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This is a great regional conference that is close to me. It’s smaller than Spectrum, but I know enough people there to feel comfortable with getting to know them better and meeting new people. All of the session I attended ended up being full of good information, and I met some great folks.

It was on Saturday, April 7, 2018, and Todd DeLuca and I gave a session called Ready to Pivot, Advance, or Change? Use Side Gigs to Move Your Career Forward. I had given a similar session at Interchange in the fall and had put in a proposal for it at Conduit, and Todd had put in for a similar session for Spectrum and Conduit, so they asked us to work together and present one session. It was fun to collaborate with someone on a session, and we ended up having a lot of fun.

This is a great regional conference that is local to me. As President of the Rochester chapter of the Society for Technical Communication, I have some official responsibilities for this event as well as some pet projects I have maintained since being co-chair myself (2015 and 2016).

One of my favorite parts of the event is recognizing my energetic and selfless volunteers with chapter and Society-level awards during the Speaker Dinner and Awards Ceremony on Sunday night. There is a short slideshow of me awarding them below.

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During the conference, I presented a Spotlight Talk on Using Checklists to Increase Consistency and Productivity in Communications Tasks. Due to time constraints, I rushed through it a bit but I got some good feedback. My slides are on SlideShare and my other resources include an infographic on How to Create an Editing Checklist and signing up for my May webinar on the same topic from STC.

Next on the agenda is Conduit next week, where Todd DeLuca and I will present a session called Ready to Pivot, Advance, or Change? Use Side Gigs to Move Your Career Forward. And then on May 9, I will present Using Checklists to Increase Consistency and Productivity in Communications Tasks as a webinar for STC.

What an honor to be named an Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (STC)!

After filling out an application that documented what I have done for the Society and the profession, my application was reviewed by a committee of my peers, who evaluated my career and accomplishments against established criteria.

More info here:

https://www.stc.org/notebook/introducing-2018-class-stc-fellows-associate-fellows/

I’ll receive recognition at the annual conference Summit in May.

Preliminary citation:

Kelly Schrank
For diverse and sustained contributions to the profession via articles, books, presentations, and blogs. For continuing service to STC at the both the Society and Chapter levels, as well as service to other related professional associations.

October 20 and October 21, I attended the New England chapter of the Society for Technical Communication’s conference Interchange. On Saturday, I gave a session on building side gigs at your day job, which started with my story of how I’ve done that at my current job, then progressed to a discussion of what the attendees wanted to do and how they might build side gigs at their day jobs. Facilitating the discussion is always the fun part for me; I just gave the presentation to give them some ideas and context.

Though you won’t get the full effect by just looking through the slides, they are here:

Ideas and Advice for Building Side Gigs at Your Day Job

#interchange2017

When the conference was all over, a bunch of us went to dinner before going our separate ways the next morning.

Where did the summer go? Here we are midway through September and there is so much going on!

Coming into September, I knew I had some deadlines and activities for the fall:

• Planning Administrative Council meetings for the STC Rochester chapter as the new President and training my replacements for programs and PR
• Putting together my application for STC Associate Fellow
• Writing a couple of blog posts for the AMWA Annual Conference
• Taking on a new freelance gig
• Attending the AMWA Annual Conference, where I will attend Board and Executive Committee meetings as the Annual Conference Administrator

But as September progressed, my deadlines and activities doubled or tripled!

One freelance gig turned into two, though the second is small. This is the type of challenging work I enjoy, though, and it will be one and off until December, which allows me to fit it in without killing myself with everything else going on.

One conference turned into three, and I am really looking forward to those! The first is the Presentation Summit, where I will brush up on my PowerPoint and presenting skills and see what I can bring back to my day job. And the second is Interchange, a regional STC conference, where I will be presenting a new session that I am putting together as we speak!

For someone who said she was going to scale back her volunteer activities (and did turn down some requests for volunteer projects from STC and AMWA to clear my schedule a bit), I still ended up busy!