Tagged: communication

STC Pushes to Become More International in Outlook

by Jen O Neill

The Society for Technical Communication (STC) is one of the world’s largest organisations for technical communication. We have members across the world. Currently around 18% of STC members are based outside of the United States, most in Canada. Around 5% of members are in Europe and Asia. So perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising if it can have a very US-centric focus as most members are there.

But it is surprising. And frustrating.

Our business is communication and an increasing number of us work globally. Even if we may not travel as part of our jobs or be based in a foreign country, our work could well be used in multiple countries and languages.

Being global in outlook matters. Understanding how “global” impacts our work and jobs is important so that we can then better meet customer and colleague needs wherever they may be based. It also means we are better able to professionally evolve to changing market demands. As an international professional organisation, STC should be there helping us irrespective of where we’re based.

Problems faced by members based outside of the US

Non US-based members have been complaining for several years to the STC board about the lack of a real global outlook from headquarters and how poorly non US-based members are often served. Examples of current issues are

  • Some membership benefits only available to US members
  • Cost of webinars
  • Can only pay using credit cards (EFT – electronic funds transfer – still not available)
  • Lack of regional conferences and workshops
  • Poor communication between headquarters and members
  • Lack of in-depth sessions on localisation/internationalisation at conferences
  • And the lack of globalized content in the Society Web site, communications and forms (such as dates, times, addresses)

Responding to our requests for change, in 2006 the STC board set up a committee to review how the society could better meet the needs of its international members. This Global Strategies committee advised the office and board on many globalisation issues. A globalisation audit of the society unfortunately had to be postponed in 2008 due to the financial crisis.

So how are we doing with globalising the society?

A year ago, the Globalisation Audit Task Force (GATF) was set up to determine how the society could improve communication with non US-based members and determine issues that needed to be resolved.
Over the past year GATF has collected a list of globalisation issues from multiple sources within in the STC such as our forums and conversations with members as well as reviewing the old website. They also interviewed non US-based members on their needs. All this work provides an insight into the problems faced by members based around the world and gives an informative update on where the STC is in its progress on becoming a more globalised organisation, better able to meet the needs of a multi-cultural membership working in a world that gets smaller every day.

The 2011 GATF report and the presentation of the GATF report to the STC Board at the 2011 annual conference last May make interesting reading. I strongly encourage you to read them.

Where do we go from here?

Progress on improving the international outlook of the society has been slow so this work by GATF is a good step forward. The report gives a practical list of action items and advises that the society how it could proceed.

From this list, we see that there are several things we could all do individually and collectively to push global issues:

  • Educate members on globalisation: Write articles and blogs on STC sites (including the Europe SIG). If you have experience in globalisation, seriously consider submitting a proposal to the annual conference that’s aimed at other experienced members.
  • Make webinars more available to different time zones: Run webinars ourselves to make them more accessible to members in different time zones. However, running a webinar using the facilities used by STC headquarters, Genesys, is too expensive when based outside of North America. Fortunately, there are many other tools around that are more affordable. We could compare notes with other regional groups on suitable webinar tools. Seek sponsorship to make them more affordable.
  • Planning regional conferences (and with volunteers) is hard work (I’ve helped with a few and can speak from experience) so they won’t be annual events. Local initiative gets these off the ground. They don’t have to be large events. Perhaps partner with another international or national association on a shared theme?

Clearly change won’t happen overnight but we need to ensure that the board and office don’t just sit back and do little to solve this growing need. So this is where we all come into the equation. A small committee can only push so hard. We should now all help push the society to become the international society that so many of us want (and expect).

What ideas do you have for pushing these changes forward?
What suitable and affordable webinar tools can you recommend?
Are there issues not covered in the GATF report?

Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

No Weather in Belgium

by Jen O Neill

I’ve been thinking about the recent travel chaos that hit Europe and North America over Christmas when air travel practically came to a standstill for days due to the snow. Like many, I was stranded and sought information everywhere and anywhere in an attempt to figure out when I might be getting off the ground. Internet, radio, TV.
Watching the weather forecasts on French TV, I noticed that the weather curiously stopped at the French border. Changing channels to a Dutch station, the weather there stopped at the Dutch border. Same phenomenon on German TV; no weather outside Germany.

Did this mean that there was no weather in Belgium, situated between these three countries?

Not at all. Belgian TV showed me that the country was indeed having its own enclosed microclimate and not sharing it with its neighbours either. But as a stranded air passenger, I was aware of the larger picture-that all these countries were indeed sharing their weather and that by sharing their weather, the weather was having a much bigger impact than if it had stayed as numerous microclimates.

It’s not just TV weather news that can be accused of confining themselves within self-imposed borders. We can be guilty of it, too. Restricting our thinking and work within the confines of our own boundaries, such as narrow functional responsibilities, is unfortunately too easy to do. Silos can seem such comfortable places. Both for us and the information we produce as writers. How much information in our style guides, for example, could be used by other groups in the company but is never shared or has not been set up to be shared? Perhaps they don’t even know we have it. And what do they have that could be useful to us?

And yet, just as the weather has found, we can make a much bigger impact if we get out and collaborate with others. It can be hard to step outside the comfort zone. Yet if we want to develop and succeed professionally, we need to think outside of the box.

