STC Israel Annual General Meeting - March 20

The STC Israel Annual General Meeting will be held on March 20, 18:00, at Beit Izzy Shapiro. The meeting is open to all chapter members. The meeting which will include:

• Committee Reports
• Review and vote to accept 2006 financial report
• Confirmation of Nominees for the new Administrative Council
• Messages from the outgoing and incoming Presidents, Debbie Shapiro and Zev Frutkoff respectively.

In addition, the 2006 Professional Certificates are ready for members. All members attending the AGM will receive their certificates then.

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Translation, Writing and Editing Workshops at Beit Berl

Beit Berl is holding several interesting workshops and seminars from March 2007 onwards, for example, Translating Children's Fiction,c reative writing (in English), and a subtitling workshop. Online details on the workshops and seminars...  or contact ]]

Jan. 9 Summary

Pricing Projects

This month's Tel Aviv Freelance Writers Cafe was animated and information-packed; Rick Teplitz walked us through the framework of pricing and billing projects from tech writing to marketing writing to editing to translation.  Follow this link to Rick's presentation outline. 

Again, a healthy numbered crowd - nearly 20 - gathered at the Press Cafe and questions posed during the meeting included:  Can I ask for half up front?  What constitutes a page?  When I bill on an hourly basis does that also account for phone time, travel and meetings?  Answers:  You can but it's uncommon, 250 words, & yes, if you budget it in.  Thanks to Rick for a well done, informative evening.  If you missed him in Tel Aviv, you might want to check out his pricing presentation at the upcoming Techshoret Conference on January 18th. 

Next month:  How to Get Your Foot in the Door: Self Marketing for Success.  February 13th at 19:00. Details to follow...

In the interim, enjoy the images and please message if you have questions.  Thanks again to Svi Ben-Elya for hosting us here on Elephant and for coming all the way from Yokneam!...Stephanie

Jacob & Daniella

Janet, Svi, Tamar (background), Jacob and Daniella

Galia, Ilana, Mark and Rick

Galia, Ilana, Mark, Gayle and Joy

2005 Events

Sept. 7, 2005 > "Salary and Benefits"

June 28, 2005 > "Annual Picnic for Tech Writers and Families" at Kibbutz Hazorea

January 4, 2005 > "R&D Centers in Yokneam" presented by the Mayor of Yokneam and "Working with Both FrameMaker and Word" presented by Shlomo Perets at Lumenis

2003 Events

December 29, 2003 > "Community Building" presented by Sara Shadmi of Oranim College at Lumenis

November 26, 2003 > "Wine Tasting and The Learning Curve" at Surf Technologies

October 22, 2003 > "First Meeting"

Coaching Skills

Seminar on "Coaching Skills for Empowering Employees"

תרגום לעברית

An experiential introduction to coaching and its applications

It has become common knowledge in the fields of business and technology that we should empower others in order to bring out their best. It is less known how to actually empower employees. Professional Coaching includes specific skills for empowering others.

The Coaching Process is a unique blend of creating an empowering context, increasing awareness, and taking action. Through coaching people expand their thinking paradigms to see new possibilities, which are then directly linked with specific plans of action. The coaching process adds value when people want something different from the way it is now: to address a particular problem or situation, to accelerate a person’s movement toward a desired role or impact, and to assist with people’s overall personal and professional development.

Specific coaching skills contributing to this process can be applied by non-coaches. We will look at how the way we approach an interaction can be empowering or not, get a glimpse at some common thinking paradigms, and consider alternative empowering paradigms such as inquiry toward discovery rather than inquiry toward proof. We will look at characteristics of “powerful” questioning, and the benefits of this skill in increasing awareness. And we will look at how to link this awareness to action through brainstorming and invitation that lead to increased accountability.

About the Speaker

For over 20 years Carolyn Tal has been working in human development with both individuals and systems. Her professional experience includes psychology, organizational consulting, and mediation, in hi-tech, bio-tech, service industries, the US Navy, and hospital settings. Dr. Tal currently works as a business and personal coach. She coaches individuals and teams, conducts workshops on coaching skills and bringing a coaching approach into organizations, and partners in equine-assisted learning for effective communication.

Trained in coaching at CoachU, Dr. Tal has Ph.D. in Psychology from Northwestern University and is a member of the International Coach Federation. Born in Chicago, Carolyn moved to Israel 12 years ago.

VBA and Word Macros

VBA and Word Macros

The meeting was held at Osem. Moshe Chertoff, who managed the meeting, quickly turned the chair over to Srul Alexander, who gave a very informative presentation on macros and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Srul opened with a real life scenario, a document with hundreds of tables that need to be reformatted. He described how a macro that finds all the tables and reformats solved this problem quickly and consistently. The presentation included details on how to create macros in VBA, the programming language used in Microsoft Office applications. The presentation included explanations on some of the basics of programming.

About the Speaker

Srul is a former programmer and systems developer. Four years ago Srul made a career change to technical writing and has been working for Dr. Text ever since.