The President’s Corner
By Debra Johnson
President
Orlando Central Florida Chapter STC
president@stc-orlando.org
It seems like I have been non-stop setting up techniques, methodologies, processes, and standards for our team at Wyndham Vacation Ownership. What we call a TMPS, includes Business Analysis, Systems Analysis, User Interface Software Engineering, and Technical Communication. At the same time, my team is hard at work creating all different types of technical documentation. We are all part of the of WVO IT Requirements Center of Excellence. So life has been and continues to be crazy as ever…
This month I thought I would fill you in on what happened at the first Administrative council meeting since our Leadership retreat. We had a great meeting, lots of involvement and discussion on many topics.
I was fortunate to have Karen Lane, Mary Burns, Sarah Baca, Candace Du Lac, Mark Wray, David Coverston, Alex Garcia, Erika Higgins, W.C. Wiese, and R.D. Sharninghouse in attendance. Jon Kessler attended by phone.
Some of the topics we discussed were:
- The Adult Literacy League would like us to hold a meeting, either regular or AdCo, at their organization near Michigan and Orange. It would a great way to expose the people there to STC and what we are all about.
- Go Daddy Web-hosting renewal. Jon Kessler discussed his resolution of certain problems we had with file uploads, especially for Memo to Members. He created a new database for MTM and kept the old content available. Jon offered his recommendations for our web hosting solution, which we decided to follow and stay with Go Daddy. We appreciated Jon researching and fixing our upload issues and for his recommendations. I was able to negotiate a renewal for two years for $107.00.
- A Website Grant opportunity that we learned about at our leadership retreat from Michele Ladner of SunCoast chapter. She shared information about applying for an STC grant to redo their Web site. We really want to update our website and move it to a site that answers the “WHY” instead of the “WHAT” and “HOW” of Technical Communication and STC Orlando Central FL.
- A Gift for Teaching opportunity to collect donations for this charity at upcoming regular meetings. We decided to collect at the next two meetings.
- Locations for our Give Thanks and Holiday reunion meeting. We would like to keep it social with no speaker. We also want to schedule more meet-ups around the city.
- Success testing next meeting’s presentation with Alyssa Fox on Meeting Burner. Sarah also arranged to have Dalton Hooper present in February on techcomm and business analysis.
- Contacting Bernard Aschwanden who had expressed interest in speaking for us. His subject is Adobe; he’s a “power user.” I will be contacting Cory Bullinger, the new FTC President, about contacting Bernard for the Jan FTC/STC meeting.
- Treasurer’s report. Alex distributed it for review and also had ideas to earn off AdCo meetings by using restaurants with organization fundraiser programs
- Mark wants to focus on the transition of the Pellegrin Scholarship from our chapter to the UCF Foundation, where it is now fully endowed. He suggested that Alex put together a forecast of the chapter budget now that the scholarship is not awarded out of chapter funds. He wants to document the relevant process over a year. Sarah said that we have a special chapter Pellegrin account with a current balance. There was discussion of what to do with this. Karen went over the options. Mark will move forward and report on where we stand and what will happen in April when we award the first scholarships out of the endowment.
- W.C. wants to determine our actual membership and promote active membership in the coming year. David will give W.C. the list of members and W.C. will write an MTM article promoting active membership. He will also update the discussion listserv distribution so that it includes only members of record.
- Chapter Survey and the Chapter Achievement Award Application. Candace Du Lac wants us to be thinking about anything we want to add to the survey. She will give the survey to FTC to coordinate and to create a PDF of it. She noted the pre-summit mixer on the CAA. Sarah mentioned the Meeting Burner virtual meeting this month as an item.
- Follow-up on giving away STC promotional items as mentioned at the Leadership Retreat. I mentioned Café Press items and W.C. mentioned seeing if logoed Summit items are leftover and available for the cost of shipping. Follow up on all items
- Nomination for Associate Fellow Deadline is November 2.
- Nomination for Distinguished Chapter Service. We need to look over the membership list and set up a committee. W.C. should help because it’s active-membership-oriented.
- Student rebate: $20 against membership for new; 4 meeting coupons (worth $20) for renewing (typically at the January meeting). We need to promote the student rebate beginning in October and extend it after the January meeting.
- Karen participating in the Chapter Achievement Award committee at the Society level. She gave us a heads-up that the application is changing to make the levels more logical and the requirements fairer.
- Update from Bethany and Dan on the following:
- Mentoring: we have 10 commitments. Interim mentees need “permanent” mentors. Kick-off planned for mid-October, pairings by end of September.
- Ocoee High School writing project: We need to respond by mid-October. The high school is teaching students to a national writing standard and is asking our help. This will make a good CAA item. Debra agreed to assist with this project.
We hope to meet at Sweet Tomatoes next month as they are participating in organization fundraising for out next AdCo meeting. We had such a great AdCo meeting. I am so fortunate to be among such a bright and intelligent bunch of people… It’s going to be a fun and exciting year. We have a LOT to do! Please join us…we would really like your input on how we can make The Orlando Central FL chapter even better!
See ya at the next meeting!
Debra