What taking part in a local chapter gives a member
Taking part in a local chapter, rather than only belonging to one, can give a member contacts, friendships and skills related to the work, and more from an association run by volunteers. A member's part ranges from sitting at the registration desk before a meeting to holding the chapter's offices and starting its events, and whether a newcomer comes back after a first meeting can turn on the welcome they receive there.
Why put effort into a chapter
Becoming active in one or more chapters is one of the best ways to get involved in AMWA. In 2011 many chapters hosted dinner meetings or similar events where a member could learn more about medical communication, befriend like-minded people and perhaps make contacts that lead to a new job or freelance work, and some held annual or biannual conferences with opportunities to earn workshop credits toward AMWA certificates. Volunteering for a chapter is particularly rewarding and can help a member develop skills directly related to their work, and many chapter leaders build close relationships with people who become lifelong friends and colleagues.
A long-serving volunteer of AMWA's Carolinas chapter said in 2008 that she gets a lot more out of a professional organisation by taking an active part, especially one run by volunteers such as a local AMWA chapter; it benefits her and, she hoped, the organisation, and it is also fun. For her, giving time is an opportunity to take part and get to know other chapter members, and it is important for networking, whether for employment opportunities or for learning from peers. In her view it is important to offer programmes locally, because not everyone can go to the annual meetings, and local programmes keep the association on people's minds rather than making it something that comes round once a year. The more people are involved, she held, the more likely they are to remain involved, which can only benefit the organisation and its members in the long run.
A busy chapter's meetings can put a member among the people they have read about in the association's journal. In the 1990s AMWA's Delaware Valley chapter met every month at a restaurant in Philadelphia, on a fixed day, something like the third Tuesday of the month, sometimes with a speaker and sometimes only for networking. One member recalls carpooling into the city with three or so others from Chester County to one of her first meetings. There she met in person a member whose regular column had run in the AMWA Journal for years.
What a member's contribution can look like
In 2011 the chapter information section of AMWA's website gave the names and email addresses of chapter leaders, which a member could use to contact the chapter president and volunteer to help organise a meeting, produce a webinar, serve as chapter webmaster, manage a LinkedIn group or take on other tasks.
By 2015 one member of the Delaware Valley chapter, who had volunteered from a few months after joining, had done everything in the chapter from sitting at the registration desk before a meeting, which she calls a great way to start volunteering, to founding and co-chairing its freelance conference and serving as its president. Another member was that year the chapter's secretary and the chair of its freelance conference. A member who had been in AMWA for four years but became much more aware of the services on offer only in 2015 became website manager and LinkedIn manager at the local level. She had not been very familiar with LinkedIn before she began managing the group, and came to have a lot more connections and more confidence in starting conversations.
A chapter event can also be how a member first joins and then comes to lead a chapter. One member, while attending an American Medical Association meeting in San Francisco, heard about a seminar on medical writing that AMWA's Northern California chapter was hosting the next day; she went to the seminar, joined AMWA, and then learned there was a chapter in her home town of Chicago. She became involved with the Greater Chicago Area chapter, was soon elected treasurer and then president, and was still active in AMWA in 2009.
The Carolinas volunteer served as president-elect and then as president, organised events such as the chapter's spring conference, and personally met with several people who were interested in learning how to become a medical writer. She suggested that the executive committee amend the bylaws to add a past-president position and served as the chapter's first active past president, which let her give advice to the next president. She continued to contribute after her presidency, a time when many chapter officers feel a touch of burnout, taking part in numerous chapter events, arranging meeting venues and organising new events.
In 2006 she and the chapter treasurer started a book club for AMWA members that operated as a traditional book club rather than discussing style manuals, giving chapter members a chance to interact in an informal setting. She organised a trip to the North Carolina Medical Examiner's Office in 2006, and in 2008, with the treasurer, a walking tour of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill the night before the chapter's spring conference, which the two walked and timed beforehand. On hearing that Oliver Smithies, a professor at the university, had been awarded the Nobel Prize, and recalling that he was an excellent lecturer, she emailed him to ask whether he would address the chapter, and he agreed, asking whether the chapter could wait until after he had collected his award in Stockholm. The lecture drew about 175 AMWA and community members to the Friday Center in Chapel Hill on 6 March 2008, and she introduced the speaker.
What brings a newcomer back
A newcomer can fear being out of their depth at a first meeting. One writer who had already been a professional writer for 15 years and a medical writer for 9 drove to his first AMWA meeting, a Saturday chapter meeting in Ambler, Pennsylvania, in January 1994, so scared of being out of his league that he almost turned round, which he calls what would have been the biggest mistake of his life. The people there did have more letters after their names than he has in his name, but they were the most welcoming and interesting people he had ever met, and he knew he had found his home. He is sure that many, if not most, members had the same first experience.
New members of AMWA's Pacific Southwest chapter remember the warm welcome that one long-serving member, who died in 2013, gave them at meetings. One member walked into a first AMWA meeting, at the Los Angeles Press Club in 1986, interested in medical writing but with major doubts about breaking into the field, and looked for a seat at the back near a door, to escape in mid-meeting if things got boring. The long-serving member touched the newcomer's arm, introduced herself and offered the seat next to her. That welcome was as profound as it was simple: no one had to stand around looking lost in a sea of strangers. For another member, the warm welcome from her and one other member at a first meeting in 1986 was the main reason for attending a second meeting of the chapter. A third calls her a big reason for having enjoyed taking part in the chapter.
She also included newcomers at the chapter's Asilomar conference. As a co-director of the conference, she made sure to include newcomers and speaker guests in the skit on its last night. When the slide projector jammed during one member's first AMWA presentation, at the conference in the early 1980s, and the presenter kept talking while fixing it, she afterwards introduced herself, congratulated the presenter and said that the presence the presenter had kept during the mishap showed a wonderful teacher in the making. A member driving to the conference for the first time had been told to arrive any time on the day before it opened, but feared arriving too late for the organising committee's work party and dinner, and telephoned. She told the member to come on ahead: the committee was putting the programme booklets together, and there would be work to help with on arrival. That inclusiveness made the member feel part of the group.