By Lori Meyer, IDL SIG membership manager
It’s 2020 — Can you still renew your STC membership? Yes!
Now that 2020 is one quarter completed, you might be wondering if it’s too late to renew your STC membership for this year. The answer is no, it is definitely not too late! Although 2019 memberships have expired, you can still renew your membership and continue to benefit from all of the programs and services that make STC an excellent partner in your tech comm career development. Those include:
- Member discounts for educational programs, including courses, webinars, and the STC Annual Conference, Summit — the gathering place for all technical communicators to learn from the best and the brightest in our profession. The 2020 Conference will take place virtually this year, due to COVID-19.
- Free subscription to Intercom, the STC monthly publication, which offers informative articles about the topics of interest to today’s technical communicators.
- Access to the Technical Communication Salary Survey, from which you can gain valuable knowledge about compensation in our profession.
- The opportunity to become industry-certified through the Certified Professional Technical Communicator program.
- The opportunity to build your network of professional colleagues through involvement in STC chapters and special interest groups.
- The opportunity to have your work recognized through regional technical publications competitions.
You can renew your STC membership online quickly and easily. Once you have completed the online renewal form and submitted your membership dues payment, your membership will be reactivated.
To renew your membership
- Go to org and log in with your member ID and password. Your STC membership number is your user name.
- Click Join or Renew Now.
- Read through the Membership Levels and Benefits section, then click the Renew Your STC Membership Today
- Click the Renew Today link at the bottom of the page.
- Complete the renewal form. If your contact information (home/work address, email, or phone number) has changed, make the necessary updates. Make sure that your email address is current and correct, so you can receive acknowledgement of your renewal and other information about your membership.
- Choose the communities to include in your membership. Each chapter costs $25.00; each SIG costs $10.00.
Please note:
- If you are currently unaffiliated (do not belong to any chapters or SIGs), you can add communities now.
- If you are already a member of one or more chapters and SIGs, you must choose them again, because the renewal system does not automatically carry over community memberships from the previous year. If you are currently a member of the IDL SIG, be sure to check IDL SIG on the renewal form! And if you’re not a SIG member, we would love to have you as one!
- If you are an STC Gold member, one chapter membership is free, and all SIG memberships are free. The system will remove the charges for these memberships at the end of the renewal process. However, you must still select a chapter and the SIGs you want included in your memberships, so you will be added to the membership database for those communities.
- Select or bypass any other options as you prefer.
- Enter your credit card information when prompted, and submit the renewal form. STC will send an acknowledgement email. Keep this email for your records.
We look forward to having you as a member of STC and our SIG!
If you have any questions or concerns about your membership, please feel free to contact me at membership@stcidlsig.org. I will be happy to answer any questions you have, or guide you to resources you need.
Thank you for being a member of the IDL SIG!
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.