We're on for the Cs next month!!!

[kathry...@uc.edu]

Kudos to Geoff for getting our SIG on the 4Cs program again this year!!! Our (virtual) meeting will be on Friday, Mar. 11, at 3:00 ET. As the meeting descriptions says, "The Workplace Writing SIG offers a place for BPTC faculty to discuss all pedagogy, technology, and advocacy. We invite all business, professional, and technical writing/communication faculty to join us!"

Please plan to attend, and please share the word with any of your colleagues who might like to join us. You can email Geoff at Geoffre...@gmail.com to sign up (I don’t know if we have to do this to be able to attend the meeting even if we're registered for the conference, but I guess we should do so just to be on the safe side). FYI, the deadline for early-bird registration for 4Cs is Monday, 2/21.

 I chatted with Geoff yesterday about an informal agenda for the meeting, and we’re thinking the following topics will generate plenty of helpful conversations:

1)      New ideas for generating or revamping writing assignments in our courses,

2)      Topics being discussed in Business and Professional Communication Quarterly and in the news/business lit in general that could be good to incorporate into our courses, and

3)      A proposal that the ABC first vice president create a SIG in the ABC, entitled “4Cs Liaison SIG,” to give this Workplace Writing SIG an official ABC affiliation. The proposed ABC SIG would help ensure the continuation and growth of the WW SIG, serve as a stable pipeline between the WW SIG and a body of experienced workplace-writing instructors and researchers, and provide those CCCC members who also join ABC a ready community in ABC.

 To go into topic #3 a bit more . . . I’ve attached the page from ABC’s operational guidelines that explains how to organize a SIG and what the requirements for the SIG would be. Basically, Geoff and I would email Judith Ainsworth, ABC’s first VP (the officer who creates SIGs), fill her in on our Workplace Writing SIG, and ask that a corresponding ABC SIG, the “4Cs Liaison SIG,” be created (ABC already has an “MLA Liaison Committee,” so we’d be modeling our name/purpose on theirs). We don’t know yet if we have 10 members at the ready, but even if we don’t, we can argue that the SIG we want ABC to establish will be such an important link to 4Cs, whose members are doing more and more instruction in workplace writing, that the SIG should be authorized even if we don’t yet have 10 members. Once the ABC SIG is created, we can announce its existence to ABC members and likely pick up quite a few new members, in addition to those of us from the 4Cs side who want to join. (By the way, to be a member of the ABC SIG, you just need to be an ABC member who has signed up for the SIG; you don’t necessarily have to attend the SIG’s meeting at the annual conference.) The new ABC SIG would help ensure the vitality of the WW SIG and also help generate ideas/person power for panels and workshops, whether at 4Cs or ABC.

 I am willing to be the “coordinator” mentioned in the attached OG page, to get the ball rolling and get us on the ABC program for Tampa, in October. If/when we convene there (and I’m guessing we can have both in-person and virtual attendees), the group can elect its chair. It can’t be Geoff, because his hands are full with overseeing the Workplace Writing, and it can’t be me, because I have extensive and unpredictable family obligations. So be thinking about whom you’d like to see as chair of this ABC SIG—maybe yourself!

 Looking forward to seeing you and chatting with you on the 11th! And please share any ideas/suggestions you have for this meeting!

[William Christopher Brown]

Hi Kathy,

I chair the MLA Liaison Committee for ABC. We create panel ideas and vote on them. I came up with an idea on "Black Lives in Business Communication" (see attached) that the MLA Liaison Committee has passed on the last couple of times. I'm going to take the hint that they don't want it! Joking aside, both times that I submitted this idea, someone suggested that CCCC might be a better conference for it. If you're looking for panel topics to consider for future CCCC conventions, feel free to consider this one. It's certainly okay if the committee doesn't want to do anything with this CFP. 

Best wishes,
Chris 

---

From: 'kathry...@uc.edu' via Workplace Writing SIG <workplace-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 19, 2022 1:50 PM
To: Workplace Writing SIG <workplace-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: We're on for the Cs next month!!!

 

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[kathry...@uc.edu]

Thanks so much for sharing this with us, Chris!! I feel sure that there are three people in our SIG who could propose a great panel along these lines (sponsored by our SIG) for the Cs 2023. A variation could also work great as a proposal for ABC 2022 in Tampa this fall (should we success in our bid to have a 4Cs Liaison SIG created by then).

I would suggest, though, that the topic be broadened for either/both of these panels so that it didn't focus so narrowly on Technical and Professional Communication scholars/teachers, since both our SIG and the one we want created in ABC will have more of a workplace-writing focus--that is, a focus mostly on writing that employees do as part of their jobs, not on those who do tech/professional writing for a living. So the set-up would need to look more broadly at the status of diversity in workplace-writing scholarship and teaching rather than on TPC scholarship alone. Also, I think it might be wise to broaden out the topic so that it isn't only about Black voices but is instead about additional kinds of diversity as well that workplaces are trying to accommodate. In particular, it strikes me that the complaints of the TPC folks quoted in the proposal as it is don't carry over that will to workplace writing, as the the business communication literature/textbooks have been examining/promoting different kinds of diversity quite a bit of late (e.g., BPCQ has published special issues on accessibility, disability theory, and social justice--and just today I read an article in the Harvard Business Review that discusses ways in which companies are promoting neurodiversity--seemingly the latest type of diversity to come to people's attention [there was an article in the lastest CCC on this topic, too]). Probably the best approach would be to start with a review of just where we are in terms of different kinds of diversity in the study and teaching of workplace writing and then base our program proposal(s) on both the progress and the gaps we see. (I, for one, would not like to see a Cs panel sponsored by our SIG give the impression that we over here in workplace writing haven't been paying any attention to diverse voices! That's exactly the kind of benighted attitude that a lot of comp people have about our field, since they don't really pay any attention to what we're doing.) But, gosh, yes, there are fabulous possibilities here. I hope to hear during our Cs meeting on Mar. 13 that some of us have come up with great ideas along these lines and are eager to propose a panel for the Cs 2023! I'd be in for a panel for ABC 2022 in Tampa if someone wants to lead that effort!