San Diego
STC Newsletter Undergoes Changes
by Rick
Bradshaw, Editor
Along with
the season change, your friendly neighborhood STC newsletter is also about
to undergo more changes. There will be a new editor next year. Actually,
there will be two new editors next year. Lana Walker-Helmuth (of "Introductions"
column fame) will be teaming up with Sharon Bradshaw (of "Meeting
Report" column fame) to edit the publication. Along the way, they
will be trying something different. The newsletter, as Kris announced
at the last meeting, will be transitioning to HTML.
Why is this happening? Apart from continually striving to reach the next
level professionally, we are trying to serve the membership better. This
will, hopefully, make it a bit easier to read since there won't be page
jumps to accommodate size of articles to the size of the paper; each article
will have its own page. Also, for those who produce the newsletter, it
will save time by streamlining the layout effort; no more last-minute
copy fitting!
For those of you who want to print and save a particular article instead
of the entire newsletter, you will find the HTML format easier. For those
who wish to download their newsletter and read or print it to read later,
there will also be a PDF version. It won't be the same PDF that you have
gotten used to this year. It will be a PDF of the HTML newsletter. It
will be secondary to the HTML version and look like the browser version
but will open in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Of course, you will still have
access to the electronic archives as they now exist, and the new HTML
version will be added.
We'll be testing this within the next couple of months and will be asking
for your feedback. Please be sure to take the time to tell us how you
feel about the changes. We exist to get information to you. Your needs
and thoughts are important to us.
Also in this issue is the article Who Wrote This?
Sharon Bradshaw and Barbara Dreyer have asked small companies, "Who
writes your docs?" Some of the answers are in their article. An interesting
aspect was that most of the companies interviewed asked to remain anonymous
while two took the opportunity to use this report as a marketing tool.
There may be future articles from these writers, continuing this "Who
Wrote That?" thread. If you have comments, please contact them.
Thinking about upgrading your graphics software? Check out our May
Meeting Preview and our Tech Issues columns.
Matt Sullivan speaks about the newest version of Photoshop; version 7.0.
Also, for those of you that may not have heard yet, FrameMaker 7.0 is
around the corner and scheduled for release later this summer. Perhaps
when that happens we can entice Matt to preview that for us as well.
If you were not able to attend the last meeting, you missed a very good presentation. If you want to know more about knowledge management, you have another opportunity coming up; there will be a knowledge management workshop in June. Please see the Professional Development column for more information, and plan now to attend.
On a very sad note, we join with Kris (see Presidential Podium) and our entire membership in extending our condolences to Coleen Miller on the death of her husband, Gethyn Allen, who unexpectedly passed away March 31. UCSD has established a memorial fund for Coleen and their unborn child. If you would like to contribute, please see Presidential Podium for details. Our thoughts and prayers are with Coleen and her family.
