STC-Phila. Metro Chapter

Society for Technical Communication

Executive Board Nominations Are Open

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Election time is here and nominations are requested for candidates for the STC – Philadelphia Metro Chapter Executive Board for the 2016-2017 chapter year.

You may submit your name for the position for which you would like to be a candidate, or submit the names of persons you are nominating.

You also can use the nomination form to volunteer for a non-elected chapter role. You do not need to be a member of STC to become a volunteer.

  • Nominations will close on April 29.
  • Voting will be conducted in May.
  • The new STC-PMC Executive Board will be announced in June.
  • Elected terms are for one year (July 1 to June 30)

Click Here to Submit a Nomination!

The current available positions for the STC – Philadelphia Metro Chapter Executive Board:
President – The President oversees chapter operations and helps other volunteers plan, organize, and conduct chapter activities.
Vice President – The Vice President organizes the chapter meetings and supports the President as needed.
Treasurer – The Treasurer manages all of the chapter’s funds and financial operations.
Secretary – The Secretary serves as the membership chair and keeps the records of council meetings.

All chapter executive candidates must be current members of the STC – Philadelphia Metro Chapter.

STC-PMC Receives Platinum Community Award from STC

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2016 Platinum Community Award Winner

The Society for Technical Communication has awarded the Philadelphia Metro Chapter the Platinum Community Award.

Citation: For having strong and varied programs and events for your members, and especially for your great focus on your student community with your Week of Writing and Web Content Strategy workshop.

Comments: Congratulations to you all for earning a Platinum Community award. Your community was one of the highest scoring applicants in this year’s CAA process. You have so much to offer your members, it was truly a pleasure to review your application.

Overview

The STC Community Achievement Award exists to recognize our outstanding communities for providing outstanding member services modeling success, and fostering innovation, which encourages collaboration, and ultimately serving the members of STC.

In addition to serving STC and its communities, Community Achievement Award-related activities provide individual members with many valuable professional development opportunities, including:

  • Meeting and networking with other professional technical communicators
  • Developing project leadership skills through volunteering for and managing community and Society level projects
  • Gaining exposure to industry tools and best practices
  • Gaining exposure to companies that employ technical communicators

Levels of Award

The application for the Community Achievement Award is quite extensive. Points are awarded for activities done in 2015.

  1. Platinum Community Award (Community of Distinction)
    Points required: 74.7 or more points (90%)
  2. Gold Community Award (Community of Excellence)
    66.4 to 74.6 points (80%)
  3. Silver Community Award (Community of Merit)
    58.1 to 66.3 points (70%)

Awards can be earned by multiple communities. As in previous years, communities are not competing with each other. Communities perform the activities listed on the Community Achievement Award Application, using these activities to serve the professional technical communication community.

Thank you to the administrative councils and and our chapter members for helping STC-PMC achieve this recognition!

Distinguished Community Service Award Winners: Calloway & Rineer

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Rineer and Calloway
Photograph by Lowell Brown

The Distinguished Community Service Awards recognize the hard work and commitment of STC’s community leaders. The award recognizes an individual’s exemplary effort, energy, and dedication to their community and its activities.

The Distinguished Community Service Award is the highest level of recognition that a member can receive for service to their community.

Two Philadelphia Metro Chapter members received this award for 2016.

Jessica Rineer: For exceptional leadership of the Philadelphia Metro Chapter – for your selfless contributions, inspiration, energy, and continued dedication.

David Calloway: For sustained contributions to the Philadelphia Metro Chapter. David has had numerous roles with PMC including President and Conference Chair.

Congratulations, Jessica and David! Thank you for your contributions!

Only 3 Days Left: Register for Neil Perlin’s Mobile Workshop!

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Neil_PerlinThere’s only 3 days left to register for STC-PMC’s workshop with Neil Perlin!

Conduit 2016 – Connecting Minds: WORKSHOP

Join us on Friday, April 1st for a full-day workshop with Neil Perlin!

Creating Mobile Apps Without Coding

Responsive design lets us port online help to mobile devices. But what if you need more features than help authoring tools can create, such as help that knows where it’s located and automatically revises itself accordingly? Or a help system for the general public that can sell tools and support services to users as part of the help? Or a help system with a built-in camera that can take a photo and send it to tech support? Help authoring tools can’t easily create such features; app development tools can. And app development tools are becoming as usable as help authoring tools.

In this workshop, you’ll build a simple but fully functional app that can run on both iPhones and Android phones. You’ll do this using the app equivalent of Flare or RoboHelp. You’ll:

  • Get an overview of app concepts and differences between hybrid and web apps.
  • Get an overview of app design concepts and principles.
  • Create a simple app that can send an email, access an external web page, and let the user add and recall data from a simple database. The result could be truly interactive user assistance or even true apps.

When you finish, you’ll have a simple but functional app to display back home in your company, and one that may start you thinking about going beyond the bounds of traditional tech comm.

ABOUT NEIL PERLIN

Neil Perlin is an internationally known consultant, strategist, trainer, and developer for online content ranging from help to mobile. He is Madcap Certified for Flare and Mimic, Viziapps Certified for the Viziapps Studio app development platform, and Adobe Certified for RoboHelp. He is the author of multiple books, most recently Advanced Features in MadCap Flare 10 and Creating Mobile Apps Without Coding.

WORKSHOP REQUIREMENTS

You will need to bring a laptop (with charging cord and a mouse) and smartphone (iPhone or Andriod) to this workshop.You cannot use a tablet for this workshop.

Your devices must meet the following criteria:

  • A Windows laptop running Windows 7+, or an up-to-date Mac laptop.
  • Firefox 10+, IE 9+, Google Chrome 12.0+, or Opera 11+.
  • An iPhone 4, 5, or 6 running iOS 8+, or an Android phone running Android 4+.

You MUST also perform a couple pre-workshop tasks.

  • Set up a Google account, if you do not have one.
  • Set up a Gmail account, if you do not have one.
  • Create a Viziapps account, if you do not have one.
  • Install the free Viziapps App.

Complete instructions will be sent to you.

LOCATION

The location is convenient to both the PA Turnpike and public transportation.

REGISTER NOW

Winners of the STC-PMC Student Membership Announced!

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Congratulations to our 3 winners of the STC-PMC student membership! Each new member will now compete to possibly win a scholarship worth $500. Look for our new student members at upcoming events!

Winners

Matthew L

Matthew Litton

Drexel University

(Not pictured)

Karen Shollenberger

Drexel University

Sara y

Sara Yacoubian

Drexel University

 

If you have any questions about the scholarship, mentoring opportunities, or TechComm programs, contact Donn DeBoard at highered@stcpmc.org.

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