By Meredith Kinder, Carolina Communiqué Managing Editor

Welcome to 2008! I'm optimistic that this year will bring the Carolina Chapter great opportunities and programs that meet all our members' needs. This issue of Carolina Communiqué follows suit: it provides a variety of articles meant to touch the needs of all types of technical communicators in our organization.

• STC Carolina is proud to announce that two members are running for office at the Society level. Larry Kunz is running for Second Vice President and Lisa Pappas is running for Director. In this issue of the Communiqué, Michael Harvey interviews Lisa in his ongoing "Interviewing Innovators" series. Larry writes about the STC's past and future, as well as tech comm trends and his vision for STC.
• Andrea Wenger helps us sort through the language we need to speak intelligently when editing and thus presenting ourselves as expert communicators.
• In case you missed the chapter's meeting centered around offshoring on November 17, Christina Eftekhar presents a thorough and interesting recap of the topics presented and ideas discussed. Her article may help you think about the issues in ways you haven't before!
• Michael Harvey delivers his president's message, centered around the resounding theme of reinvention. If you've ever had an interest in self-reflection and evaluating if you're a right fit for this profession, this article is a must.
• I've also included a couple of article reprints in this issue that I feel are interesting and thought-provoking:
  • Scott Abel describes how he has learned that scientists use 3D images to look for life-saving clues — and they use a tool that we all probably use on a daily basis: Adobe Acrobat.
  • Sue Kocher describes her and John Kohl's experiences at the Localization World conference in Seattle. Sue gave a presentation entitled Real Enterprise Terminology Management: A Case Study and summarized how the Terminology Management Steering Committee at SAS built support for terminology management and how the committee obtained executive support for standardizing language assets.
  • Lisa Mileusnich presents some ever-welcome shortcut tips on using Microsoft PowerPoint.
• Viv supplies "advice" to a disconcerted technical writer whose husband is full of geek-speak.

Enjoy this issue, and I promise there will be even more in store for the rest of 2008!


Meredith can be reached at newsletter at stc-carolina dot org.