AGM brings on new talent and recognizes ongoing efforts

This year the Toronto chapter changed the format of the annual wine and cheese by combining it with the year-end award ceremony and introducing an annual general meeting (AGM). Over the course of the evening, we reviewed preliminary chapter financial statements and looked at the chapter's performance as compared to stated objectives for the year. We discussed some of the year's highlights including our spring conference that raised more than $10,000 for the chapter as well as the first comprehensive membership survey in recent memory (see summarized results).

I introduced the chapter executive for the coming year and thanked everyone for their contributions including outgoing members, Pamela Paterson and Liz Pilgrim. For the 2006-2007 session, we will have the following members returning to their posts:

• Rob Hanna - Chapter President
• Bernard Aschwanden - VP/Competition Manager
• Robert Milkovich - Chapter Past President
• Pat Dales - Secretary
• Linda Ranaudo - Treasurer
• Rhys Griffiths - Manager Single-Sourcing SIG
• Andrew Brooke - Newsletter/Membership
• Liz Pollack - Recognition Manager
• Kim Watson - Hospitality
• Sheldon D'Cunha - Volunteer Manager
• Susan Anderson - Archives

We also had a number of signed petitions for vacancies on the executive council. I had the pleasure of acclaiming several new members including:

• Todd Race - Program Manager
• Wilkie Lo - Webmaster
• Mona Albano - Employment Manager
• Jennifer Paton-Smith - Education Manager

The evening concluded with our award presentations to our competition winners as well as to our chapter award recipients. The award ceremony culminated with Liz Pollack presenting Ralph Robinson with his Associate Fellow plaque. I wish to once again extend the thanks of the chapter to Kim Watson and her volunteers for making the evening a success. The atmosphere, the food and the drink were exceptional.

To contribute an article to the newsletter for consideration, please contact our editor at newsletter@stctoronto.org or reply to this email.

I must say that I approached the April 2006 STC meeting with a fair bit of scepticism. I've been around the "networking" block a few times over many years, and perhaps it has made me a little overconfident when it comes to meeting people. I do have to catch myself, however, and realize that there are always important tips and techniques to remember that will always serve us well.

Some time ago, Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems said "The network is the computer". It looks like his vision may finally be coming true. With the prevalence of broadband and wireless Internet connections, and the development of new programming tools like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), we're seeing web applications that rival their more prosaic counterparts in speed and functionality. In this column, I'm going to take a look at some web-based applications. To use them all you need is a reasonably current web browser and an Internet connection. Most are free, although you may have to register to use them.

It's a brand new STC year! Our new President, Paula Berger, has chosen the slogan "The New World of STC" for this year. And a new world it is!

Time travel is an endlessly fascinating theme in science fiction; there is no shortage of novels, movies and TV shows that explore it. But is time travel only science fiction, or is it really possible?

For the past ten years, Patrick Hofmann has been hip-hopping the globe exclaiming the virtues of visual language and pictorial instruction: "away with words"! Wordless communication can solve countless usability problems and reduce often enormous translation costs, but all the time Since he created his first wordless manual, Patrick and his colleagues have conducted a barrage of usability tests on reams of hard-copy instructions and online information, uncovering both new and ongoing challenges that face visual communication. How do we visualise for different cultures, languages, and ages? How do we visualise for different types of information, and newer technologies? How can we test the usability of these without spending a fortune?

Meeting starts at 6:45 PM and is free for all STC Members. Non-members will be charged $5 at the door. Please have your membership card or a copy of this email as proof of membership.

View meeting information.

"Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it."