by Monique Cobb, Carolina Chapter Secretary

The Carolina Chapter toured China without even leaving the Triangle. Past President of the NCSU STC Student Community and current STC Carolina member, John Martin, spoke about his recent visit to China with the People to People Technical Communication Delegation to the People’s Republic of China. His presentation provided insight into the cities that he visited: Beijing, Guilin, and Shanghai during his trip from October 20 through 31, 2008 and his personality provided a tour-guide insight with humor.

The Carolina Chapter of STC, joined with NCSU Student Community members, began their journey by meeting at Systems Documentation Incorporated (SDI). Martin then introduced the People to People Technical Communication Delegation to the People’s Republic of China by providing some background of the program. He explained that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, with a desire to advocate world peace, founded the delegation program in 1956. The goal of this trip was to learn about shared concerns between U.S. and Chinese technical communication professionals. The delegation wanted to compare the “state of information development” within the various sections of China. And personally, Martin wanted “to engage in the shared humanity of all of us.”

The trip consisted of 15 technical communication delegates and five guests. Martin went on to explain about the internationally combined group. Eleven were from USA, one from Belgium, one from Australia (but currently working in Indonesia), and two were from Canada.

The delegates were from various companies such as HP, Sun, Molex, AAD, NCSU, Accenture, TranSenda, Symantec, while one was even self-employed. Most participants worked in different areas of technical communication, including a president, senior managers, writers, editors, a usability expert, a training specialist, and a medical writer.

Their adventure began in Beijing while visiting from October 21 through 25. Here, the group visited Peking University, the Beijing Association of Sciences and Technology, and Cyber Recreation District. The last two destinations were government facilities.

Traveling by plane between the Asian destinations; the next visit was spent from October 25 through 28 in Guilin. Here they visited the Guilin Hunter Information Industry Limited Corporation and the Guilin Programmers Club. The first was a business, while the Guilin Programmers Club was at an educational group.

The last leg of the flight took the group to Shanghai to visit Accenture Shanghai and HP Global Development Center from October 28 through 30. Both of these were businesses. At all three of these stops, delegates took turns presenting various topics, where they discussed the state of technical communication as a profession, and shared presentations, observations, challenges, successes, and best practices with each other.

More information about the delegates’ voyage and topics they presented are in the article The Details: People to People Technical Communication Delegation to the People’s Republic of China.

Monique can be reached at monique_stcjobs at yahoo dot com.