jim’s list of suggested software. We will get MS Project, Dreamweaver 8 and Visio Professional 2003.

Future Meetings

We are set through May. Joe is talking to someone from Apple to come and speak at our June meeting.

Treasurer’s Report

Ben will run a report for last quarter (end of Dec. 2005). Ben is training Deborah and transitioning the job over to her. Deborah has started writing the Treasurer’s manual. He urged Deborah to join Int’l STC’s group of Treasurers. We received a check to run the Chapter from STC Int’l for $1683.50, which covers 6 months. The check amount is based on the number of members the Chapter has. We also received a check from The Gordon Scholarship Fund for $382 based on an agreement with them to receive 15% of the profits of our local 2005 publications competition for the Chapter’s financial risk in “fronting” the competition.

Elections

Richard will ask people to think about running for a Chapter office at Wednesday’s meeting. The new term begins in June.

Touchstone Competition

A Chapter sponsor is needed. Joe will find out the status for the 2006 competition. If none will be held, we will hold another smaller scale competition as we did last year.

Respectfully submitted,

Eunice Malley

Secretary