The joint meeting of the Society for Technical Communications (STC) and Huntsville Alabama L5 (HAL5) Society is something to communicate about. In October 2018, STC President Julie Blair presented the idea of a joint STC and HAL5 meeting. Freelance Technical Writer Bart Leahy (who has often written for Ad Astra) was the perfect choice for the presenter with his background in technical writing, space interests, and past HAL5 and STC memberships. Bart’s presentation “Communicating About Space: Priorities and Pitfalls” was well received. His talk emphasized using clear language and connecting with audience interests to make pro-space outreach more effective.
The meeting was held at the Huntsville/Madison County (Downtown) Library. Food and drinks were offered to the guests. Along with gaining understanding, this event was great for networking and communicating about space and communication interests. Technical writers and editors, NASA personnel, engineers, space fiction authors, space advocates, and archivist were among the 28 people who attended the event. STC President Julie Blair commented, “The STC was proud to co-host this event with HAL5. We are glad Bart could visit Huntsville and give this talk.”
Pictured from left to right are (top row): Bart Leahy, Ronnie Lajoie, and Matthew Graham; (bottom row): Robin Scott, Les Johnson, Greg Allison, Julie Blair, Cheryl Austin, Beverly Watson, Carter Castle, and Alicia Carroll.
1 thought on “Huntsville Chapter Joint Event”
Going back to the Moon to stay will effectively stall space settlement for decades, while spending enormous amounts of money on peripheral technologies to those needed to establish functional, profitable settlements in Earth orbit. Supporting lunar development will be wholly at taxpayer expense and generate virtually no net profit. Only astronauts and specialists will participate. It is not for the general public. It should be necessary to show a clear cost to benefit ratio of lunar development compared to Earth orbit settlement development. The Moon plan is a bad plan because it stalls true space settlement indefinitely.