The Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (STC) just isn’t that help­ful to me anymore.

I didn’t always feel that way. In fact, when I start­ed my career 13 years ago, I loved the orga­ni­za­tion. The Van­cou­ver chap­ter had month­ly meet­ings, there were annu­al salary sur­veys pub­lished for Cana­di­ans, pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment ses­sions abound­ed, and I reli­gious­ly read the organization’s pub­li­ca­tions. I even vol­un­teered as the vice-pres­i­dent of the local chapter.

So what hap­pened? How did I lose that “lov­ing feel­ing”? A few reasons:

The STC’s Cana­di­an salary sur­vey dis­ap­peared. A num­bers of years ago, the STC stopped pub­lish­ing a salary sur­vey for Cana­di­ans. It was a real dis­ap­point­ment. Now I’m left with hear­ing anec­do­tal infor­ma­tion about mar­ket rates that seem to vary wild­ly. Some writ­ers appear will­ing to work for noth­ing while oth­er com­pa­nies freely want to pay more than the stan­dard rates. The salary sur­vey was a use­ful tool.

The local job bank is mediocre. In my expe­ri­ence, one of the valu­able rea­sons to become an STC mem­ber was that it pro­vid­ed access to the local job bank, which used to be a vibrant source of employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. These days, there are still a smat­ter­ing of jobs list­ed in the local job bank but I’ve found that free web sites such as http://www.indeed.ca to be more helpful.

The STC is no longer the defin­i­tive voice of tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Years ago, the STC was the main pur­vey­or of tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion knowl­edge. I used to avid­ly read the organization’s Inter­com and Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion mag­a­zines. Per­haps the STC’s posi­tion of author­i­ty began to wane when Web 2.0 emerged. Tech­ni­cal writ­ers start­ed writ­ing blogs and many of these blogs, like Tom Johnson’s http://idratherbewriting.com/, offer valu­able infor­ma­tion to tech­ni­cal writ­ers much faster than the STC ever could. And they’re free.

To sum­ma­rize, the STC is prob­a­bly still use­ful to new­er tech­ni­cal writ­ers. But if you have a pass­ing knowl­edge of some of the lead­ing tech­ni­cal writ­ing blogs (here’s a list of influ­en­tial tech­ni­cal writ­ing blog­gers), and you under­stand where and how to look for work and how much to charge, the STC may not be that use­ful to you either.

NOTE: This blog entry might sound like a crit­i­cism of the STC’s vol­un­teers and mem­bers. That’s not my intention—I think there are many tal­ent­ed indi­vid­u­als who con­tin­ue to be involved with the STC. As I not­ed, I vol­un­teered with the chap­ter for many years.