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The Central Illinois STC chapter is happy to announce that there's enough money in our chapter budget to offer a few partial/full scholarships to the 48th Annual STC Conference in Chicago this May. Specifically, we will award a:
The only caveat: Scholarship recipients must present a brief (5-10 minutes) overview of their conference experience at our June meeting. (We'll make you sign a statement to this effect, so be prepared!)
If you're interested, please send an email to Peggy Currid at currid@soltec.net with the following information no later than Friday, April 13, 2001:
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DeWitt Jones (http://www.gacpc.com/bios/bio_display.asp?name=Dewitt%20Jones), an award-winning National Geographic photographer, will be the keynote speaker. If you attended the annual conference in Dallas in 1993, DeWitt was our keynote speaker then who urged us "to put juice in our cameras." He's still on record as being the most popular STC keynote speaker for annual conferences.
Richard Lederer (http://pw1.netcom.com/~rlederer/index.htm), author of more than 2,000 books and articles about language and humor, will be the closing speaker. He'll also do a workshop on Wednesday morning. His best-selling books include Anguished English, The Bride of Anguished English, and The Write Way: A Guide to Real-Life Writing. His syndicated column, "Looking at Language," appears in newspapers and magazines throughout the United States.
He appears regularly on "All Things Considered" and with Charles Harrington Elster hosts a weekly one-hour radio show, "A Way With Words," on San Diego Public Radio. He is usage editor of The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition Unabridged.
Approximately 250 sessions and 17 post-conference workshops will be offered. We're very fortunate once again this year that noted and popular presenters JoAnn Hackos, Ann Rockley, Ginny Redish, Whitney Quesenbery, Neil Perlin, and BogoVatovec among others will be very busy giving a variety of presentations. After a 2-year absence from STC annual conferences, Bill and Kit Horton (http://www.horton.com/start.htm) will return to do three presentations and a post conference workshop.
Approximately 50 exhibitors have already signed up. An onsite STC bookstore will also be set up in the Exhibit Hall in the Hyatt.Manual evaluation workshops, usability demos, and a special Vendor Showcase featuring some of the latest products on the market will also be available.
A Global Communication Town Meeting will be held daily in the Moulin Rouge room of the Fairmont. Technical communicators from around the world will share their ideas and concerns on international technical communication.
Need more details? Check out http://www.stc.org/48thConf/index.html.
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Your pushy prez needs to know. So far, we believe the following chapter members are planning to attend:
Please alert Nancee Moster at nmoster@metasolv.com if you're planning to go.
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Jim Copes, Peggy Currid, Joe Grohens, Nancy Komlanc, Nancee Moster, Fred "The Bookie" Randall, and Marya Ryan masterfully represented our chapter in a panel discussion on "Introduction to the Technical Communication Profession" at the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana on Thursday, March 29th.
Approximately two dozen undergraduate and graduate students attended. And if the duration of the presentation (two-and-a-half hours) and the fact that we've been asked to do this again are any indication, we can definitely consider our second sortie into local academia a resounding success. (Our first successful sortie was a presentation arranged by Deshae Lott at the University of Illinois-Springfield last November.)
Thanks to Kathie Gossett, Matthew Lessig, Steven Davenport, and Andy Cantrell for making one of our chapter priorities a reality.
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Want to know more about the opportunities surrounding Champaign-Urbana's new research park? Then make sure you mark 11:30 a.m., Thursday, April 12 on your calendar.
John Parks, University of Illinois Director of the research park will talk about the park at the park—the new NCSA building on South First Street.
Refreshments will most definitely be served.
Expect a meeting announcement soon...
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Nancy Gacki, Education chair of the Chicago Chapter STC, invites you to participate in the annual Chicago chapter STC's Peer Review workshop scheduled for Saturday, April 21, from 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., at the IIT Rice campus in Wheaton, IL (just east of Rt. 53 and off Butterfield Road).
The Peer Review Workshop, which is open to any STC Illinois chapter member, is an ideal, inexpensive opportunity to present materials and receive feedback on work from fellow members and peers in the industry.
For more information, check out http://www.stc-chicago.org/education/peer.shtml