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In this Issue: |
Editor's Welcome: Looking Back, Looking Forward... and Best Wishes! News and STC Events: Web Content Management, Recognizing STC Volunteers, Wanted - Recognitions Committee Manager Meeting Report: Privacy Matters Career Corner: Interviewing Questions - Part V |
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STC Events: |
May General Meeting: Web Content Management Presented by Sara Durning of Kiwibird Communications This presentation will include:
Sara Durning, a New Zealander who now lives and works in Toronto, Canada, is the face behind kiwibird communications. She brings nine years of documentation, software and web development experience to the table. Sara has held a variety of positions including four years as an Information Architect at New Media Architects, a company that builds Web-based applications for companies like Xlibris Corporation, Centennial College Learning & Resource Centre, Canadian Trading and Quotation System and Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. Tuesday May 11, 2004 at 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Toronto Chapter Awards Program - Recognizing Outstanding Volunteers As we all know, it takes many dedicated volunteers to have a successful chapter. At the Toronto chapter, all of the services and programs enjoyed by our members are possible thanks to the volunteers who give so generously of their time, energy and talents. Every year, the Recognitions Committee selects several individuals to receive a number of chapter-level awards. This program has grown and evolved over time to include several categories of recognitions. This year’s awards will be announced meeting in a brief and happy ceremony at the June. To recommend an individual for one of these awards, please contact recognitions manager Kim Van Rooy, at kvanrooy@sympatico.ca by Friday May 21st. The Rennie Charles Award recognizes one member who has made an outstanding contribution to the Toronto Chapter in the current year or over the past several years. This is the Toronto chapter’s most prestigious award and is not necessarily given every year. Every member is eligible for consideration, except those who have already won. Rennie Charles is remembered with great fondness by many of our senior STC members. He was cherished for the “ideas, support, patience, advice and mirth” he shared with the Toronto technical writing community. This award is given to honour and recognize those Toronto chapter members whose leadership and support follow in the tradition of Rennie Charles. Pacesetter Award - recognizes an individual or committee of the Toronto chapter that has shown innovation and creativity related to ideas for or the execution of Toronto STC activities. This award is not necessarily given every year. President’s Award - recognizes a person who has made a significant contribution to the Toronto chapter’s year and is not otherwise sufficiently recognized. This award is given at the discretion of the chapter president and may be awarded to more than one individual. Outstanding Rookie Awards - recognizes the members whose volunteer efforts begin within their first year of STC membership. Friends of STC Toronto Award - acknowledges a significant contribution to the Toronto Chapter by an organization or an individual who is not a member. No person or group may win this award more than once. Wanted! Recognitions Committee Manager For as long as I’ve been a member, Recognitions and Awards have been a high priority with the Toronto Chapter. Over the years, this program has expanded to include the Rennie Charles Award for outstanding contributions to the Toronto Chapter, the Morgan White Award given every fall to five students of technical communication, and several other chapter-level awards for outstanding volunteers traditionally presented at our June meeting. The Recognitions Committee is a fluid group that comes together as needed throughout the year. Depending on the award, the committee may be comprised of members of the current executive, past presidents, past recipients and interested volunteers. For example, the treasurer and the membership manager are involved for the duration of the Morgan White Award because free memberships are awarded. In addition to managing the Toronto Chapter awards program, the Recognitions Committee is responsible for submitting their recommendations for Associate Fellow and Distinguished Chapter Service, the international-level recognitions awarded by the STC. I first became involved with the Recognitions Committee in 1995 when I was the chapter’s volunteer coordinator. Spearheaded by competition manager Carla Salvador and education manager Diane Whitehouse, the Recognitions Committee established several new awards. At the time, our chapter recognized only one member every year (the Rennie Charles Award). We also developed a working timetable to cover publicity, nominations, selections and award presentations. The hard work of the Recognitions Committee in those early years has laid the groundwork for the ongoing success of our chapter’s awards