2006-03-24 - France Chapter Annual Conference Report

The STC France Chapter Annual Conference 2006 on March 24, 2006 in Paris was a great success! We had over 40 participants from all over France (and beyond) and our team of expert speakers helped make this one of our most innovative and dynamic France Chapter conferences to date!

The theme of this year's conference was Taking Charge of Your Career and our goal was to provide attendees with an opportunity to learn more about current trends and techniques in the profession, learn about how others had negotiated the various twists and turns of their careers and discover new ways to take better charge of their own professional development.

"Met my expectations at a good price"

The conference included morning and afternoon keynote presentations, several parallel round table breakout sessions, a networking lunch and a panel discussion on the theme of training and professional development for technical communicators. The conference was followed by the STC France Chapter Annual General Meeting from 5pm-6pm.

"Very informative"

We began the day with coffee and croissants at 9am - a chance for attendees to pick up their conference packs, catch up with some old friends or colleagues and engage in a bit of informal networking before things got under way. Among the attendees we had several students from the Masters program in Multilingual and Multimedia Documentation Design at Paris 7 University (Jussieu) and from the Master Métiers de la traduction et de la communication multilingue et multimédia at the University of Rennes 2.

"The conference was very motivating – it gave me an idea how my career can evolve"

We had people travel up from Lyon and Aix-en-Provence, and even from as far away as Switzerland, Belgium and the UK. Several of our speakers also traveled in from abroad, including our afternoon keynote speaker Jeannette Eichholz who flew in from Milwaukee in the US especially for the event. It was good to see such so many new faces in the crowd, and with a total of 35 attendees and 8 speakers, this was one of our most well attended chapter meetings ever.
After a short welcome from France Chapter President Stuart Culshaw, our morning keynote speaker got us underway with a look at current trends in the technical communication market. Mark Clifford, former President and now Membership Manager of the STC UK chapter, as well as Assistant to the President for Global Interests and a candidate in this year's STC elections for the position of Second Vice President, got us thinking about the changes going on in the global economy and the impact that those changes are having on our profession. He emphasized the importance of continually developing our skills to stay abreast of ongoing trends and new techniques and not allowing ourselves to fall behind.

Mark went on to remind us all of the importance of keeping our personal portfolio and resumé up to date with samples of our recent work and concrete examples of how, as a technical communicator, we were able to contribute to the overall business goals of our employer or customer. Mark argued that unless we are able to prove our worth to management, we run the risk of having our jobs seen as just yet another unavoidable expense, and thus an easy target for outsourcing. A lot of work needs to be done to promote our profession to corporate management and to show how the unique skillset of technical communicators can provide considerable value in many areas, not just our traditional role of producing product documentation.

One of the questions raised at the end of Mark's presentation revolved around the need for technical communicators to have knowledge of many different related fields. We don't necessarily have to master all these skills, but we should know enough about them to be able to interact with and benefit from the more specialist knowledge and skills of experts. While there does appear to be a continuing need for the kind of "Jack of all trades" role that, as technical communicators, we are used to playing almost every day, we should also consider delving deeper into one or more of these related fields, such as usability, information architectecture or quality assurance.

At around 10.15am we split into four separate groups for the parallel round-table breakout sessions. Each 45-minute session took place in a separate small meeting room, with 10-15 persons max. per group and each session repeated once, thus enabling attendees to choose 2 out of the 4 topics on offer. This session format proved to be a great success with all participants. Our round table host speakers were invited to start with a short, relatively informal presentation, and the smaller group sizes helped encourage interactive discussion among all participants. We'll definitely try to repeat this format at future events, though probably with slightly longer sessions to avoid having to break up conversations and force people to move on to the next session!

Elisabeth Sabot, a graduate of the Rennes translation program and currently technical writer and translator at Influe-Illicom, recounted her transition from translation to technical communication. All participants had chance to recount their own stories. Several other participants, it seemed, had also moved into the field of technical communication from translation. As technical communicators in a non-English speaking country, most of us found ourselves as both translators and technical writers. It was also fascinating to find out how others came to move into the profession from many different directions.

Jeannette Eichholz described how her department at G.E. Medical transformed its documentation from disparate documents to single-sourced documents that are managed in a Content Management System on a single server for all the writers working in the division around the world. The first step was moving to FrameMaker, then to Structured FrameMaker, which enforces the style guide and template, followed by the move to XML files in a database. Many other companies are going down the same track (or planning to in the future) and so it was very valuable to hear about this particularly successful project.

