Following on from the mammoth task of organizing the Region 2 conference in October 2006, the UK chapter continued that trend with a spring conference on Blogs and Wikis for the technical communicator.  This was followed in June by an excellent event in June, at Churchill College, Cambridge which concentrated on non-verbal communication.  Everybody took away some very useful information, tips and techniques from the event, which one of our main speakers, Patrick Hoffman, described as the best event he had attended in some time.

The Cambridge event was also the time for our annual general meeting, at which Nick Rosenthal took over as President of the Chapter.  Nick immediately brought some enthusiasm and direction to the management team, many of whom had been left 'tired and emotional' after the efforts needed to make the Region 2 conference such a success.  Monthly conference calls are a  regular feature for the Chapter's management team, and forward planning started to pay off immediately.  This included planning the 'Making DITA work for you' event, which took place in Manchester, in November.  Having two experts, Alan Houser and Indi Liepa, to talk about DITA, the benefits and consequences of implementation, and how to specialize it for individual needs, was a great feature.  The event attracted delegates from Sweden and Iceland. Forward planning and the relationships developed through the STC seem to be paying off, as we already have an exciting  programme of planned events for 2008, and agreement from Sarah O'Keefe and JoAnn Hackos to participate at two of our events.  Details of our future events, which include content management, and modular and collaborative writing, can be found on the Chapter web site at http://www.stcuk.org/