program. For the past decade, the Toronto Chapter has continued to celebrate and honour its outstanding volunteers every year. Sustaining a recognitions program over several years is an achievement to be proud of. An organization that values the dedication and service of its volunteers stays healthy and well functioning! I’ve had the privilege of serving as recognitions manager for several years now and I believe this is one of the most important and rewarding executive positions there is. It is extremely gratifying to recommend fellow volunteers for well-earned awards—and tremendous fun presenting the certificates and honours, especially when we manage to surprise the recipient! If you would like to nominate a fellow member for this position, volunteer for the recognitions committee or find out more, please contact me at kvanrooy@sympatico.ca or call 416-535-2181 ext.2382. I’d love to hear from you. |
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Welcome: |
May 2004: Looking Back, Looking Forward...and Best Wishes! By Editor Philip Kahn - newsletter@stctoronto.org Even though spring is finally in the air, the end of the STC year is in sight. Be sure to read Kim van Rooy's news items above and then nominate anyone you feel is worthy of being honoured for their contribution, or consider making your own contribution next year by volunteering to manage our Recognitions Committee. It's a great way to get involved. This month Andrew Brooke wraps up his very useful series on those dreaded interview questions. Keith Soltys looks at text and code editors while STC President Robert Milkovich has some tips on time management. Finally, Susan Webb has an excellent report on last month's 'Privacy Matters' presentation. I hope she doesn't mind too much if I intrude on her own privacy by mentioning that she will be taking a break from writing for us this month to prepare for her upcoming wedding. Best wishes Susan! Philip Kahn works for Rogers Media and also is the sole proprietor of Digital Jive, a company which provides web design and technical writing services, as well as Macintosh support. He lives off the Danforth with his wife, daughter, dog and a Mac G5... not always in that order. |
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Meeting Report: |
May 2004: Peggy McChesney and Mario Morel on Privacy Matters By Susan Webb - susan_e_webb@yahoo.ca Think about the last time you signed up for cable service, or even ordered a pizza. How much personal information did you share? Did you consider how the company might use it? More to the point, how can technical writers tap into companies' current need to document their privacy policies, to ensure their customers' trust? STC member Peggy McChesney of Key Communications and Mario Morel of YourPrivacy discussed the new privacy legislation, PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act), and related issues. Both have extensive field experience with the impact of privacy policies on business. Peggy introduced us to the context of PIPEDA, which was passed in April 2000, and became mandatory in January 2004 in every Canadian province under federal privacy legislation. Customers can file complaints with companies who do not comply with PIPEDA. Non-compliance can have a number of business impacts, including loss of customer confidence, loss of company time, and penalties of up to $20,000. Private information is defined as any information (except what appears on a basic business card) not publicly available that can identify someone. Peggy then outlined two levels for the use of private information:
However, if the company cannot explain its need for additional personal information, or obtain consent for its use, the customer can opt out of the secondary use level. If the customer chooses not to provide specific data, the company may use general information, such as age range, instead of specifics. Companies must be accountable for information collection and for identifying purposes. They must also limit the use, disclosure and retention of data, and document customer consent. Options should be provided for customers who challenge compliance, and the minimum information requirements clearly spelled out. Internet technology and large computer storage space now permit rapid, low-cost customer information-gathering by companies, which can present significant challenges to monitoring privacy. To observe a privacy policy effectively, companies and customers should follow Business owners should:
Customers should:
Mario then presented The 10 "Ps" of Privacy (how the accurate documentation of privacy requirements common across industries can earn customers' trust). He demonstrated that while all ten are necessary, some are more relevant to certain job functions than are others. Accountability is key for a company's CEO, while practices, procedures and protocols are most important to an IT department. Because all ten principles are relevant to customers, privacy documentation must be clear and concise. As technical writers, we need to understand the privacy requirements, to help companies comply with PIPEDA. They are:
