By John Clement
Multiple volunteers from across STC have recently come together to form an STC Community Coalition. A joint effort for 2024-2025 STC program year, this volunteer group is held between leaders across a number of STC Chapters and SIGs (including leadership from STC Chicago, along with Ohio, Carolina, Florida, Michigan Great Lakes, Instruction Design SIG, and Accessibility SIG) and was begun in mid-2024. The goal of the coalition is to reduce the heavy burden of program planning that chapters and SIGs had been facing in recent years.
This coalition is led by STC Chicago president Ashley Gordon. Florida chapter members John Clement, Dominick Chiovari, and Chantal Cyrier have each found opportunities to contribute to the coalition and its events over recent months. Florida chapter vice president John has helped with program planning at various points for the Coalition. Florida chapter director-at-large Dominick currently volunteers to create all of the graphics for the coalition’s events. In late fall, FTC @ UCF president Chantal Cyrier was part of a technical communication career panel where she discussed her experience in technical communication so far as a student and recent technical writing intern.
One goal and benefit of Coalition events is joint promotion. Leaders come from many places in STC and are encouraged to share Coalition-hosted events, leading to larger attendance than most events hosted by a single chapter or SIG alone. On top of that, chapters with at least one active volunteer supporting the coalition get sponsorship for their chapter, meaning that STC members of that participating Chapter or SIG can attend coalition events for free. This includes Florida! On Coalition events, you may see or may have already seen the chapter logo represented on the event graphic. Typically, STC members who are not in the coalition will pay a small fee, and non-STC members can attend for a slightly larger fee.
The coalition currently includes Ashley Gordon (Chair), John Clement, Dominick Chiovari, Alyssa Doubleday, Angie Dianetti, Dan Dornbrook, John Clement, Kylie Jacobsen, Peggy Frizzo, Viqui Dill, Art Burger, and more.
Each month, the STC Community Coalition has hosted monthly virtual lunches, monthly webinars, and there are plans in place for occasional book club events.
If any of the events to come interest you, be sure to join in for them, especially to make use of the perk of free attendance by being part of STC Florida. You can see upcoming events and get tickets on TicketTailor as they get revealed. You can also follow the STC Chicago LinkedIn (primary sponsor for the Coalition, with president Ashley Gordon being the coalition chair) for updates and to check out examples of past Coalition events.
