By Anjela Dukes

Back in July, during our annual Vision Day meeting, we discussed our chapter's strengths and weaknesses and the noteworthy events of our past. We pondered the questions that we, as a pilot chapter for STC transformation, need to answer for the national effort. We rightfully concluded that we are a very healthy chapter with a positive outlook on the future. We are a strong group with six active SIGs.

If you take a look at the new individual membership categories at http://www.stc.org/transformation/memberCategories.pdf, you'll notice that one option allows STC members to choose to be part of three SIGs. That's right. One choice is to opt out of chapter membership altogether.

The new membership model could affect our chapter big time.

If the Carolina Chapter loses members, we lose money. If we lose money, then we lose our ability to provide services and activities. Responding to this challenge,our Administrative Council and the Transformation and Strategic Plan team are focusing on innovative ways to bring you value and to continue the great service sand activities we provide today.

Consider this:

• Each month, Carolina holds membership meetings at which members can exchange ideas and network.
• Carolina provides a variety of training opportunities in the form of hands-on workshops, telewebinars, and a mentoring program
• Carolina provides a Job Bank that lists local job openings, placement agencies, and companies that hire technical communicators. It provide slinks to other job-related websites and newsgroups. In addition, members can place their HTML-coded resumes on the web for review by potential employers.
• Carolina provides a quarterly newsletter to keep our members informed about the latest trends in technical communication and to enable our members to voice their opinions
• Year in and year out, Carolina conducts one of the best local online, art,and technical publications competitions in the Society. Our judges are well-trained, as Ann-Marie Grissino attests in a related article in this issue of the newsletter.
• Carolina is one of only nine STC chapters nationwide to conduct local salary surveys. Members have used these surveys to angle for better pay and more responsibility on the job.
• Carolina consistently hosts high-quality local conferences. Our upcoming Tri-Doc 2005 is assembling a top-notch slate of speakers and discussion topics.
• We give out free money!

OK, I was just kidding on that last point to see if you were paying attention. We don't hand out cash, but the knowledge and skills you get through our chapter's activities often translate into higher pay and more respect on the job.

By the time you read this message, our re-chartering discussion on Dec. 9th will already have taken place. We will have talked about changing our chapter name, our goals and strategies, revamping our mission statement, adding value to the larger STC community, and attracting new members. We will have spent part of our time talking about the new STC membership model and how it might affect our chapter. I'm confident we will have brainstormed even more ways to provide you service.

When you pay your dues this year, choose to stay with our community. Let me know what we can do to make that the right choice for your career.