by Meredith Blackwelder, Managing Editor, Carolina Communiqué

The first-quarter buzzer sounded on the last day of March, and it’s time to venture into spring with a fresh attitude. Our chapter is at the top of its game, so join us in this winning effort by contributing an article, attending an event, or volunteering for a committee. In the spirit of college basketball’s March Madness, I urge you to step it up and put you chapter involvement in the winning bracket.

So peak out from under that pile of paperwork on your desk and start now by enjoying this issue of Carolina Communiqué. We’ve worked hard to bring you as many different articles as the NCAA tournament has teams. This issue contains a smorgasbord of articles, spanning topics from a Who’s Who list of award winners in our chapter to descriptions of single-sourcing options and grammar rules.

And remember, you control how much involvement you have in the Carolina chapter in the upcoming quarter. Start by educating yourself about what’s hot and what’s happening in our championship caliber chapter.

To wrap up, here’s a quick review of our first quarter articles:

• We list recent chapter achievements in Anjela’s president’s message.
• We spotlight Michelle Corbin and Michael Harvey as newly-named Associate Fellows.
• We salute Betsy Kent’s receipt of the Distinguished Chapter Service Award (DCSA) and Heather Brautman as a member of Sigma Tau Chi.
• We speak to Project Gutenberg in the first of a series of article on the topic by Ron Garrison.
• We clarify commonly confused words particularly pertinent for technical communicators in Andrea Wenger’s article?.
• We showcase Pam Harris as our chapter’s Volunteer of the Quarter.
• We provide a local Management SIG meeting recap for those that couldn’t make the meeting.
• We have a Q & A session with the local FrameMaker SIG president to find out what it takes to lead a local SIG.
• We brainstorm with Bill Albing in his article on how many tools and technologies are too many to handle.
• We learn about single-sourcing with FrameMaker and SiberSafe in our guest column by Rob Hanna of the Toronto chapter.
• We venture into cutting-edge ideas with Terry Smith’s article on unconferences.
• And we keep our finger on the pulse of the Society transformation process with Suzanna Laurent’s article.

Let’s begin spring with a winning attitude and a dedication to STC team excellence in the upcoming quarter!

Meredith can be reached at Meredith dot Blackwelder at sas dot com.