From the President

by Kit Brown, STC-SRC president

Whoooosh! I just looked up and it's September already! How'd that happen and where did the summer go? Oh yeah, traveling and working…

The travel part was awesome! Ireland is a lovely country, and the IEEE-PCS conference was an interesting opportunity to meet colleagues from the other side of the big pond, as well as see some old STC friends. It was my third trip to Ireland, and as always, it was a magical experience.

Then, of course, there is the work, both paid and volunteer, which seemed to expand significantly when I wasn't looking.

The STC-SRC council has been spending the summer planning a great year for you!

Programs: Alaina Eldredge, the programs VP, has some great program ideas, starting with this month's guest speaker, Jack Molisani, who runs ProSpring, a technical services company. He will tell us how to avoid mistakes when job hunting. With the ups and downs in the economy, many of you have expressed interest in these kinds of topics, so I hope to see you there. And, Alaina could use 3-4 people to assist with planning and implementing the programs this year. Keep checking the Events page for more information about upcoming meetings.

While we are on the subject of programs, please give a big THANK YOU to TrusJoist for their continuous support on the telephone seminars, and to ExecuTrain for graciously providing a venue for our meetings this year.

Competitions: Barb Helling is managing our almost always annual publications, art, and online competition this year. She and her committee will be asking for volunteers this fall who can judge in the competitions. We are working to ensure that the chapter we trade with is closer to our size so that we don't get as overwhelmed as we did a couple of years ago. The competition is a great way to get to know your colleagues and to learn more about what other people are doing in our field. Barb will need 20-30 judges, and she has 2-3 spaces on her committee if you are interested.

Workshop: Darla Scott is co-managing the eLearning spring workshop. This is an ambitious undertaking that we hope will provide some great learning opportunities on eLearning, as well as bring some revenue to the chapter. Darla is looking for 5-10 people to help with the workshop, including publicity, evaluating proposals, handling registration, helping the day of, and so on. The workshop is planned for a Saturday in Spring 2006. We will post additional information as it becomes available.

In addition to these activities, we have day-to-day administrative functions that are necessary to keep us functioning smoothly.

Secretary: Kaye Wingert is doing a great job of tracking our meeting minutes, handling correspondence, and following up on our action items.

Treasurer: Kathy Hinds worked hard this summer to ensure that our financial statement to the international organization was accurate and on time. She is critical to our success and we rely on her budgetary and financial skills.

Membership VP: Ryan Martin has the fun job of meeting and greeting new members and connecting them with current members. He works hard to help our chapter grow, and is the person to talk to if you want to know what volunteer opportunities exist or have questions about membership.

Web Weaver: Teresa Cartwright has taken over the job of maintaining our website and ensuring that our chapter presents a professional virtual face to the world. She's working hard to get the site updated with all the fall information.

Newsletter Editor: New dad Jeff Carter does a fantastic job of finding articles (and nagging those of us who forget to submit our stuff). If you have any article ideas buzzing around in your brain, Jeff would love to hear about them. He would like it even better if you would submit your articles to him…. Newsletter articles are a great way to market your skills and add to your portfolio.

Please take the time to volunteer, to attend the meetings, to read the newsletter. Remember, STC is like anything else-you get out of it what you put in. I'm looking forward to seeing each of you at the meetings, at the competition judging, and at the elearning workshop….