Chapter News

Volunteer of the Year 2011-12 Announced

Sera offered her services as a volunteer soon after she attended her first contractors’ meeting in March 2011 and has been active ever since. She became a regular at both CIC and program meetings and was a keen user of social media. She eagerly accepted the newly defined role of Social Media Coordinator, helping the chapter publicize events and quadrupling our number of followers.

Sera has strongly supported the Programs team in its three primary tasks—speaker wrangling, room logistics, and hospitality/refreshments. When the Team Lead role suddenly became vacant, she jumped in to keep things on the critical path. After only two months of experience on the team, she coordinated it for the rest of the year, relying on a small but capable cast to produce successful events month in and month out, with admirable follow-through and oversight. There is little glory and lots of wear and tear in the job, but Sera didn’t stop, and our successful year was due in large part to the visible increase in attendance at program meetings.

Her dedication follows the postman’s code: neither rain nor hail nor sleet prevent her from attending meetings and carrying out her work. When snow kept our January speaker stuck in Seattle, Sera braved a blizzard and walked downtown, 8 kilometres, to help make the meeting a success.

Sera’s ability to find fresh speakers helped energize the Programs team as well as the chapter. Her varied interests led us to November’s presenter, Anthony Michael, on writing for translation. (In fact, Sera remarked that this was the first time she had conversed with Anthony in English.) Another “get” was the May presenter, broadcast media veteran Hazel MacClement, on storytelling. Both of these speakers came from outside the usual tech comm world, but they attracted good crowds and allowed our members to network with people from new and interesting fields.

Birds of a feather are challenged to present fresh ideas. Not so with our VOTY recipient, who brings both ideas and energy to our chapter. STCCWC is one of many organizations in which Sera chooses to participate, and we are lucky birds to have a volunteer member like Sera Kirk.

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