Recognition opportunities from STC

By: Lori Meyer, Membership Manager

STC provides many opportunities to recognize and honor the hard work and accomplishments of its members. Here are two such opportunities:

The Distinguished Community Service awards (Distinguished Chapter Service, Distinguished SIG service, and Distinguished Service for Students) provide communities the opportunity to nominate one of their members for exemplary service to their community. Community leaders can submit a nominee to STC, which evaluates each nominee and determines their qualification for recognition. Any senior STC member in good standing with a record of service to their community can be nominated. Nominations are typically submitted by the community in October, and recipients are announced early the following year.

For more information about these awards, visit the STC distinguished community service awards page.

Associate Fellow and Fellow honors are given to long-term STC members who have demonstrated an exceptional record of contributions to their community, to STC, and to the profession.

Candidates for Associate Fellow must have been STC members for at least 10 years, and have 15 or more years of experience in technical communication, or technical communication and a closely related field. Associate Fellow candidates can be nominated by any STC senior member in any community, or they can nominate themselves.

Candidates for Fellow must have been Associate Fellows for three or more years, and must demonstrate a continuing record of service to their community, STC, and the profession since becoming an Associate Fellow. Candidates for Fellow must nominate themselves; they cannot be nominated by any other STC member.

Application forms for Associate Fellow and Fellow, Class of 2020, will be available on the STC website soon. Applications are typically due in October, and the honorees are announced early the following year. Honorees are officially recognized at the Summit conference, where they are presented with award certificates.

For more information about these honors, visit the STC Honors page.

For more information about additional individual and academic awards given by STC, visit the STC Awards page.


Lori Meyer
Lori Meyer

Lori Meyer, an STC Fellow, has more than 20 years of experience as a technical writer, editor, and help developer. She began her technical communication career in Rochester, NY, and relocated to the San Francisco Bay area in 1998. Lori has been active in STC since the early 1990s, starting with the Rochester Chapter, where she created the chapter’s first Web site.

Since then, she has held in many volunteer positions, including employment manager, secretary, conference co-chair, membership manager, director-at-large, and SIG co-manager. She has delivered leadership presentations at the STC Summit international conference and via webinar.

On the community level, over the years Lori has served as a director at large for the Carolina Chapter, secretary and president of the Washington DC-Baltimore Chapter, membership manager of the Rochester, East Bay, and San Diego Chapters, and president of the East Bay Chapter.  Lori stays involved with these communities, and also volunteers for the Technical Editing and Consulting and Independent Contracting SIGs.

IDL SIG announces its first SIG award recipients!

By: Lori Meyer, Membership Manager

The IDL SIG is proud to have its first recipients of our newly-minted SIG awards! These awards provide us with an additional opportunity to recognize the volunteers who work so hard to make our SIG the excellent community that it is. Two awards are given:

Volunteer Achievement, which recognizes the services of a SIG volunteer over time. Our first  Volunteer Achievement award goes to Jamye Sagan, a long-time SIG member who has served in many volunteer capacities, including co-manager, social media and surveys manager, and treasurer. Jamye’s award citation reads:

For being a shining light of service to the IDL SIG through your outstanding work as a SIG leader in many roles over the years, and for always being there with your able helping hands and solid wisdom.

New Volunteer, which recognizes a SIG member who has demonstrated exemplary service as a first-time volunteer. Our first New Volunteer award goes to Kelly Smith, who became editor of our SIG newsletter, IDeal, in 2018, and has worked tirelessly to provide an informative, value-adding communication piece for the SIG. Kelly’s citation reads:

For your hard work and organizational skills that have enabled us to continue providing a quality newsletter to our community every quarter.

Heartiest congratulations to Jamye and Kelly, and we look forward to naming next year’s award recipients!


Lori Meyer
Lori Meyer

Lori Meyer, an STC Fellow, has more than 20 years of experience as a technical writer, editor, and help developer. She began her technical communication career in Rochester, NY, and relocated to the San Francisco Bay area in 1998. Lori has been active in STC since the early 1990s, starting with the Rochester Chapter, where she created the chapter’s first Web site.

Since then, she has held in many volunteer positions, including employment manager, secretary, conference co-chair, membership manager, director-at-large, and SIG co-manager. She has delivered leadership presentations at the STC Summit international conference and via webinar.

On the community level, over the years Lori has served as a director at large for the Carolina Chapter, secretary and president of the Washington DC-Baltimore Chapter, membership manager of the Rochester, East Bay, and San Diego Chapters, and president of the East Bay Chapter.  Lori stays involved with these communities, and also volunteers for the Technical Editing and Consulting and Independent Contracting SIGs.

IDL SIG Treasurerʼs Report

By: Jamye Sagan, IDL SIG Treasurer

The SIG continues to perform well financially in 2019. As of May 15, we have about $3,000 in our account. We will provide updated figures after we factor in all Summit expenses.

