Recently, while reading a blog, I discovered that National Geographic had set up cameras in the wilderness of Botswana and was calling it WildCam Africa. As I look at it right now, I can see two elephants drinking at a water pool. (http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/wildcamafrica/wildcam.html)

My first reaction to the site was, “Wow! This is really cool!” My second reaction to the site was, “Is there nowhere that technology can not go? Is there nowhere that humans cannot invade?” All social commentary on humanity’s invasiveness aside, this site illustrates the trends that we have been seeing in technology.

Our president, Tamara Chapman, delves into the reaches of technology in her article on technology trends. Our new student columnist, David Kaden, researched and interviewed several chapter members to get a good feel for the trends of our profession. A new contributor, Tessa McKinnon, gives a personal follow-up to the marcom articles from Maryse de la Giroday.

Our Innovation Director, Rahel Bailie, provides us with a trend analysis of Content Management. (She has also started a Vancouver community of a group called CM Professionals. Go to http://www.cmprofessionals.org for more information.) We also have an article from the Rockley Group about why we should be interested in managing content.

With so many rapid changes in technology and so many new ways to distribute information, technical writers have a unique opportunity to evolve the distribution of information. While many of us work for companies whose standards might be unchanging, the next project might bring us opportunities to propose new methods for distributing information. We make ourselves more valuable by learning of these methods in advance and proposing solutions based on customer needs.