Candidate materials and bios will be available on the STC website in early January 2010. This post is a reminder about the upcoming elections – and possibly a reminder to renew your STC membership.

Who are the Candidates

The following information is provided by Jackie Damrau, Manager, Nominating Committee. Feel free to contact Jackie if you have any questions: jdamrau3 at airmail.net.

Please note that the election slate presented below reflects changes to the composition of the Society Board of Directors. Based on the results of the Knowledge-based Governance Survey of the membership conducted in August 2009, the STC Board of Directors voted during its 24 August 2009 meeting to amend the Society Bylaws to reflect the following position changes:

• Remove the Second Vice President position
• Remove one Director position
• Change Director terms to two years
• Allow Directors to serve two consecutive terms

A full copy of the revised bylaws is posted on the STC website.

Congratulations to all of the candidates, and thanks to everyone who expressed interest in running for office.

• For President: Mike Hughes will automatically succeed from First Vice President.
• For First Vice President: Hillary Hart will automatically succeed from Second Vice President.

Candidates on the slate for the 2010 STC election:

• For Secretary: Rachel Houghton and Steven Jong
• For Director (three positions to be elected)* Nicky Bleiel, Al Hood, Tricia Spayer, Makarand (Mak) Pandit, and W.C. Wiese
  *Lisa Pappas resigned from the STC Board effective 23 November 2009, which creates an additional position for someone to serve the one year remaining in her term. For the 2010 election, STC members will elect three directors-at-large, with the top two winners serving the two-year terms and the third winner serving the remaining year of Lisa’s term.
• For Nominating Committee (two positions to be elected): Lory Hawkes, Nathaniel Lim, Linda Mikkelsen, and Preeti Mathur

What individual STC members can do

• Ask the candidate a question. The STC Web site will provide a “Question and Answer” area where individual members can post a question for all candidates for a position. All candidates for an elected position will receive the question by email and have the opportunity to post an answer. (The page is STC Board Election, but it is not updated at the time of this post.)
• Endorse a candidate. As an individual member, you may endorse a particular candidate on Twitter, the STC Ideas Ning site, the STC LinkedIn group, or your own personal blog. (NOTE: Group endorsement of a candidate by a community, chapter, or committee is not allowed. E-mail lists that are administered through the Society office and subscribed to based on an elected position in a community, such as the Presidents’ list or Treasurers’ list, are not appropriate venues for endorsements from individual members.)

The elections page will include each candidate’s statement and personal URL for additional information about the candidate.

Note that candidates are permitted to contact individuals personally in addition to providing campaign information on their own personal Web sites. The STC office may also send out (maximum) two campaign messages per candidate through Society e-mail to those who have opted for Society mail.

Take a moment to get to know the individuals running for elected office at the Society level by visiting the Candidates’ Page on the STC website where you can review the candidates’ biographies, ask them questions, and view their responses to questions posed by other members.

The 2009 election will be held from 10 March 2009 through 9 April 2009. Information on casting your ballot has been sent directly to all members.

Remember to vote, and thank you for doing your part to make STC a vibrant, growing organization.

Visit the Europe SIG’s updated web site regularly

This is the easiest resolution to keep because you’re here already – just  take a look round our brand new site and come back as often as you can. If you’d like to contribute, please contact our web manager, Karen Mardahl (k.mardahl@gmail.com)

Renew your STC membership

Although money is tight for everyone this year, STC membership gives you access to a worldwide community of technical communicators, writers, editors, illustrators, and educators, that you simply can’t get anywhere else. If you want to keep moving forward with your career, can you afford to let your professional affiliation lapse?

Volunteer to help the STC Europe SIG

You can get even more out of your STC membership not only by staying a member of the Europe SIG, but by giving up a little of your own time and effort to help the SIG move forward. We are still STC’s youngest and smallest Special Interest Group, and we need as much help as we can get. Being a SIG volunteer means that you help decide what kinds of activities the SIG promotes, and how we communicate with our members. So please, even if you can only manage a couple of hours a month, do get in touch. If you’d like to help with the SIG elections please contact Derek Torres (derekctorres@gmail.com). If you’d like to help with anything else, please contact me (david@farbey.co.uk) or Jen O Neill (writer@jennifer-oneill.eu).

With sincere good wishes for the coming year,

David

There is still time to volunteer to serve on the SIG nominations committee, or to be a candidate for a place on the SIG’s management team. Many members of the Europe SIG already contribute their time and efforts to support STC activities in many ways, and we are sure that everyone who does so would agree that being an STC volunteer is a richly rewarding experience.

A little background

The STC Europe SIG was established in 2007 following a petition to the STC Board by interested members with the organizers of the petition, David Farbey and Jen O Neill, being confirmed by the Board as interim co-managers. The SIG began recruiting members in the November 2007 – January 2008 membership renewal season and now has over 180 members. You may be interested to know that only about half our members live in Europe.

During 2008, Jen and David were joined by three other volunteer members who help them run the STC Europe SIG: Alice Jane Emanuel as membership manager, Derek Torres as newsletter manager, and Karen Mardahl as website manager. As we approach the end of our first full year as a SIG, and approach another STC membership renewal season, it is time for us to hold elections for SIG management posts for the very first time.

We do hope that you will consider volunteering some of your time to help run the STC Europe SIG over the next year. Volunteering to help run an STC SIG does not take up a lot of your time, and almost all the work involved can be carried out online from the comfort of your own home or office. (Some SIG activities do take place at the STC’s annual conference.) Being an STC volunteer can be a very rewarding experience, particularly in a SIG such as ours where you will be in contact with STC members from all over the world. If you would like to know more about what might be involved, please contact one of the SIG co-managers.

All the roles held by our current volunteer team are open for election, and any member of the SIG, including the current officeholders, may be nominated as a candidate for election. Members may also nominate themselves. Members should also suggest additional roles that may help running the SIG’s activities (for example, an online programs manager, or perhaps an annual conference activities manager).

Timeline

The timeline and process for the proposed election is as follows:

• Recruit two volunteers to serve on the Europe SIG nominations committee by 19 December 2008
• Invite nominations and self-nominations for all roles in the Europe SIG management team by 16 January 2009
• Publish slate of candidates for all roles in the Europe SIG management team by 6 February 2009
• Hold online elections for all roles in the Europe SIG management team in March or April 2009

If you are interested in helping in some way, however small, please contact our nominations committee manager, Derek Torres (derekctorres@gmail.com), or contact one of the SIG co-managers David Farbey (david@farbey.co.uk) and Jen O Neill (writer@jennifer-oneill.eu).