Northern California STC Chapters Leadership Day
by Ben Lukas

The Northern California Chapters of STC met at Mills College in Oakland on Saturday, December 7, to share concerns and ideas regarding our chapters. Lance Gelein focused the audience with an address stressing the importance of addressing the human needs of our members, much as we do our professional audiences. Beau Cain moderated the conference, and kept the agenda flowing in spite of rich participation in questions and suggestions by the audience.
Key results of the conference include an awareness of opportunities to share resources between the chapters to better serve our collective members. One focus became providing services to help our members with education on the changing tools of our trade. Another focus is a need to develop within STC a capability to successfully market technical communicators to new industries.

The organizers of the conference are working on developing a user list to continue our group discussions and to post the collected ideas generated at the moderated brainstorming sessions. To include yourself on this list, email Richard Mateosin. To reply to the organizers' follow up questions, email Marie Highby.

Sharing Successes and Confronting Challenges
Upon entering Mills College for the leadership development conference, the participants were greeted by the beautiful courtyard and meeting room in Alderwood Hall. Designed by Julia Morgan in 1923 as the Ming Quong Home for Chinese Orphans, the building provided a setting that stimulated the participants to think and participate enthusiastically.
The conference began with keynote speaker Lance Gelein addressing the participants. A former president of STC, Lance has been involved in serving Northern California STC chapters in various capacities for over a decade. Lance encouraged his audience to stress the human elements in building relationships and programs for STC. He emphasized the importance of making the STC experience fun for our members.

Beau Cain kept the agenda moving at a lively pace as a representative from each Northern California chapter gave a brief chapter historical overview and status report.

• Beau Cain from Silicon Valley Chapter spoke about the largest STC chapter anywhere, with a membership of about one thousand. It has several active special interest groups (SIGs). However, the chapter has lost touch with its origins, and is hoping to research the actions of its founding leaders. With so many members and a large geographic area, the Silicon Valley Chapter is working towards a satellite chapter in Santa Cruz.
  
  
• Marc Smircich spoke of the successes and problems for the San Francisco Chapter. They use email to elect their officers, have developed an extensive chapter handbook, and have used recognition to expand their volunteer participation. However, like most other chapters, their membership has declined from its peak of a few years ago.
  
  
• Melody Brumis spoke for the East Bay Chapter. Known as "the friendly chapter," East Bay prides themselves on personal contact with its members. The chapter Website is active and constantly changing, and they have won several awards for their newsletter. Because so many of their members are under-employed, they have started a SIG for networking.
  
  
• Jeff Simon addressed the audience for the Sacramento Chapter. The board at this chapter has experienced some recent turnover, as life has taken several members away from their commitments to STC. Diverse in geography, stretching across much of the Central Valley and to the Reno area, many of Sacramento's members can rarely attend society functions. They also have differing interests of members who work in either government or in the computer industry.
  
  
• Chris Muntzer from the North Bay spoke to the group about the challenges of a small chapter, with membership concentrated in the Santa Rosa area. Founded in 1994, it numbers about one hundred members. He feels that his chapter has much to share within the Northern California STC community.
  
  
• Kathryn Munn from Berkeley listed several successes of the Berkeley Chapter, including an archived history, the use of the Internet for reserving and paying for chapter meetings, the use of job tickets for communicating volunteer needs, and an education initiative. This education initiative has organized inexpensive classes for its membership on FrameMaker, on documenting APIs, and on organizing this series of conferences. Challenges include providing services that interest both its new members from the UC Berkeley programs and with established professional careers.

Each conference attendee participated in four small-group brainstorming sessions, interspersed around the chapter presentations and lunch. Led by a moderator who remained at a topic location as participants moved around the room, each of these sessions included up to six other participants. The moderators recorded ideas developed at each table and reported to the assembled participants at the end of the day's session. Organizers of the conference will compile and post these reports to a society website soon.

• Chris Muntzer hosted a table topic on "How to Reduce Volunteer Burnout."
  
• Jeff Simon moderated discussions on "Making STC Value-Added: Recruiting and Motivating Members."
  
• Susan Harlan facilitated discussions at her table about "Technical Writer Skills and Alternative Jobs."
  
• Marc Smircich hosted groups discussing "The Business of Newsletters."
  
• Kathryn Munn's groups brainstormed about "Recruiting and Recognizing Volunteers."
  
• Vicki Maki hosted discussions on "Mentoring."
  
• Beau Cain facilitated table discussions about "Collaborating on Programs in Northern California."
  

Results
As the day progressed, it became clear to this writer that the chapter organizers hoped to build a spirit of cooperation among the participating chapters. In this, they have succeeded. Participants shared ideas about better serving the needs of members both new to technical communication and established in their careers. Ideas developed in each small group often overlapped with those developed in others, and grew in detail as the day progressed.

Planned for this winter and spring are two additional conferences to follow up on the work begun at Mills College. Organizers will announce the details of these sessions s for our Northern California STC chapter volunteers soon.

Thanks from all participants went to Karen Hill, Viki Macki, Beau Cain, Susan Harlan, Jacqueyn Lee, Patrick Lufkin, Kathryn Munn, Chris Muntzer, Bill Robinson, Marc Smircich, Jeff Simon, Greg Stevenson and many others for their efforts in organizing and presenting this conference. Participants from the East Bay Chapter plan to post photos of the conference on their Website.