Meeting with Alan Houser, STC President

Hot Weather, Crumbling Traffic, Noisy Pathway… That’s Bangalore from a few days before…

The next President of STC, Alan Houser was in town to attend a conference. Despite his hectic schedule with events and meetings, he agreed to meet the STC India Admin Council in person and discuss some pending points from a long time which did not turn fruitful over emails… He made sure he finished the conference activities and then met us in a good Café Lounge. I definitely need to say it was the Hard Rock Café which made him more so excited and also wanted to visit a few places in and around there.

Michelle Ann Cherian, Swaminathan Moorthy, and Naveen Dcruz from the Admin Council of STC India, and two senior members (past presidents) Susan Alexander and Tharun Unni met Alan Houser. We had discussed a good number of points with respect to the STC India Chapter and what help STC does or did not do. Some of the points discussed are as follows:

1. A representative from India for at least a year in the STC advisory board. Why we are never represented in any board?
2. Competitions that can be done and organized by STC US and India together.
3. A quarterly call to discuss the vision for the chapter.
4. Why can’t STC US think of expediting the money payable to us or do something to get some India members attend STC conferences?
5. What is STC US doing to grow the Techcomm market especially in ASIA?
6. What steps have been taken to join and work with other translation areas? India is a hub for translators, why can’t STC US do webinars free for us?
7. Steps taken to better the tech communication market in third-world countries.
8. Why are senior members quitting the chapter?
9. Why does STC US never talk to us consistently and come out with a formula for curbing membership downfall?
10. Are there any steps to decrease the membership fee for India members? USD 165 is still large for members from India especially when it is paid by members themselves.
11. For the members of third world countries, can STC provide discount on online certification courses?
12. Why is the India chapter not considered for the Member challenge? This has been the case in the last few years.
13. Even though we had nominated senior members for the associate fellow, they were never selected. Any issues with this case? This happened for more than 3 years in a row.
14. There was a suggestion to move all the common costs to STC. Common costs include the Web Hosting fee. Is it still on? We did write to STC about this. But there was no response.
15. How about giving us a FREE webex number to do the webinars?
16. What about the dues from STC?

We discussed about the possibilities of collaboration with other chapters, how we can help others, and other factors. Alan has volunteered to take up these queries personally and clarify us with the details from STC. We ended up our meeting with a surprise point on the Chapter Specific Webinars we planned to schedule in the coming months. As of publishing this article, we have already scheduled a Webinar and the mail is out on the STC India mailing list.

By Swaminathan Moorthy