A  Time for Change! “Leap Ahead” is the Name of the Game

December 16-17 of 2005 saw the confluence of 350 technical communicators at Taj Krishna,Hyderabad. The mood was upbeat at the 7^th Annual STC India Conference . As always, all the first timers to the conference were overwhelmed. Old timers had a great time meeting their friends whom they meet only at annual conferences. It was also a perfect occasion to network with like-minded people and make new contacts. The participation of two Pakistani members of the STC India chapter, Farzana Jafar and Ayesha Haroon, was something that caught the attention of everybody.

The words of Farzana and Ayesha “the conference, on one hand proved to be a unique platform to interact with technical writers from different regions and cultures; on the other, it allowed us to familiarize ourselves with cutting-edge tools, technologies, and trends in technical writing”- explain what made them travel the distance to be part of the event.

The quality and content of papers presented were a true reflection of the level of maturity reached, a trend that has made the members of the technical communication fraternity in this part of the world sit up and take notes. The thrust was on technical content management, structured authoring, emerging techniques such as embedded help, and productivity increasing techniques in content generation, rather than on tools and writing/editing skills. The writing on the wall was loud and clear. Organizations need to replace rework with reuse. Endless pages of documentation is passé. A structured approach to content management is in. Truth be told, ROI is the name of the game. Has always been. Will always be.

As always, STC India’s reins move into a new admin council in the year 2006. After two years of an immensely eventful journey with the current editors, Indus too leaps ahead into a new set of hands. With this, we are confident that we will instill fresh perspectives in content that will give our audience greater value that they have always expected from us!

To take stock of the adventurous heights scaled by Indus in the past two years, during which the newsletter consistently was at the level of excellence among the STC newsletters, we realize that we have achieved most of the goals that we set for ourselves (refer Editors’ Footnote in the  March 2004 issue of Indus). In retrospect, the one goal that we could have done a lot more is “represent the Indian technical communicators and address need-based issues.” “Need-based issues” is the key. With the tech writing landscape responding to change so quickly, identifying and then addressing what could unanimously be agreed upon as the need of the hour was the true challenge.

Going forward, Indus will be backed by the best of the efforts and the new team will be as receptive to feedback and suggestions as we have been in the past.

Indus is a platform where we collate all our dreams, all that we plan, and wish to achieve for the technical communicator in you. “We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun”, and now it’s time to ring in the new. Let us dream, let us dare together, and let us take the only step we know.

Subash Babu & D Vijayalakshmi