By Jenna Moore, Chapter President


I considered calling this article “Yes We Can”, but decided to leave that one safely in the hands of President Obama. As the summer progresses, my term as President of the Carolina chapter is drawing to a close. This year has been a tough one, not just for our leadership but for all of us. Since November we have watched an almost constant roller coaster of external activity influence our personal and professional lives. With the failing economy came the loss of jobs for many of the technical communicators in our community. The lowering of the gas prices might have made that a little more tolerable — for a time. We’ve seen good news and bad news and this is going to continue for the foreseeable future. But don’t worry--I’m not going to let this turn into yet another rant about the depressing state of the economy.

Rather, I’d like to highlight what this roller coaster year has done for STC Carolina. We’ve concentrated on reaching out our arms to other communities. We partnered with the NCSU STC chapter for our August program--the career progression. This was a wildly successful event and we intend to continue that partnership. In February we called on members of the Write 2 Publish Meetup group and freelance specialist Alice Osborn. This turned into another wildly successful event as we very nearly went to standing room only for attendance. This is another partnership we intend to continue. In May we partnered with ASIS&T to put on a Saturday training program for CMS users. This turned out another highly successful event and another partnership to savor.

These are great steps for STC Carolina, but are merely the beginning of our real journey. I want to thank everyone who has reached out to their professional network to bring us new resources this year. I hope to see this trend continue and multiply in the near future. We have successfully begun the work of building our community. In addition to reaching out to other communities, we have worked hard to build up our own. We are reaching out to all of our past leaders for guidance and assistance. We’re also reaching out for new leaders to bring in new ideas. This building process is an ongoing, life-long journey. With changes in leadership come new ideas, different skills, different networks and contacts, and a growing list of resources to increase the value we offer to our members.

We intend to take advantage of even more of those resources in the near future. Bea and I have been talking with our incoming council about ideas and we are excited about the coming year. I hope all of you will tune in to the message Bea has for Vision Day in July. Some great things are coming that I know you’ll appreciate. We want your opinions too, so keep your eyes (and inboxes!) open for a membership survey coming soon. Make sure your voice is heard.

STC as a society is facing a tough year this year. The recession has hit everyone, including professional associations, very hard. This means that some things will change, but STC Carolina is prepared to change with the times and continue to raise benefits for our members. We’ll need volunteers to implement all our plans, for small tasks as well as the larger ones. So be prepared for that tap on the shoulder to come soon. Together we can make STC Carolina even stronger in these tough economic times.

Let me close by saying thank you. Thank you to my council that has worked so hard with such innovative ideas and tireless effort. Thank you to STC as an organization for supporting our chapter. Thank you to each and every member of our chapter that elected me as Vice President and President of the STC Carolina chapter. I’ve learned a lot during this time and it has been my honor to serve. I hope to continue helping to lead this great chapter on the continued journey we have undertaken.

Jenna can be reached at pastpresident at stc-carolina dot org.