An apology and a goodbye to STC

I was fortunate that my daughter had a school concert this evening. It allowed me time to compose my emotions before composing this post.

By now most people following #stcorg on Twitter have heard about the delay I and one other inadvertently caused the rollout of MySTC. I completely and sincerely apologize for causing this. There was nothing sinister behind it. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I was excited to finally see MySTC live.

When STC posted the announcement of the delay, I felt obligated to step forward as one of the two involved. I hadn’t realized I’d done anything wrong, and I knew that STC and people following me on Twitter likely saw my excited posts on Twitter that day. I had reservations about logging in as the url did say staging, but since it was publicly available I figured why not at least try logging in. Amazingly enough, my own STC credentials logged me right in. At that point excitement took over and I started to browse around.

Now I want to be perfectly clear that the only area I tinkered in was my own member profile. I added information about myself, toggled a RSS and Twitter feed on, and uploaded a photo. I did not tear through the site, I did no form of hacking. I was merely looking at and adding info to my own member profile page. I was using it as intended.

After updating my profile, I left the site and went on with my day. By today I’d actually forgotten all about it. I had a busy day ahead and my attention was focused elsewhere. But, because I use GetSatisfaction to log and track issues, questions and ideas about STC’s web site, I received an email notification of a new comment on an item I’m following. This one. I followed the link, saw that no one had yet responded offering a status but another member was asking, so I posted a tweet asking for an update. The STC Board of Directors – or is if Hillary Hart herself, I can’t tell since the Twitter profile uses both identities – responded with a snark.

I actually was stumped by this. I thought maybe I forgot an email update or something and went looking, and then I thought it might have to do with an Office employee’s new family edition. Whatever the case, the snark hit me wrong and I did eventually give in to sarcasm. My bad, but I still had no idea what the Board/Hillary was talking about.

And then the announcement was posted to STC.org and the Twitterverse grabbed onto it.

I did have questions about logging in. I tweeted as much. But given the site was live and public, I gave it a shot. If it wasn’t live, I wouldn’t have gotten in. I did get in, as myself, and it looked operational.

I’ll admit to visiting the site. It was live. I’ll admit to logging in. It allowed me to using my own member login credentials. I’ll admit I updated my member profile. It was my profile.

I apologize that doing so disrupted a test. I intended no harm. I was merely curious and excited. After all, I’d been awaiting something like this since 2009 when the STC Forum was shut down, and eagerly awaiting this since 2010 when it was formally announced at the Summit.

What I have issue with is the treatment of this accidental disruption. The announcement says I was an unauthorized member on the site. If so, I wouldn’t have been able to log in. My STC credentials were, in fact, authorized. Of course, STC knew this by their own admission: “these individuals were able to use their existing credentials to enter”. What we didn’t know was that this live and operational site was being tested.

The announcement also stated, “These individuals also broadcast the URL of this website on Twitter”. That, as written, is a lie. I never once posted the URL for the web site. You can check my Twitter time line. I don’t scrub it.

The announcement continued, “which compromised the security of our controlled environment”. Now, if it was a controlled environment, would any of this ever have happened? Again, no malice was intended on my part, merely curiosity. And again, because I was free to log in as myself with my existing credentials, I didn’t think anything of it.

I am sorry that additional time and expenses are required to finish testing because of something I did, but I had no idea I did anything disruptive and I really shouldn’t have been able to do anything at all if the site was actually secure. If outside consultants were involved in setting this up, they should be admitting to their fault in setting up an uncontrolled environment for testing purposes.

Now, what really bothers me is that from the time I logged in to the time I received the snarky post from the Board/Hillary and to the time the announcement was published, not one STC Office or Board member contacted me about this issue. They obviously knew who the “unauthorized members” were, yet to my knowledge they didn’t reach out to either of us. Instead they chose a direct passive-aggressive approach using the voice of the Board of Directors.

I may be vocal, I may be assertive, and I may not hold my tongue as often as I should, but I know when to eat crow. I’ve done it many times, publicly. I also have continued to offer assistance and service to STC. I’ve managed a SIG for the past several years (currently in transition to a new SIG Manager for fresh energy and ideas), have worked on several committees and task forces, served as a judge in local competitions, and I’m even currently investigating social media platform options for the 2011 Summit after being asked by STC to do so.

As vocal as I’ve been, I’ve always worked in support of STC. I may publicly tweet dismay about decisions being made or actions being taken or not taken, but it’s because I care. Or, cared.

Today’s events have made it clear in my mind what has been nagging at me for a few years now. You see, while I see solid value in a central organization promoting and furthering the theory and practice of technical communication, I am convinced that STC is no longer fit to carry that banner. The organization is far more dysfunctional than I ever imagined. Many factors lead me to this realization, but the current situation rings the message loud and clear. It’s the final nail in the coffin, so to speak.

I’ll be wrapping up my current duties in the next few weeks, and after that I’ll be focusing on more fruitful endeavors in techcomm. It’s been an interesting 8 years with STC, and I’ve made some great friends along the way, but it’s obvious that it’s time to move on.

Tagged as: stcorg, techcomm