Chris Durban, independent financial translator and author, and current president of the Société Française des Traducteurs (SFT), presented the different aspects of translating and writing in the financial sector, with many varied examples and plenty of good advice for anyone looking to move into this area of the profession where, it seems, skilled writers and translators are still very much in demand.

Marc Swanson shared his experience of moving from technical writer to marketing writer. Life on the flipside of the client signature, as he described it. Marketing and business communication is done before a client signs on the dotted line and purchases a product, so the writing must appeal to an audience of prospective buyers, whereas technical writers are generally writing for users of a product that their company has already purchased for them, and therefore don't have much alternative but to ready the documentation if they need assistance. Marc's presentation provided an interesting way of looking at writing: The different audiences, the different deliverables, and the different styles.

Lunch was served at the onsite restaurant and provided an excellent opportunity for participants to compare stories from the morning sessions and engage in some informal networking while enjoying a nice three-course meal.

When there was no more wine or coffee to be had, we were able to convince people to return to the meeting room. Our afternoon session began with a keynote presentation on preparing documents for translation by Jeannette Eichholz on behalf of the Milwaukee-based translation agency ICD, who kindly sponsored Jeannette's attendance at the conference. For the writers in the audience, it provided a valuable insight into the problems and expenses that can arise during the translation process due to poorly written documents. In addition to advice on maintaining good writing standards, there was also practical advice on how to deliver files to translators, and on the importance of providing supporting documents such as multilingual glossaries and interface guidelines, so as to make the process as straightforward as possible for the translator.

After a short break, we moved onto our panel discussion, which was moderated by STC Region 2 Director/Sponsor Vici Koster-Lenhardt. Our three panelists were each invited to make a short, relatively informal presentation of about 15 minutes on a specific issue relating to the education, training and professional development of technical communicators. This then served as a springboard for questions and discussion between the audience and the panelists.

David Farbey, STC UK Chapter President, spoke about distance learning and e-learning and how both these techniques are used for technical communication courses in the UK. David defined "distance learning" as referring to courses that provide access to a tutor and allow interaction with other students via email, discussion forums and live chat (somewhat like an "extended classroom"), whereas "e-learning" typically refers to individual study modules that are usually shorter and related to a specific topic. Successful courses, it seems, are those that can provide a combination of these two methods of learning to suit the varying needs of students. David pointed out that there are no longer any traditional classroom-based undergraduate courses in Technical Communication in the UK, though graduate-level courses are still going strong.

Sheffield-Hallam University, where David teaches, provides a hybrid e-learning/distance learning course, which allows students to work from anywhere at a time that suits them and yet still follow a complete 2-year course of study. The university is also looking at ways to make individual components of the course available as separate modules. This would be particularly of interest to working technical communicators just wishing to brush up their skills or learn new skills in a particular area. David recommended anyone considering distance learning or e-learning training to look around and compare the many different courses on offer, whether from private vendors or from traditional universities and colleges.

Daniel Gouadec, Director of the Centre de Formation de Traducteurs, Terminologues et Rédacteurs (CFTTR) at the Université de Rennes 2, presented a comparison of the skills that technical communicators and translators are (or should be) taught and argued that both groups actually have very similar skill sets and training requirements. The key to success in today's very competitive translation market is no longer just one's ability to translate well, but rather all the additional skills that translators must be able to master, such as the ability to write well, set up and run a website, write a proposal, or create multilingual terminology databases. Daniel expressed concern at the large number of translators who continue to arrive on the market each year without sufficient training.

Chris Durban, as current President of the Société Française des Traducteurs (SFT), member of several other professional societies for translators and founder of a French association that works to promote better understanding of the translating profession to corporate management within the financial sector, was the perfect person to address the issue of cross-professional networking and how important it can be to career develpment. Chris gave an energetic talk on the importance of belonging to one or more professional societies and in particular that the relatively low-cost of membership of such societies (in comparison to the fees charged within many of the regulated professions (such as those for doctors or lawyers, for example), pay for themselves many times over in terms of networking, learning and job-hunting opportunities.

