Learning through Sharing

A lot of nice things are happening in the Indian technical writing community today. We're witnessing a growing trend where corporates, technical writing agencies, universities, and volunteers are coming forward to do their bit for the community. We recently organized a lecture on Challenges in Developing Web-based Technical Content, in Bangalore. This special event of the STC India chapter was sponsored by The Writers Block. It just goes to show that we're getting much required support from corporates and technical writing agencies.

The Delhi/NCR wing of the STC India chapter is organizing its first regional conference on 24th June in Delhi. On behalf of the STC India admin council, I'd like to thank Saravanan and Pawan for their hard work and leadership. This event is sponsored by Oracle and Adobe.

I also want to mention here that we are contributing to the efforts of the professors at the Anna University, Chennai by conducting a few sessions on communication theory, presentation skills, professional writing, and resume writing for over 300 engineering students. This event assumes significance as we're trying to collaborate with academics in finding ways to enhance the value of the technical communication profession in India.

The first-ever mentorship program has begun. We received an overwhelming response from the community. Thanks so much. This 3-month program will end on 10th September. I take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks to all mentors and proteges for their time and support. We're now planning an organizing a symposium for leaders and managers in the technical writing industry. EMC has evinced keen interest in supporting this event. By the way, it is the second event organized by STC India for managers and leaders. We conducted the first one at Hewlett-Packard last year.

Also, we are exploring the possibilities of conducting a few introductory sessions for students of the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media. We hope to schedule these sessions in July.

The annual conference of the chapter is slated to be held in Bangalore in the first week of December. The conference program committee managed by Anupama A is progressing on various fronts: selecting the venue, event manager, and so on. This year's conference is expected to attract over 500 people from across the globe. The conference program committee is faced with an uphill task of organizing this huge event.

Akash Dubey, the Bangalore city representative of the STC India chapter, came out with a novel idea of organizing technical sessions, such as Introduction to UNIX, Introduction to Networking for Bangalore-based writers. He roped in software developers from different companies to conduct these sessions for technical writers. I want to congratulate Akash on a job well done.

We have three new members on the management committee of the chapter: Geetha Nazare (sponsorship manager), Avinash Akshay (competition manager), and Tanvi Malhotra (employment manager). On behalf of the chapter members, I want to thank them for taking up these positions.

We're currently developing a new Web site for the STC India chapter. If everything goes well, the new site should go live in August. Our focus is on reducing admin intervention and on reorganizing the existing content. The new Web site includes a section for members only. In this section, we will post all administrative documents, such as guidelines for city representatives, guidelines for conference program managers, guidelines for organizing regional conferences, and mentorship program guidelines. City representatives and other volunteers of the chapter will be given admin privileges to upload and publish presentations and documents to the STC India site. This facility will help us reduce Web administration and maintenance costs.

I recommend that you take advantage of what is soon going to be on offer.

Thanks,
Gururaj

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