By following the above, we can ensure that the framework of the privacy policy is relevant to the company, trace customer consent, gain customer trust, and clarify communications about individuals' privacy rights. So when you next order a pizza, be generous with the toppings, but sparing with how much personal information you disclose, as you do not know how the company may digest it! Susan Webb joined the STC in September 2003. An honours graduate of the Technical Communications program at Seneca College, she is interested in online learning and editing. In addition, Susan leads Adult ESL learners on an engaging, fun-filled journey through Canadian English at the Toronto District School Board. |
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The Wandering Eye: |
A Technical Writer's Toolkit: Text and Code Editors By Keith Soltys - keith@soltys.ca
Last month I wrote about software tools that technical writers would find useful; this month I'm going to continue with software, specifically text and code editors. It's possible to get good tools free or for a very small investment. A good text editor is almost certainly a necessity if you work with help files, web pages, or API documentation. Sure, in a pinch, you can use Notepad, if you don't mind being limited to working on files smaller than 64K and not having syntax highlighting or search and replace. TextPad and UltraEdit are two shareware editors that offer all these features and more. Of the two, UltraEdit is the more powerful, but TextPad has a clip-library feature that makes it easy to enter boilerplate text and code fragments. I find it's really handy for writing FrameScript scripts-select the code snippet from the list, double-click and it's pasted into my script. If you don't want to spend about $50 on a shareware editor, there are many freeware and open source editors. Among the best of these is PSPad, which incorporates spell checking, differencing of files, a hex editor, syntax highlighting, and many more features. And it's free. If you're looking for something simpler, NoteTab provides multiple file editing in a tabbed interface and can be used as a Notepad replacement. It has both free and shareware versions, with the shareware having more features. Veterans of the UNIX world may want to stick to Emacs, which is available for most computing platforms, making it handy if you work in a heterogeneous environment. You can spend a lot of money on an HTML editor, Dreamweaver will set you back $400 US, for example. But you can get a lot for free. HTML-Kit is one of the best freeware HTML editors. Like most of this breed, it's code-based with a non-editable preview window. (Personally, I prefer this to WYSIWYG HTML editors anyway). It has extensive toolbars for quick insertion of tags, syntax highlighting, and will work with most scripting languages. There's a large user community and many plug-ins are available to add features. Arachnophilia is another good, free editor. It has a keystroke recording feature that can really help on tasks like cleaning up code generated by other applications. 1stPage 2000 is another free HTML editor, with different modes (easy, expert, hardcore), so you can tailor the interface to your degree of skill with HTML. XML editors are relatively new. While some of the commercial tools (Arbortext Epic, XMetal) are now mature and stable products, there are few good, easy-to-use freeware or shareware XML editors. About the best I've found so far is XMLMind, which is a commercial tool that has a "feature-limited" free version. The feature limitation is that you have to work with the schemas included with the editor, but since it includes DocBook, that isn't much of a problem if you want to use it for documentation and not data manipulation. If you want to learn XML or DocBook, this is a good place to start. Morphon is another free XML editor. Note that I haven't tried this one yet, but from looking over their web site, it looks to be quite powerful (WYSIWYG and tag modes, support for tables, a separate CSS editor) and is cross-platform. Having pretty much given up on structured authoring in FrameMaker, I'm going to give this one a closer look. Keith Soltys has been working as a technical writer for 16 years, and is currently at the Toronto Stock Exchange. He maintains the Internet Resources for Technical Communicators web site and has recently started a weblog. He lives in Pickering with his wife, two children, a cat, and an ever growing collection of Grateful Dead CDs. |
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Career Corner: |
This month, we complete our series on interview questions. Although we've covered many potential questions, note that we've only scratched the surface. There literally hundreds of questions that you could be asked. Although it is impossible to anticipate every question, the more that you can plan responses to, the greater prepared you will be. Here's an extensive list of other questions and statements to think about, from the sublime to the ridiculous, in no particular order. If you can think of a response to each one, you will be far more prepared than most people.