We need to be more like the weather. Circulate.

Call for Proposals: Navigating the Global Training Terrain

We’ve received a call for proposals from Pam Brewer of the Academic SIG of STC for the Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization.

Call for Papers: Special Issue

You are invited to consider submitting proposals for researched papers or best practices pieces in a special issue of the Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization entitled “Navigating the Global Training Terrain: New Literacies, Competencies, and Practices.” This issue, to be published in fall 2011, will focus on training in global contexts from the perspective of both those who train and those who learn. We seek submissions from a variety of perspectives including business, science, humanitarian practice, health, social advocacy, education, and government.

The Background

Logo for RPCG

Navigating the Global Training Terrain: New Literacies, Competencies, and Practices
(to be published in September/the Fall of 2011)

The twenty-first century has been characterized by rapid transformation—technological, social, cultural, environmental, economic, and scientific. In this changing milieu, organizations and individuals must continually acquire new knowledge and abilities or be left behind. Influential entities such as the United Nations strongly advocate the pursuit of lifelong learning for individuals, while leading companies, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations seek to become what scholars such as Peter Senge have called “learning organizations” that can transform themselves through the learning of their members at all levels.

Training, or the structured development of skills, competencies, and up-to-date knowledge, is an increasingly important element in these pursuits. The shape of training may vary—formal or informal, face-to-face or technologically mediated, short-term or long-term—but the end purpose is always the same: to facilitate learning by individuals or groups, usually with the larger purpose of enhancing organizational quality.

Training is vital to the success of globally connected organizations and individuals, but success requires the trainers’ effective bridging of linguistic, cultural, and social distances. Only teams and individuals with facility in navigating diverse languages, cultures, technologies, educational practices, and rhetorical traditions will be able to successfully provide training to global audiences.

Professional communicators, whose discipline claims expertise in several areas relevant to training—including oral, written, and visual rhetoric, usability, information architecture, electronic collaboration, intercultural communication, and collaboration with translators—are well positioned to contribute to global training efforts or take on the role of trainers themselves. Yet, despite these advantages, the pool of research on training in global audiences is limited, especially within the field of professional communication.

The Focus of the Special Issue

This special issue of the Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization seeks to address this need by providing a space for scholarly research and best practices on the topic of global, organizational training. The issue, entitled Navigating the Global Training Terrain: New Literacies, Competencies, and Practices will focus on training in global contexts from the perspective of both those who train and those who learn, including current research and best practices. The special issue will also cast an eye toward organizational training as it is evolving towards the future.

The editors of the special issue welcome submissions from a variety of perspectives including business, science, humanitarian practice, health, social advocacy, education, and government.

Possible topics pertaining to the theory, teaching, and practice of training in global contexts include the following, among others:

  • Intercultural considerations in the design and delivery of training
  • Training and the social web
  • Cultural intelligence for trainers and training audiences
  • Language use and translation in training contexts
  • Meta-communication and training
  • Communities of practice
  • Legal issues in global training
  • Economic aspects of global training
  • Assessment of global training
  • Training from a distance

Submitting Proposals

Proposals (up to 500 words) for research papers, short best practices pieces [*], and tutorials are due by October 10th, 2010. Review criteria can be found on the Journal’s website at www.rpcg.org. Proposals should be sent as an email attachment to one of the guest editors of the special issue:

  • Pam Brewer, Appalachian State University: brewerpe @ appstate.edu
  • Jim Melton, Central Michigan University: james.melton @ cmich.edu
  • Joo-Seng Tan: Nanyang Technological University: ajstan @ ntu.edu.sg

[*] We strongly encourage practitioners to submit best practices pieces on any of the topics identified in this CFP or on related topics. Best practices describe the training strategies, approaches, or methods that work in a particular situation or environment.

  • What has worked and why?
  • What has not worked so well, and what could work better?

Authors may use the following optional framework for best practices pieces: title, description, methods used, results, technologies used, and lessons learned. While the proposal and review process is the same for research papers, tutorials, and best practices pieces, final manuscripts for best practices should be shorter: approximately 1000 to 3000 words in length.

Production Schedule

The schedule for the special issue is as follows:

  • 10 October 2010 — 500-word proposals due
  • 15 October 2010 – Guest editors return proposal decisions to submitters
  • 10 January 2011 – Draft manuscripts of accepted proposals due
  • 1 July 2011 — Final manuscripts due
  • September 2011 — Publication date of special issue

About the Journal

The Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication and Globalization publishes articles on the theory, practice, and teaching of technical and professional communication in critical global and intercultural contexts such as business, manufacturing, environment, information technology, and others. As a global initiative, the Journal welcomes manuscripts with diverse approaches and contexts of research, but manuscripts are to be submitted in English and grounded in relevant theory and appropriate research methods. The Journal is peer reviewed with an editorial board consisting of experienced researchers and practitioners from over 20 countries.

The Journal is free or “open access,” using PKP open source software and housed at East Carolina University.

The first edition is planned for September 2010, and it will be published thereafter on a quarterly basis. For more information, see www.rpcg.org.

Please feel free to share this CFP with others who may be interested. We hope that this special issue will represent academic and practitioner perspectives as well as multiple disciplines.