STC India Diary

STC India Annual Business Meeting: Minutes

The following are the minutes of the Annual Business Meeting of the STC India Chapter held on Dec 12, 2003, at Le Meridien, Pune.

The meeting was chaired by our Immediate Past President, Frederick Menezes as Tharun Unni our Chapter President, and Suvarna Inamdar our Vice President could not attend.

The agenda for the meeting was as follows:

1. 2003 Summary

A brief round-up of the STC India Chapter activities during 2003 was given by Susan A. on behalf of Tharun Unni. Tharun had declared 2003 to be the "Year of the Volunteer" and several members of the technical communication community contributed their efforts towards the chapter this year.

Highlights of this year's achievements are:

• INDUS: Continues to grow in quality and provide excellent visibility for our chapter. INDUS won an Award of Merit in the 2002-2003 STC Newsletter Competition. It was rated the seventh best newsletter in the competition. Our Immediate Past President, Frederick Menezes, was invited to judge STC's international chapter newsletter competition.

D.Vijayalakshmi, Pawan Nayar, Edwin Skau, Kumar Dhanagopal, Frederick Menezes, and Aparna Achyuta all contributed to the success of INDUS.

• Education Sessions: As in previous years, several learning sessions were held in Pune and Bangalore thanks to the efforts of Ramesh Aiyyangar, Anu A. and the Education Manager - Rajan D.V. One session was held in Chennai, organized by Raj Ekaneethswaran.

• Chapter Website: The Website received a totally new image thanks to Neeraj Bhatia our Webmaster. Neeraj also began to collect statistics on the number of visitors to the site. Despite being in the US for a good part of the year, Neeraj continued to update the site whenever it became necessary.

• Chapter Administration and Finances: At the end of 2002 our chapter was registered as a society requiring several accounting norms to be followed. Rohina Daruwala did an excellent job to get our finances to adhere to such norms.

• Membership: The number of members in our chapter stands at 78, thanks to efforts of Prashant Natarajan who was Membership Manager till August 2003.

• Public Relations: Peter Yorke the PR Manager for the year ensured that the activities of the chapter gained unprecedented media attention during the year.

• Competitions: Sunil Gokhale conducted three major competitions - Art, Online Documentation, and Technical Publications. He also conducted competitions in logo design and essay writing.

• Conference Program Committee: Makarand Pandit headed the Conference Program Committee and was ably assisted by Frederick Menezes, Ramesh Aiyyangar, Sunil Gokhale and Linda Menezes. Conference newsletter volunteers were Meera Balani, Anuradha K, Francis Anthony, Ramesh Aiyyangar, and Frederick Menezes.

2. Elections to the STC India Chapter Administrative and Management Councils

The following were elected to the STC India Chapter Administrative Council:

•  Susan Alexander: President

•  Peter Yorke: Vice President

•  Ramesh Aiyyangar: Secretary

•  Rohina Dhunjeebhoy: Treasurer

•  Tharun K. Unni: Immediate Past President

The following were nominated to the STC India Chapter Management Council:

•  Gururaj B.S.: Membership Manager

•  Sunita Shelar: Education Manager

•  Subash Babu: Competitions Manager

•  Poornima Venkatesh: Public Relations Manager

Elections and nominations to other posts in the chapter: