Angela Shetler of the American Cancer Society Speaks on Lansing Community College

Angela spoke at my tech writ. 124 class and here's my review:

Just wanted to say that Angela Shetler came and presented to my tech
writing class today and she did a spectacular job. The presentation she did for my class was "Technical Communication and the American Cancer Society." She talked about the rhetorical decisions that have to go into the communication practices of the organization. Her power point was full of interesting visuals, and to say the truth, you might need a dry tissue available for part
of the presentation. My students loved it.

The one thing that I found especially interesting, was their new "story" initiative. They are collecting personal narratives from cancer survivors and their caretakers, and creating secondary documents from these, including multimedia and web texts. They have a
huge bus that is going around the U.S. collecting these stories (plus they have several kinds of blog spaces) -- and they are finding this kind of appeal to be extremely effective (I mean you think about the value of quantitative research on health issues -- but it might be that to save lives you *have* to turn to narrative).

Anyway, she discussed this type of document created where several people are interviewed, and then their interviews are shaped, fashioned, edited, and presented (repurposed) for various audiences. This was really interesting. (I decided it's called a "Story-based Technical Report" or something--a new genre).

And, did you know that the top 15th most influential policy maker on capital hill is the American Cancer Society, or that 42 Nobel peace prize winners were funded by same, or that they frequently hire tech writers locally?

So, that's what I want you to know. Hers was the most engaging presentation I've heard for a long time where it made me think something I am doing might actually matter.