You can view the results of the previous survey here nicely compiled graph.

I would like to comment on the survey results here.

Question #1. Are you attending the next chapter meeting, this Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Neil Perlin, an internationally renowned presenter, is presenting on how to create help for the Web 2.0 age.

Thirteen out of at least 150 members confirmed that they are in fact going to the meeting. Another 10 actually showed up, but did not indicate before the meeting. For those of you who aren’t going, how can the chapter better meet your needs? I often think that the meetings only appeal to about a quarter of the membership, and am trying to figure out what other things we can offer. Ideas?

Question #2. Should we resurrect the chapter newsletter?

Seventy-five percent of the people said the blog was sufficient. This is really interesting. In reflecting over the change, I was talking with a colleague and she said that a newsletter can also be a burden to read. You have to print it out, find the time to sit down and go through it — you feel like you have to sift through it, because of the time and energy that was put into it. With the blog, you can just visit it and get caught up when you have time.

Let’s let the newsletter remain in blog form for now — and for the person who volunteered to help resurrect the newsletter, can we redirect your efforts to another task that needs to be done: workshops?

Question #3. I would like to see more of the following …

The two biggest requests were for more workshops and more information about members. I agree that we need more workshops. Now the question becomes what the workshops should be about.  Would you like to be a workshop coordinator for at least one of the workshops? If so, send me an e-mail.

As for more information about members, I have plans for this. I want to create an author profile page where you can see brief profiles about each member. I also want to make public a member directory, and hook in the addresses to a Google Maps API, so you can see who your closest neighbor is. If you look at the sidebar on the site, you’ll also see I added a live user chat area. Maybe we should schedule some time for users to get together to chat. What other ways can we provide more information about each member? If you would like to help me out with basic data entry for the member map, please let me know.

Question #4. What should the topic of our April meeting be?

Two answers stood out more than others: How Windows Vista and Office 2007 affect technical writers, and How to Make a Six-Figure Salary as a Technical Writer. I am working on getting someone from Microsoft to demo all of the features in Office 2007; I still haven’t heard back from the person.

Regarding the salary topic, there is someone we can fly out, Jack Molasini, but it would cost the chapter money. Perhaps we can find someone within our chapter who could tackle that topic? Anyone have any suggestions? Does anyone make a six-figure salary?

Step-by-step intro to blogging and alternative markets for technical writers were also popular responses. I would love to present on blogging, and I can give the presentation I’m preparing for Vancouver. Can anyone suggest a speaker for the alternative markets for technical writers topic? By this we mean, what other markets can you fill as a technical writer (instructional designer, policy and procedure writer, business analyst, project manager, copywriter, etc.)?

I’ll address the other responses in my next post. Do you have any thoughts about the survey or my responses? If so, use the comment feature below.