Chapter Competition
Sets Local Record

by Mark Levinson

Competition Update

• List of Winners & Awards
• Award Dinner (coming soon)
• Award criteria

The entries were judged in California, on an exchange basis. The Californians commented, "Our judges really enjoyed the exchange process and were impressed with many of your entries."

From the entrants' point of view, "the experience was indeed interesting and edifying," as Ester Halac says. Ester won an award of excellence for an ECI marketing brochure. "I found the judges' critique detailed, to the point, and constructive. Some went into more detail, some into less, but overall, their evaluations were thorough. Perhaps this is even more valuable in marketing material where the 'rules' of writing are more vague than in writing for end users." The same brochure won a design award for Rachel Gurevich.

Sara Stein concurs: "Objective reviewers provided in-depth and valuable feedback, which I'll definitely take into account for future projects. It was very helpful to receive external appraisals from people unfamiliar with the project. Overall, I was very impressed with the depth and meticulousness of the evaluations, and am now more attuned to the reader/customer's point-of-view than I was before." Sara won an award of merit for a Scitex Vision site preparation guide.

At Creo, the other inheritor of the old Scitex company, Danielle Blander won an award of excellence for an informational poster; Timna Snir-Aviani, Monique Lance, and Oren Iny won one for online help; and Fran Bonhardy won a merit award for a quick reference guide.

Debbie Shapiro considers awards "a great encouragement at work" and says, "Our product managers like to introduce me as 'our award winning technical communicator.'" At the same time, "The judges found several weaknesses that will become pointers to help us improve our documentation." Debbie, who works at Biosense Webster, won an award of merit for a documentation set together with her designer Raul Valencia.

Other winners were David Schor of VCON for excellence in online help; David Shaked (Wernick) and Avraham Berger of AlmondWeb for merit in tutorials and training; and Ronald Schwartz, a freelancer writing for ADI Video Technologies, for merit in noncomputer equipment guides.

The winning entries will be displayed at the 2005 STC Israel Convention, and an award banquet is currently being planned for April. Details for the latter will be posted shortly.