To welcome in the New Year in style, we chose a classy Parisian café on the banks of the Seine for our "Meilleurs Voeux" social meeting on January 17. Located next to the former "La Samaritaine" department store, the cosy upstairs room at Le Café du Pont Neuf provided great views of the river and the Pont Neuf bridge.

Despite the low turnout, attendees enjoyed some great conversation, as we explored topics ranging from the state of the current job market for technical writers, to plans for the upcoming France Chapter Conference in March. Our secretary and treasurer Ellen Lebelle gave a brief summary of our chapter's financial situation and reiterated the need for more volunteers to step forward to help develop chapter programs and activities.

Finances

Our chapter is in good financial shape. We have around €6000 in the bank, which will be invested in our forthcoming chapter conference and to subsidize our regular chapter meetings in the coming year. Our bank balance includes a considerable sum that was returned to us last year as profit from the STC Region 2 Conference in London the previous year.

We try to run our own "regular" chapter meetings at break-even or at a slight loss, so as to provide members with as much value as possible. Our September "Saveurs & Savoirs" meeting, for example, ran at a slight loss. We also were left out of pocket after our planned November meeting had to be canceled because of the transport strike.

The membership rebate that our chapter receives from STC as a percentage of your membership dues was significantly reduced this year due to the dollar/euro exchange rate, but our solid financial position means that this will not affect our program offering for the coming year. STC recently changed the way it calculates chapter membership rebates, providing more direct pass-through of your membership dues to the chapter level. We hope that this will encourage more members to take advantage of chapter networking and educational events and encourage new members to join.

We have high hopes for our upcoming Annual Conference, which this year will take place on March 13-14 at the Maison Internationale at the Cité Universitaire de Paris. The conference represents incredible value, especially for STC members who received a reduced rate on registration. We also offer reduced rates for students and members of STC partner associations. We have managed to secure several event sponsors this year who will help us to offset some of the costs and allow us to at least break even. Putting on an event of this size is nevertheless a considerable undertaking, involving an investment of €7000 or more (not to mention the blood, sweat and tears of our dedicated conference team!) We are hoping for 60+ attendees this year, so we hope that you will join us and bring a colleague or three and help us make this a successful event.

Elections

Our dedicated and long-standing secretary and treasurer, Ellen Lebelle, will be retiring from the board this year and several other positions are also up for election. The current board has been in place for several years and it is now important to renew and grow our leadership team. If you think you've got what it takes and would like to play a key role in supporting and developing the technical communication profession in France, than this is a great opportunity for you to get involved. All chapter leadership positions are listed and described on the STC France Chapter website: http://www.stcfrance.org/volunteer

Submit your candidacy to the chapter president before the Chapter Conference on March 14. Elections will be held in April, and the new board will begin work in May, with a two-month training and transition period.

Conference

As mentioned above, planning for this year's France Chapter Conference planning (on March 14) is well under way. We have a great lineup of speakers and are just finalizing the day-of-event program. We have several sponsors and exhibitors signed up and will be publishing the registration form and conference rates in the coming week. We'll also be having one or two half-day workshops on March 13. Find out more at http://www.stcfrance.org/conference2008.

We're looking for volunteers to help out with conference logistics before and on the day. Let us know if you're interested in lending a hand by sending a mail the conference team at: conference@stcfrance.org

Oh, and Happy New Year to all our members and friends of the STC France Chapter. We look forward to seeing you soon!