Speaking of Quality

Welcome to our first online newsletter! This is a new adventure for the Quality SIG. I believe an online newsletter provides us with a more timely and more manageable way for all of us as SIG members to share our knowledge and keep in touch with one another on topics we care about, such as the quality of our technical communication.

Volunteers in the Quality SIG are working on several additional ways to improve our communication and to improve the vitality of this SIG. These include:

• Ensuring that all members are initially subscribed to the Quality SIG listserv so you can read and participate in these electronic discussions. Many thanks to Don Lenk who worked diligently to update the subscription list. As a reminder, to post a message on the listserv, simply point your browser to http://lists.stc.org/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=stcqsig-l. (Note that the last letter in this url is the lowercase letter L, not the number 1.)
• Redesigning and updating the SIG home page and web site. Volunteers have already completed a set of initial improvements. Point your browser to http://www.stcsig.org/quality/index.html and check out the FAQs or the section on "Resources and References." Many thanks to Don Lenk, Judith Scott, and Kelly Parr for their work on this.
• Publishing the newsletter quarterly on the web to provide better access to articles and materials in a more timely manner. Special thanks to our new newsletter editor, Jeff Staples, and his new volunteers for all their work to get this initial issue onto the web.

So, what can you do as a member of the SIG? To get more out of it, put a little something into it. Consider doing one of the following activities in the next month:

• Post one question or observation about quality on the listserv.
• Write up one "FAQ" about quality, along with your recommended answer, and send it to Don Lenk to be added to our website. Don can be reached at donlenk@aol.com.
• Think of one reference on the topic of quality - a good book, an article you read in a journal, or a website you found - and send the reference to donlenk@aol.com for inclusion in the Resources and References section of the website.
• Write a short article (preferably in Word) about anything related to quality and send it to jeff_staples@bmc.com for publication in our next online newsletter. All topics are welcome - a story about a process improvement you tried at work, or a summary of something you do that others might learn from as technical communicators, or book review of a book on quality.

If we each took half an hour this month to make one contribution to the Quality SIG, we would increase the professional knowledge currently available through the SIG exponentially. Let's give it a try!

Lori Fisher
STC Fellow, Silicon Valley Chapter