I am the Edmonton Liaison for the Alberta chapter (the main body being in Calgary), and one of my goals has been to engage more of the “younger generation”, including all those fresh minds (and non-members) attending the tech comm program at a local university.

Our questionnaire is in the process of being developed and will be distributed to all members of the Alberta chapter, as well as all tech comm students in the province.

Thanks for such a well written post.

Good post. Well balanced arguments.

My 2 cents is that the STC need to get some external consultants to come in and make recommendations.

Hard to believe that they can’t use the resources at hand.

I thought of signing up but then saw this 9 stage application form:

https://access.stc.org/JoinSTC/

It shouldn’t be this hard.

Ivan

As a 33-year-old TC, I concur with many of your views. I am the VP of the Pittsburgh chapter, and we are struggling to keep our members involved. I am trying to actively expand from our traditional member demographic and it is a challenge. We cannot afford to alienate our existing members. The key is that both our older and younger members value the community, most.

I was surprised to read a couple of respondents who were, in turn, surprised about younger members valuing a community. Look around! It is everywhere! LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, ReddIt, etc. Social media is exploding throughout all demographics, but has completely saturated the younger population. They crave it like a drug. Now the reasons for this, and whether it is good or bad, is a discussion for another day. The fact remains that STC must make the most of this opportunity in order to reach this “next generation.”

Amen. Excellent statement.

When I was a newcomer to the field (low those many years ago!), I did draw value from STC for finding a job and learning more about the profession, the possibilities and facets. What I didn’t anticipate going in but now value immensely is the community. I do belong to a chapter, but, honestly, more out of loyalty. Professionally, I have much more in common with my SIG communities (I specialize in accessibility).

And I agree — Change everything, and you lose long-time members and their historical and domain knowledge. Again, as a novice, I reached out to technical communication mavens — those published in Intercom or the Journal or folks I heard about through other members.

But there’s also this key opportunity to “teach up,” if you will. I guest lecture once or twice a year at graduate schools (in tech comm or human factors), and the tech saviness of the students is dizzying. Their openness to the newest technologies and knowledge of open source tools, shared with we seasoned veterans, can help us reinvigorate our own careers.

I like your idea of volunteer task forces — we have day jobs and families, so long-term commitments restricts the recruiting pool. Task forces with specific goals and timelines are a more realistic mechanism. Running the organization of STC with volunteers — IMO — is not realistic. Volunteers have to pay the bills and cannot be fully committed to operations. Yes, we can run chapters and virtual communities through volunteer work — not a lot of hard deadlines. But to effectively and efficiently run a large Society, I believe that we need a staff experienced with running a non-profit association. Fortunately, the senior STC staff have just those skill sets (ever ask Lloyd what he did before he retired? And Diana — don’t get me started ).

Regardless of where our opinions may differ, I heartened by the passion evidenced in your post. You care about this profession and the members of this organization. By building on that shared passion, I believe we can survive this economic morass, emerging as a leaner organization more valuable to its members.