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Saturday, November 6th and Saturday, November 13th, both were beautiful fall days. Warm, sunny, great days for raking leaves, for coaching soccer teams, for hiking New Hampshire Mountains. Yet, one hundred and fifty STC volunteers donated their time, forgoing the pleasures of a New England autumn day to participate in STC judging. Why?

The Boston Chapter of STC, as part of the international STC, holds three competitions yearly: Electronic Documentation, Technical Art, and Technical Publications. The Electronic Documentation competitions were held on the 6th at Sun Microsystems, and the Technical Art and Technical Publications competitions were held at Avid Technology on the 13th.

The return on time invested must be worth it.

The strongest motivation for participants is to get exposure to documentation from other sources. Unintentionally, we all end up in our own vacuums. The competitions give everyone an opportunity to see high quality work from other companies and to keep abreast of documentation trends. Scottie Farber puts it this way, "I learn new things every year that expand my skills and reshape my standards - from the books I read, from the other people on my judging teams, and from the dialog that goes on in the second round of consensus judging."

Judges share the opportunity to see what works and what does not. Often entrants are constrained by operating systems, applications, and templates chosen for them by their organization. Viewing how others accomplish the same task using different tools is a mind-expanding experience. According to Kristine Claremont, the experience "provides real-time examples of how new applications and technologies are being used by designers in the technical communications field."

Peer interaction is another strong motivator. Respondents stated that the competitions are a great place to share ideas and learn new techniques. As John Minniti of Webhire observed, "As a manager of a team that likes to be on the cutting edge, judging gives me the opportunity to see what other technical communicators are doing. It helps me get a better idea about how much farther we can push the envelope." Receiving feedback on one's own documentation is a plus -- all entrants receive the comments about their entries regardless of whether they receive any award. Linda Harris, of EMC perceives judging as "helping me to see what other people were doing. It also puts me in touch with other writers and gives me a feeling of what they thought is good or bad documentation."

Barbara Veneri, of Waters Corporation, states, "It gives us the chance to have 'experts' in technical writing (versus experts in the software, firmware, hardware, or [the] applications we write about) review and respond to our work, to see where our work fits in among the work of our peers." Jane Alaimo appreciates the consensus judging, "It was good to have my thoughts about documentation validated with other's agreement, ...." Connie Chappell of National Graphics, Inc. responded, "I loved hearing their thoughts on each entry. Sometimes we agreed, but more often we broadened our views by discussing why we disagreed." The competitions help pull us out of the vacuums we crawl into (and still allow us to end sentences with prepositions).

With all these technical writers in one place, a natural by product is the opportunity for participants to broaden their professional network. The late Carol A. Landers stated with conviction, "Network, Network, Network!" There is another by product, friends get to meet friends and we all get to make new friends.

Meeting with peers and being reviewed by peers encourages excellence. All of us stand a little straighter, try a little harder, when there's an audience. Participation indicates that STC folks care about the profession and they see participating as a great way to contribute to the STC. John Garison of IDe participates because "... as a judge ... I could try and affect change from within ...."

Marguerite Krupp states, "Over several years of judging, organizing, and participating in STC competitions at both the local/regional and international levels, I think that the competitions have had the effect of improving the overall quality of the documentation that the participants produce. This is totally subjective, of course, but I have examples that demonstrate this progression."

Winning the recognition of one's peers also helps within their respective organizations. R&D and management colleagues have concrete affirmation that the Tech Doc department is a positive contributor to the community and organization. For those aspiring to an award, judging this year helps them improve today's documentation to win next year's award.

One respondent offers us a "think about." Sam Goldman, the President of Techniscribe in Dedham, MA... "Put his foot in his mouth and said, 'Compliments for how smoothly it was all done. Compliments for the selection of broad categories, although I think there is some overlap in the software segments. Criticism of the forms which are entirely too long. Many of the categories and sub-categories are repetitious. Criticism of the vast number of awards. It's like the Grammys. 'And now the award for the best recording done on a green CD by a 4-person combo using electric guitars running on 28 Volts'. ... Otherwise, much fun."

And, after summarizing all these worthy and appropriate reasons for participating, we can share with Susan Bullowa, who "had a good time." Connie Chappell affirmed, adding , "I really enjoyed the whole experience. It was fun, worthwhile and beneficial to our profession!"

See you next year?

Bill Greuner is an associate editor for the Boston Broadside.