If you are an independent consultant or lone writer, you might be interested in attending a meeting of the STC West Coast Contractors Group. We usually meet from 6:30–8:30 pm on a Tuesday, every second month from October to June, at the Cameron Recreation Centre at 9523 Cameron Street in Burnaby. All STC members can attend, and the $5.00 meeting registration fee is a deal.

Watch the STC website for meeting updates and reports. We’ve been known to occasionally shift the meeting to a local restaurant for munchies.

The group has about eight to ten regular members, but we’ve had up to 25 attend events. We’d love to have you come for a visit, partake in refreshments, and stay for a while. The event is an opportunity to share information and resources, or just network with fellow writers.

Content for the meetings has ranged from facilitated sessions on insurance options for contractors, to networking skills, to informal discussions about how members handle issues in the workaday world. New topic ideas are always welcome.

Other local contractor resources include an electronic mailing list and a directory of contractors. Links to those are available on the CWC Chapter Web site.

You can find STC International resources for contractors or lone writers at:
http://www.stcsig.org/cic/pages/cicsig-l.htm and
http://www.stcsig.org/lw/resources.htm, respectively.

As a group, we’d like to pass our thanks and appreciation along to Odile Morrison who has done an outstanding job as the Contractors Group team lead since 2002. Now that she’s our chapter vice-president, we hope she can stay involved.