The SIGʼs major expenses so far this year  include:

  • STC student membership reimbursements, as part of our student article writing program
  • Speaker honorarium for our SIG webinars
  • Sponsorship for the Leadership Program at Summit
  • Summit giveaways for the community reception and business meeting
  • Summit business meeting luncheon

If you have any questions about SIG finances, please email me at treasurer@stcidlsig.org.


Jamye Sagan
Jamye Sagan

Jamye Sagan currently serves as  treasurer for the IDL SIG, and is a senior member of STC. She served as a co-manager of the SIG from 2010-12.

At work, she uses her tech comm skills to make sense out of the seemingly senseless. At play, she uses sticks and hooks to transform yarn into pretty objects.

Manager’s Report Second Quarter 2019

By: Marcia Shannon, IDL SIG Manager

Thoughts about Summit 2019

I am finally back in the groove after the Summit trip. During those recovery days, I was composing this article. Other attendees have written articles that review specific sessions. I am addressing, no, celebrating the power of connecting face to face with other technical communications professionals across industries, gender, age, experience, and schooling.

This was my fifth Summit. I discovered STC late in my career, but the eight years I have been a member have been the best. Why do I attend Summit? To gather with my “tribe” and to meet and socialize with the leaders and experts in our field. Summit was an intense learning opportunity and an intense social experience.

I had conversations that challenged my ideas and conversations where I could offer information. I attended sessions that filled gaps in my knowledge and led me to explore new ways to work. It was inspiring to be there to applaud the accomplishments of the achievers, who set us an example of “just do it.” It was energizing to explore the latest tech comm tools from major providers, such as Adobe and TechSmith.

During Summit breaks, we talked about all things tech comm without having to explain our passion to non-tech-comm colleagues. Making connections at Summit pushed me out of the job-created “lone writer” box. My strongest takeaway were the people who talked to me and listened to me, who validated my place as a tech comm professional.

A substantial number of speakers are members of this SIG. Throughout the next several months, Summit 2019 speakers will be invited to present their sessions to the IDL membership. Watch for the announcements and take advantage of this opportunity to hear these strong, articulate speakers.

It is not too early to begin planning to attend Summit 2020 in Bellevue, Washington. If your employer allocates funds for training, start building your case to use those funds for Summit. If, like me, you are an independent contractor, figure out how to work out a budget that includes saving for Summit. However you can make it happen, I believe you will find it worth your time and your money.


Marcia Shannon
Marcia Shannon

Marcia Shannon was assistant co-manager for the SIG in 2018, and transitioned to co-manager in 2019.

From the editor – Q1 2019

By: Kelly Smith

Happy spring! And welcome to the first newsletter of 2019. We have a great lineup this quarter with contributions from several new people, so let’s get started!

Survey’s manager Jamye Sagan has compiled the results of the IDL SIG demographic survey, conducted in December 2018. Ten percent (60 of our 558 members) took part in the survey. The report gives us details about our members, their involvement in the SIG and other organizations, and their experiences at Summit 2018.


Our new Co-manager Marcia Shannon wrote about her experience taking on this new role and volunteering for the SIG in general. She also points out that she can’t be “co” manager without another co-manager, so if you’d like to volunteer to help lead our SIG, please contact Marcia!


Marcia also provided an update on the US Department of Labor’s O*NET Data Collection Program. If you volunteered to take part, you may have already heard from them.


Programs manager, Viqui Dill has two articles for us this time. The first announces new Fellows and Associate Fellows from our SIG.

The second is a list of several Summit sessions that might be of interest to members of the IDL SIG. Check it out! And if you are coming to Summit, don’t forget to register for our SIG lunch and business meeting before May 5. We can’t wait to see you!


Student Outreach manager, Sylvia Miller, has collected 12 articles from students on various ID-related topics. This quarter, we are publishing four of them. Congratulations to the winners, and look for four more articles in next quarter’s newsletter!


We welcome introductions from new members and this quarter, new member George Abraham contributed his biography for us. If you’d like to introduce yourself to the SIG, please send your bio and an appropriate photo to me.


And finally, STC Fellow David Dick contributed an article on Communication Information in Government Proposals.


If you have an article related to any aspect of instructional design, please send it to newsletter@stcidlsig.org. We welcome submissions from all our members and would especially like to see book reviews and bios of new members. The deadline for our Q2 issue is May 4, 2019.


Newsletter editor - Kelly Smith
Newsletter editor – Kelly Smith

Kelly Smith has been Managing Editor of the IDeaL newsletter since May 2018. She also serves as membership manager for her local chapter – STC Southeast Michigan. Kelly works as Senior Technical Writer at Dart Container in mid-Michigan and has been active in the STC since 2015.