By Meredith Kinder, Managing Editor, Carolina Communiqué

As I skim the diverse group of articles in this quarter's issue, I realize how important it is for successful technical communicators to "keep up." By that, I mean we must constantly have our finger on the pulse of not just one area, but multiple areas of interest. Our profession demands that we be well versed in many different areas, or we'll be left behind!

We're striving to:

• Keep up with who we are as a profession: See Larry Kunz's article, which describes how to tell our STC story. And Julio Vazquez's article explains how he came to be a part of the profession.
• Keep up with technology: See Rick Sapir's article on how our chapter's web site evolved from a traditional site to a wiki-based site. Brian Russell's article describes his experience with podcasting.
• Keep up with the changes in our language over time: See Ron Garrison's article on changes that the English language has seen over time.
• Keep up with how our jobs change: See Michael Harvey's insight into how we should stay ahead of the trend he sees in technical communicators' job responsibilities.
• Keep up with new theories and technique: See Bill Albing's thoughts on the important ways that the creation of content and how it's delivered form connections. See my article on how to practice proper copyrighting.
• Keep up with editing practices: Andrea Wenger's article hones in on rules of grammar. The rules might not be new, but they may be new to your writers.
• Keep up with changes in STC: Mark Clifford, Char James-Tanny, Mike Murray, and Jeff Staples contribute to an article that spotlights the new STC board of directors. Anjela Dukes describes how Cindy Richardson-Decker changed the role of our chapter's membership manager.

I believe that the reason we're pressured to keep up with so many evolving technical communication topics is that ours is a relatively new profession. We're still establishing ourselves and proving new and better ways of contributing to our worlds.

With STC on our side, we're able to keep up with all these topics that may seem overwhelming, as Melissa Flippin and Laura Cunningham describe in their testimonials, "What Does STC Do for You??". This issue of Carolina Communiqué strives to give you a leg up in the race of keeping up.

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