Setup
The Rochester Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication’s annual conference Spectrum is always a big deal for the chapter and the Council. Since I am president of the chapter, I have a lot of responsibilities in that role and as a past co-chair of the conference (2015 and 2016), I also know all of the different moving parts of the conference and what needs to get done, so I feel responsible for making sure things run smoothly.
Every Spectrum starts on Saturday with setup, when Council members and Spectrum volunteers bring everything to RIT, where we hold the conference. There are swag bags to put together, a giveaway table to set up, and conferences to be had about the coming days.
Leadership Day
The first official day of the conference is Leadership Day. This year’s event had the theme of A Practical Guide to Shape Your Future. We broke into groups to discuss what goals we had in the next few months, and how we could ensure we met our goals.
Speaker Reception
The evening of Leadership Day, we have a speaker’s dinner. Because this was the 60th anniversary of the conference, this year’s event was called the 60th Anniversary Banquet and had more awards than usual. As president, I was reponsible for choosing award receipients and presenting awards. At the behest of the Membership Manager, we also gave out long-term member awards for those who had been members for more than 10 years.
Conference
With so many sessions to choose from, and yet, so much to do, I don’t always get to attend a lot of sessions. In most sessions, I went around and took pictures and posted them to Twitter. I took action shots of the speakers and the participants in their sessions, gathered employees from companies and took thier pictures to show how some companies send their technical communication teams to conferences, and took pictures of the sponsors at their booths to promote them on Twitter.