By Julia Southwick
2024 Leadership Retreat In Review
When we got to the building, the room was locked, and we had to call security to get in. While we waited, we chatted over donuts in a seating area in the lobby. Most people were there before we were able to get into the room and were able to help us get set up so we could start. Although we got set up later than originally planned, we started as soon as we could.
We started by introducing the 2024-2025 Administrative Council (AdCo): President, Julia Southwick; Vice President, John Clement; Secretary, Rachael Swertfeger; Treasurer, W.C. Wiese; Immediate Past President, Bethany Aguad; and Director-at-Large, Dominick Chiovari. Congratulations to the newly elected AdCo!
Next, we all introduced ourselves, our chapter role(s), and our goals for the retreat. Bethany provided some new trends in tech comm and then handed the presentation to Julia to go over the chapter’s mission, vision, and values. Julia highlighted a new graphic for the chapter values that will be on the chapter website made by Joy Carandang, who also made graphics for the mission and vision pages.
Bethany and Julia reviewed how our chapter can help individuals learn to be leaders and highlighted some volunteering opportunities, such as member recognition and outreach, writing for the newsletter, mentoring, and helping with our website. If anyone has a volunteering idea that could be fun, they are welcome to add something new to the chapter!
They then turned to Chantal and Joy to give some updates from UCF’s Future Technical Communicators (FTC) Club. They gave a year-in-review summary of FTC’s events and a sneak peek at some upcoming events in the Fall. Chantal and Joy introduced John for some updates from STC’s Community Affairs Committee (CAC). In 2023-2024, the CAC held monthly town hall meetings and hosted a networking activity and leadership development session at STC’s summit in May. The CAC is open to new members and is currently recruiting for volunteers- if you’re interested contact John Clement and/or Jamye Sagan for more information.
After John finished, he passed the slides to W.C. to review active membership and the chapter budget. Our top programs last chapter year were UX Writing, Navigating Freelance, Contract, and Permanent Technical Communication Roles (UCF), and the Annual Employment Panel. Our membership and active membership are up from last year, and nonmembers who attended meetings were down from last year. As W.C. reminds us, every year, if you attend a meeting, you earn active member points and are in the running to earn an active member shirt- points can be earned according to the chart below.
The top point earners for every year are recorded in the “Champion Active Members” chart.
| Year | Active Member | Points |
| 2004 | Janette Farnsworth | 63 |
| 2023 | Julia Southwick | 55 |
| 2003 | Mike Murray | 51 |
| 2002 | WC Wiese | 48 |
| 2019 | Bethany Aguad | 41 |
| 2020 | Bethany Aguad | 40 |
| 2018 | Bethany Aguad | 38 |
| 2024 | Julia Southwick | 38 |
| 2007 | John Kessler | 34 |
| 2006 | Bonnie Spivey | 34 |
| 2008 | Erika Higgins | 33 |
| 2012 | Debra Johnson | 32 |
| 2005 | Gail Lippincott | 32 |
W.C. reviewed the chapter finances with us, and we are doing well financially. We have plenty of budget for the upcoming year(s) as we have been spending less since we went virtual in 2020. This is his last year as our treasurer, and he is looking for someone who wants to learn how to be chapter treasurer for next year. If you’re interested in learning, please contact W.C. Thank you for all your years of hard work as treasurer, W.C.!
We took a break after W.C. was done before planning the meetings and programs for the upcoming chapter year. John led the planning and we came up with the below program slate for 2024-2025.
| Month | Date | Topic |
| August | 22 | Tech Comm Skills Through Tabletop Gaming |
| September | 19 | Summit Recap |
| October | 17 | Tool Demos – MadCap Flare, Snagit, etc. / Tools Roundup with new tools |
| November | 21 | Early Career Skills – networking, LinkedIn (Mirhonda S.), Handshake |
| December | 19 | Holiday Networking Social |
| January | 23 | UCF/FTC meeting |
| February | 20 | Marketing |
| March | 20 | Employment Panel |
| April | 17 | AI |
| May | 15 | Talk Like a Girl |
| June | 19 | End-of-Year Social and Elections |
| July | TBA | Leadership Retreat |
John also agreed that we should continue our monthly networking sessions, listed below. We’ll announce the meeting topic when we send out meeting reminders!
| Month | Date |
| August | 14 |
| September | 11 |
| October | 9 |
| November | 13 |
| December | 11 |
| January | 8 |
| February | 12 |
| March | 12 |
| April | 9 |
| May | 14 |
| June | 11 |
After another break, Julia led a discussion on what went well in the past year and what lessons were learned that can be applied for the coming chapter year. Some suggestions were look into the application for Community Achievement Awards and re-engage with the process as well as send out a survey to find out why people aren’t rejoining, what people want and need out of the chapter.
Takeaways and Looking Forward to a New Chapter Year
My biggest takeaways from the leadership retreat are that 2023-24 was a good chapter year and we have a good foundation to start the new year with. We’ll bring into the 2024-25 chapter year lessons from the past year and use them to create a new plan for the year to come. We started planning at the leadership retreat and will continuously evolve the plan at our monthly AdCo meetings starting September 5. Let us know if you’d like to join the meeting, and we’ll send you the Zoom invite.
Thanks to input from our leadership retreat attendees, I’m looking forward to all of John’s upcoming programs. Of all of the upcoming programs, I’m most excited to have Susan Kelley come present “Talk Like a Girl” for the chapter to discuss assertive communication. She attended the STC summit and presented it with great success there, and I’m glad to see we’ll be able to share it with you in May!
Leaders and volunteers are an important part of the chapter and are a big reason why our chapter succeeds. New or upcoming leaders and volunteers can help out with member recognition and outreach, help with the website, write an article, present at one of our meetings, and more. The benefits of volunteering include increased job quality, leadership skills, career resources, recognition, and an amazing community.
I’ll leave you with one final photo: all of our 2024 Leadership Retreat attendees! The new AdCo and I are excited to see what we can accomplish this chapter year with all of you!
