Where do we go from here?
Post date: Jun 15, 2011 11:16:10 PM
Last June 16, Saul Carliner shared clever parallel histories between the famous TV Soaps (All My Children and One Life to Live) and our industry. The audience could not stop laughing. With sobering reality, he pointed out how we, just like the shows, their writers and Ivory soap are in the same path to cancellation unless we remain relevant and retool. He did predict though that because people do it so badly, communication skills will always be in demand.
Saul points outs the opportunity areas in: Content Management Systems, Ebooks, Elearning, Globalization, DIY Documentation, DIY Publishing, Knowledge Management, Edu-marketing and edu-tainment.
There's the rub. How many of these areas can we be ready for? As our industry goes through rapid and epic changes, how quickly can we respond to the requirements?
To be competitive, we should heed Saul's four components of career development:
Core communication expertise
Content expertise
Competence with tools
Personal training budget - Use STC to lower your training cost, network and get the full value from membership
I thought it appropriate to talk about Saul's session because I recently saw a posting in another group asking: "Do you still find STC relevant?" The question can be asked about STC or any other professional organization, or group. Some of the responses to the post were down from those who felt betrayed by their chapters, while others had totally opposite favorable experiences.
It's a new calendar year for STC New York Metro. Aside from our meetings and email, let's use the Forums: MySTC. LinkedIN. Email and Twitter to start conversations and collaborate. We are passionate about career development in STCNY and to the extent we can get speakers to support us as a group, we will push professional development forward.
Let's connect and keep talking about what it takes to stay relevant for our personal careers and our profession. No, we don't want to get washed away like the soaps!