First, thank you to all of you Usability and User Experience SIG members who voted for me as SIG Manager. Yah, I know, I was unopposed, but I want to thank you anyway.

Your new leadership team - myself; David Dick, Assistant Manager; Michael Harvey, Treasurer; Adrian Howard, discussion list coordinator; and Cheryl St. Charles, Webmaster - are looking forward to the coming year.

Right now, we are working on the SIG budget for 2009. STC is changing its fiscal year from July 1-June 31 to January 1-December 31. The budget for 2009 is due to STC by August 15.

Our budget is based on a subsidy from STC of $4.00 per member of the SIG. The other $6.00 of your SIG fee supports the SIG discussion forum and Web site, as well as support we receive from the STC office. The SIG can also earn money through its activities in order to increase the amount available to spend on activities. On 2009, we ought to have about $7700 in the budget.

In a conference call last Friday, August 1, the leadership group discussed several possible activities we could budget for.

We are excited about the possibility of adding online seminars to our offerings to the membership; David and volunteer Eric Hughes are already researching what this costs.

Webmaster Cheryl St. Charles experimented with a SIG blog after getting excited about new ways to communicate at the conference. Should we continue exploring things like blogs and wikis?

We want to know what activities you want the SIG to undertake. We focus on the usability of technical communication, but are we doing everything we can to help our members make their communication products more usable? What services could we offer our members that they cannot get anywhere else?

Please fill out this brief questionnaire by August 7. You can rank the suggested activities or give us a great idea of your own. And if you are willing to tell us more about your great idea, please give us your email address at the end of the survey.

Labels: UUX business