By Karen Lane
President
Orlando Central Florida Chapter STC
president@stc-orlando.org
As we enter the end-of-year season (since for all practical purposes, Halloween begins “the holidays”) your Administrative Council is concentrating on celebrating our accomplishments, honoring the season, and moving brightly into the new year. For seasonal observances, we have two events that have proved very popular in the past few years. Our Dinner of Thanks will be held on November 13, an early opportunity to enjoy fellowship and camaraderie with your colleagues and their significant others.
Thanksgiving is my favorite secular holiday, and I think it is my favorite exactly because it doesn’t depend on religious belief or ritual to be meaningful. Someone raised the question, “Whom do atheists thank on Thanksgiving?” My answer is that the question is irrelevant. We can be grateful for the good people and things in our lives with or without a specific target to receive our thanks. Thanksgiving as a national observance and the Dinner of Thanks as a chapter observance share the goal of encouraging us to be aware of the advantages we enjoy and the connections to our loved ones near and far. For myself, I am thankful not only for my family’s blessings but very much also for the gift of friendship my STC friends have provided. I wish all our friends and colleagues a meaningful season, and I do hope we will be able to celebrate our accomplishments together on into the future.
For December, we will be reprising our Alumni Holiday Reunion dinner that was so successful last year. We will be giving you more details in the next few weeks, but in the meantime please mark your calendars for December 11. The location will again be the Marriott at Lake Mary. Stay tuned for information on how to reserve your place.
As another heads-up, don’t forget that every January the UCF Future Technical Communicators co-host a special joint FTC–STC event at UCF. As always, the meeting will feature a well-known expert who will talk on a topic of interest. That’s all I can say here, since the announcement and arrangements are in the hands of FTC. This is a free event (except for your parking), by the way, so try to get to the meeting, which will be held on January 15, 2013.
And don’t forget to renew your STC membership. If you renew by December 31, 2012, your regular membership will be discounted by $30. That renewal incentive goes away on January 1, so don’t wait too long to renew. Here is the link:
http://stc.org/membership/join-or-renew-now/membership-dues
I will have more to say next month (of course!). In the meantime, please try to attend our Dinner of Thanks and join your friends and colleagues in celebrating all that we can share that is life sustaining and fulfilling. And don’t forget that I am always eager to hear your complaints (so we can address them) and your compliments (so we know that we are serving your needs). Just e-mail me at president@stc-orlando.org.