Announcements

P & P SIG Has Another STC Fellow!

Raymond receiving his award in Las Vegas:
Paula Berger, STC President is on left; on right is Shirley Hancock – Manager of Fellows Nominating Committee

We’re thrilled to announce (if you didn’t know already!) that our own SIG Manager, Raymond Urgo, has been named a Fellow of the STC. The citation from the STC Board reads:

“For excellence as a management consultant, educator, mentor, and author, and for leadership in advancing the development and communication of policies and procedures in STC, the community, and the profession.”

The highest rank that the Society can confer upon a member is that of fellow. Those who become fellows are associate fellows who have attained such eminence in the arts and sciences of technical communication that they are deemed worthy of being designated among the select few whose service has distinguished both the Society and the profession. Less than one percent of STC members achieve the grade of fellow.

Those of us who have worked or studied with Ray know him as a gifted professional and mentor to our field of P&P. Congratulations, Ray, from all of your friends and colleagues in the Policies & Procedures SIG!

Raymond Urgo advises on best practices for investing in policies and procedures systems and documentation to transform organizational performance. He founded the world’s only group of policies and procedures specialists, and teaches his specialty worldwide through UCLA Extension. Web site: www.urgoconsulting.com.

P&P SIG Honored with 2006 SIG Pacesetter Award

At the STC Annual Conference honors banquet event, the STC Board announced the Policies & Procedures SIG as the recipient of the 2006 SIG Pacesetter Award.

Raymond Urgo, founder and manager of the SIG, accepted the award on behalf of our 1,000-member community.

The certificate’s citation, to be found on the SIG’s Web site, reads: “For tirelessly promoting the profession in a variety of venues and channels and for populating the November 2005 P&P-themed issue of Intercom with informative, useful, and interesting articles”.

Dana Chisnell, assistant to the STC President for virtual communities, presented the certificate. According to Raymond Urgo, “This was a sudden surprise, and one that we all will be grateful to have been considered for and honored with.”

Three New Volunteers Fill Three New Positions

This quarter, three SIG members stepped up to volunteer by filling three new positions serving the SIG.

Linda Sloan, Information & Research Manager, is the first volunteer to manage our information and research needs. Linda is based in the Los Angeles area and is a new member to our SIG. She has a background in library science, online database searching, and indexing. She is seeking to expand her knowledge further into technical communication, and P&P is one area of interest. In her volunteer role as manager, she is seeking to groom her management talents while applying her expertise in classifying and organizing information. In addition to managing her newly formed team, Linda will create a comprehensive electronic index to the contents of the SIG’s newsletter. Contact Linda.

Maria Christophel, Information & Research Assistant, is currently based in Arizona. She lived in southern California where she worked with P&P in the banking industry since the early 1980s. She was a manager of P&P at Washington Mutual in Irvine, CA for 3 years and a one-year retiree. In her volunteer role initially, Maria will apply her research talents to create a comprehensive bibliography of all STC publications on P&P. She will also be updating the SIG’s timeline (history) published on our Web site. Contact Maria.

Kathleen Lopez, Volunteer Coordinator, is a new member to our SIG. She lives near Atlanta, Georgia. She is a Technical Publications Manager who formerly worked for 14 years in journalism and found her way into the technical writer field ten years ago. She’s worked up from writer to creating and maintaining whole departments such as Quality Assurance and Training. She currently is breaking into the Project Management field. Achieving a Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems is among her latest achievements. As the SIG’s volunteer coordinator, Kathleen will be responsible for recruiting and orienting new volunteers, maintaining job descriptions, coordinating recognition of volunteers, and ensuring our volunteers get the support they need as they assist our SIG. Contact Kathleen.

Upcoming Course in Policies and Procedures

Introduction to Policies & Procedures Communication (Web-based course)

University of California, Los Angeles Extension

Dates: October 5 through November 30, 2006

Fee: $550. ($500 for STC members)

Course# 439.19

Reg# to be announced

Instructor: Raymond E. Urgo (rurgo@urgoconsulting.com )

Contact: UCLA Extension 310/825-4192 or www.uclaextension.edu

Bios on SIG's Volunteers Now Available

In an effort to learn more about the volunteers who serve our virtual community, we now have a new Web page dedicated to brief biographies of our volunteers. Learn more about them.

• Volunteer Coordinator
• Information & Research Project Assistants
• Information & Research Manager

For details, see http://www.stcsig.org/pp/volunteer/open_positions.php