Chris also called for more work to be done by professional societies such as the SFT or STC to both promote their respective professions to a wider audience (and in particular top management), but also to understand better the people working in the profession. It is surprisingly difficult, for example, to come up with a reliable estimate of the number of translators working in France. The same is certainly true about the technical communication market here too. Chris ended with an invitation for STC and the SFT to develop closer ties in the future and to explore ways to organize joint events or exchange speakers on topics which are clearly of relevance to both translators and technical writers.

The discussions that followed the panel presentations clearly showed that participants were eager for more training and learning opportunities and that there is also a certain degree of apprehension about the future of the profession. Most agreed that lifelong learning and membership of professional societies were two important ways in which we could all help ourselves to take charge of our careers.

After another short break, we held our traditional prize raffle, which gave all participants the chance to win some cool STC-branded goodies in return for handing in their completed event feedback form. We also added a special raffle for the students who were present and awarded a free STC student membership to the lucky winner, Etienne Beuter, from the CDMM course at Jussieu University.

We thanked our speakers with a small gift of chocolate, and a special thanks went to Vici Koster-Lenhardt who has been a great help and inspiration to our chapter leadership team, since she hosted our first strategic planning meeting last May. As STC Region 2 Director-Sponsor, Vici has had a huge positive impact not only our chapter, but all the chapters in this region, which covers all the STC Chapters in Europe and Israel as well as several on the West coast of the US. Vici's term as Regional Director Sponsor comes to an end in May, but she will continue to encourage STC's development as an international organization in the future as she moves up to a position on the STC's nominating committee. Vici began her tenure as Region 2 Director Sponsor three years ago with a visit to the STC France Chapter and it was perhaps fitting that her last "official engagement" before the STC Annual Conference in Las Vegas in May should also be here with us at a France Chapter event. We still hope to be able to persuade Vici to come and visit us again soon in Paris, which, given her love of macaroons from La Durée, shouldn't be so difficult ;-)

We closed the day with a round-up of France Chapter activities over the last year, a brief financial report from Chapter Treasurer Ellen Lebelle who, amongst other things, explained our decision last year to purchase our own video-projector to avoid having to beg, borrow or (worse) rent one for around €300 a time for our chapter meetings.

Janet Richards then went on to present the results of the STC France Chapter 2006 Salary Survey, which took place in February and was addressed to full-time salaried technical communicators working in France. We received 59 completed surveys from all over France, our best response rate ever.

Since the last survey in 2003, salaries for technical communicators in France seem to have remained more or less stable, rising just over 2%, compared to an inflation rate of around 4% in France over the same period. On the bright side, entry-level salaries do seem to be on the rise. Complete results for the STC France Chapter 2006 Salary Survey are available for download from the STC France Chapter website.

Chapter president Stuart Culshaw then gave a brief run-down of our plans for the future. In particular, next year, we would like to:

Continue our policy of low-cost evening meetings throughout the year with one or two invited speakers. We already have one meeting planned for Thursday June 15 on the subject of Usability. So mark your calendars!

Hold at least one chapter or local interest group meeting outside of the Paris area. We have already spoken with several people who are interested in organizing meetings in Lyon and Toulouse. If you'd like to get involved, get in touch with a member of the France Chapter board and find out how you can help make this happen.
Engage more members in volunteer activities and improve support for those volunteer activities with regular meetings throughout the year.

Continue to develop a stronger community by promoting more interaction between members and developing closer relations with employers and universities/training companies.
Hold another strategic planning meeting in early June 2006 to clarify our objectives and establish our plans for next year.
We ended the day with a call for action:

Get involved!
We were not able to hold our chapter leadership election at the conference, as originally planned, due to a lack of candidates. We must hold leadership elections before the STC Annual Conference in May to ensure continuity in the leadership of the chapter, so please consider stepping forward to help develop and promote our chapter. We distributed a list of leadership positions to all conference participants and urged all those present to get involved.

Whether or not you attended the conference, please consider contributing a little of your time and experience and get in touch with a member of the existing France Chapter board to find out more about volunteer opportunities. We have worked hard this year to develop sustainable processes to support our activities. This means it's far easier to make a valuable contribution to our chapter without having to make a lengthy time commitment. Even if you're only able to spare 15 minutes here or there, there's still plenty you can do to help! Look oout for more information coming soon to the STC France Chapter website.