A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham! We've been looking at interview questions like these for the last few months, but now, a confession: it has all been a sham! Here are two incredible facts: a 1989 British survey revealed if an interview was done by someone who would be working directly with the candidate (which is usually the case), the success rate dropped to 2% below that of picking the name (of qualified candidates) randomly! And if the interview was done by a "personnel expert", the rate dropped to 10% below picking the name randomly! It makes you wonder what on earth personnel experts are paid to do. Why then do companies waste huge sums of money and time conducting interviews, when they would probably be better off just picking names randomly? I believe it is simply because they know of no other way to hire people, and most of them would certainly have no idea that the interviewing process is largely useless. However, the fact that the process is useless is not your problem - it is the company's problem. Your challenge is to learn the tricks and techniques that can help you win interviews. The fact that the process itself is flawed is irrelevant. There is simply no other way to play the game if you want to work for a company. Even freelance writers often have to go through the interview process, at least with new clients. Winning the Interviewing "War" The Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote in his famous military treatise The Art of War: every battle is won before it is ever fought. When you are heading into an interview, you are going into battle. You are up against every other person who is applying for that job. Fortunately, it is a peaceful battle, and you will probably never see (much less have to kill) your opponents. Tzu's statement simply means "planning is everything". What is astonishing is that Tzu wrote these words 2,500 years ago, yet they are still incredibly relevant today. All major endeavors, from warfare to job interviews, involve three major areas: an objective, strategies and tactics. Do not make the mistake of getting these mixed up. The objective is the ultimate, single purpose of something. The strategies describe at a high level the ways you will achieve the objective. The tactics are the specific actions you must take to achieve the strategies, which in turn lead to the completion of the objective. Comparing these areas for warfare and job interviewing, we get:
Whether it's war, job interviews, dating, getting in shape, or any other task, planning is critical. The more you plan, the more you strategize and think about how you will behave and respond to these many questions, the greater your chances of success. Remember - the person who wins the interview isn't necessarily the best person for the job, but is the person who is best at getting that job. Andrew Brooke (abrooke@insystems.com) is a full-time technical writer at InSystems and maintains a technical writing and career management website. |
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From the President's Desk: |
Everyone is very busy these days – you have to phone weeks in advance to make appointments with your friends, it takes months for a job interview process to finish, well heck, it takes an hour to get home from work every day. We could all use some advice on how to deal with the million things we have to do. But how do we make sense of the myriad of systems and books available out there? How do we choose a system that works for us? These three tips will help you use your time more wisely, get more satisfaction out of life, and pick a time management system that works for you:
As you think about how to manage your life, consider what time management is really about –improving our quality of life, getting more satisfaction from what we do, and being able to look back and feel good about how we’ve spent our time. And enjoy the journey! |
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Useful Web Site: |
A Guide to Documenting Sources Supplied by STC Webmaster Mona Albano - webmaster@stctoronto.org Here's a useful web site: http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/index.html It connects with pages showing research resources and explaining how to document sources in four main styles: APA, MLA, Chicago, and CBE. The Style guides are for different types of scientific papers:
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About the STC: |
The Society for Technical Communication is an individual membership organization dedicated to advancing the arts and sciences of technical communication. It is the largest organization of its type in the world. Its 25,000 members include technical writers and editors, content developers, documentation specialists, technical illustrators, instructional designers, academics, information architects, usability and human factors professionals, visual designers, Web designers and developers, and translators - anyone whose work makes technical information available to those who need it. The STC Toronto Chapter was founded in 1959 (then the Society of Technical Writers) and is the largest chapter in Canada. |
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About this Newsletter: |
This newsletter is produced monthly by the STC Toronto Chapter and is sent to all registered members just before the General Meeting. We will not share nor sell our address list and will only send e-mails with information we believe to be useful and relevant to our members. Our mailing list comes directly from the STC, so if you want to receive the newsletter at another address you will need to login to their members profile section and update your information. |
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