Re: Cheaper routes to training

[Janet Swisher <jmswisher -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:48 AM, Javier Longoria <javster1 -at- bellsouth -dot- net> wrote:
> HI all,
>
> I saw this link in one of my LinkedIn groups and was wondering if anyone
> else had seen it:
> http://diceblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/cheaper-routes-to-certifications/
>
> Of the two options in the article -- IEEE's Computer Society vs. ACM --
> which do you think would be a better fit for technical writing? I know
> that IEEE has a Professional Communication Society, but access to the
> "element k" courses seems to be only for the IEEE Computer Society. I
> don't know if the list of courses is the same for both options. I was
> able to see in the IEEE Computer Society website that there are some
> FrameMaker courses and Adobe Captivate, but nothing on DITA, single
> sourcing, help authoring, RoboHelp, Flare, etc...
>
> Any thoughts anyone? Does anyone here belong to ACM (instead of STC),
> and if so, which SIG did you join?

I have been a member of IEEE-PCS and ACM SIGDOC and SIGCHI, though I
haven't renewed them this year. I haven't tried taking any of the
courses you mention. The IEEE Computer Society has a local chapter
whose meetings I have occasionally attended, even though I'm not a
member of the Computer Society.

For IEEE, the online course access is specific to the Computer
Society; joining just the Professional Communication Society won't get
you that.

For ACM, access to online courses and Safari books is a benefit of
basic membership, so it doesn't matter which SIGs, if any, you join.

Both IEEE and ACM are academically focused, so a big part of what you
get from them is journals and conference proceedings. Both also have
magazines and newsletters at a more "popular" level; I didn't find
either one to be as useful to me as my STC membership. If you are in
the software industry, joining IEEE-CS and ACM are not unreasonable
ways to keep up with the state of the art in software engineering.

-- 
Visit my blog at: http://www.janetswisher.com
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