Two colleagues and I were recently interviewed via email about our careers in medical (technical) writing by a journalists for the website BioSpace. We are members of the STC HealthMed special interest group (SIG) of the Society for Technical Communication (STC).
The article was published on March 5 and is available here:
On February
STC North Texas Lone Star Chapter about Using Checklists to Increase Consistency and Productivity in Communications Tasks.
Of 40 people who registered, 15 attended, and I got some good questions and comments at the end. I also re-connected with people I haven’t seen since the last Summit or even many year’s prior Summits or in one case since I had been with the Mid-South Chapter, which no longer exists. Feedback has been good so far.
On January 14, 2019, I conducted a webinar for the TC Dojo on my favorite topic of checklists!
Of 123 people who registered, 54 attended, and I got some good questions at the end and some LinkedIn connection requests afterward. Feedback has been good so far.
More information and a link to the video: https://www.single-sourcing.com/events/checklists-increase-productivity/
The STC New England Chapter’s InterChange conference is a nice intimate conference over a Friday and Saturday (October 26 and 27 this year). The theme was Engineering Experiences, so I updated some slides I had used on networking to give a session called Engineering Your Networking Experiences. I was in the first session of the first day, right after the keynote, so I did my best to send InterChange attendees out into the rest of the conference and the world with some tools for better networking. It was gratifying to hear attendees use some of my phrases in talking to me and others in an effort to network and use what they learned.
Action shots, stolen from Twitter:
Slides: Schrank_Engineering Your Networking Experiences_Interchange_102518
Bookmarks of MANY Articles on Networking: Networking Resources – Links
Personally, I was pleased with how it turned out. I struggle with looking at my notes too much and getting a little out of breath in my excitement, but I feel like that was much more in control on this session. I am no Ted Talk-er, but I am definitely making progress.
And I always feel like I make a few more connections as a speaker than just another attendee, so that is fun.
I also attended some good sessions and met and re-connected with some interesting folks.
I didn’t get many pictures, but her’s one from dinner after the conference with some friends:
We went to a place called Holly Crab, and if you ordered the seafood boil, it came to you a bag. That was the strangest way I have ever eaten dinner before, but it was pretty good overall.
After many years of saying, I should attend this conference, I finally did attend one day of the Communication Central Be a Better Freelancer conference. and I’m glad I did! I got to see a couple of people I normally see at STC functions, but then I also saw the Chair of the Liberal Arts school at Morrisville State College, who hired me to adjunct there (teaching a tech comm class) in Fall of 2016. So that was unexpected.
Also, I won a book (below), worked on my elevator pitch, learned a bit about macros, and met some interesting folks!
I’m excited to talk about technical writing to a local group of young girls at the library on Oct 5:
Another conference I have been wanting to attend for years is the Lavacon conference. I was lucky enough to win a free registration at the Conduit conference, so I cashed in some frequent flyer miles for the flight and got a roommate to share the room costs. No speaking this time; I’m just going to explore the conference, learn something new, and network.
