Re: ADMIN: An Open Letter to the TECHWR-L Community - a new idea

["Bill Hall" <bill -dot- hall -at- hotkey -dot- net -dot- au>]

Given that I have somewhat wandered out of the domain of technical writing
into knowledge management, I have not been monitoring Techwr-l closely
lately.

Today I was horrified to see that what has been one of my most useful
sources of techwriting knowledge in danger of dissipation. The Ray's have
been ideal moderators - most of the time they have let wisdom emerge from
the community, and have only stepped in as moderators when people started
getting personally very nasty or when bandwidth was being taken up by widely
off-topic chitchat.

However, all of that has been said in this thread, so I would like to
suggest an idea that no one has raised that may provide the right kind of
hosting group to take over from the Rays.

Many flames have been raised over the STC, so this would not necessarily be
a good host, especially given that Techwr-l has a genuinely international
membership. Perhaps someone who has the appropriate contacts could explore
the possibility that Techwr-l would be a good project for the International
Council for Technical Communication (INTECOM) -
http://www.intecom.org/dynindex.html. Intecom is an international umbrella
oranization for most technical writing societies around the world (including
STC, IEEE/PCS and ACM's SIGDOCS. From what I have seen of INTECOM's
activities (via my peripheral association with the Technical Communications
Association of New Zealand, whose president is also currently president of
INTECOM) this would be an ideal body to host an emergent organization like
Techwr-l. An international umbrella body promoting the profession could
profit in many ways from the interaction with Techwr-l members without
compromising its independence.

Although I am not a formal member of any of its member organizations, I
believe that Techwr-l would fit well within its primary purpose:

--------
INTECOM is the international association of technical communication
societies. Its overall purpose is to support the world-wide recognition and
respect of technical communication as a professional activity and to improve
the performance of that activity. It was formed in 1969.

One of the main objectives of INTECOM concerns the professional development
within technical communication. This includes advice on professional
standards, education and training schemes.
--------

For some wisdom wrapped up in some good laughs see INTECOM's Code of Good
Practice - http://www.intecom.org/code.html.

Regards,

Bill Hall
Evolutionary Biology of Species and Organizations
url: http://www.hotkey.net.au/~bill.hall
------------------------------------------
Information is not knowledge
Knowledge is not wisdom
Wisdom is not truth
Truth is not beauty
Beauty is not love
Love is not music
Music is THE BEST
-----------------------------
(Zappa - Packard Goose)


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