Dan Voss will be providing a live presentation “Writing a Winning Proposal: ‘Near Misses’ Only Count in Horseshoes and Nuclear War” for our January chapter meeting. All you need to attend is your phone or PC! We will also be meeting at the IHOP to see the presentation in person, but we will have audio and video for those on the call.

Event Timing: Thursday, January 17 at 6:30pm ET (Presentation begins at 7:00pm)
Event Address: Online through Google Meet or IHOP, 11571 University Blvd, Orlando, FL 32817
Virtual Access: Details to be sent to attendees who RSVP and send payment

In this dynamic and entertaining presentation, 40-year aerospace proposal writer/manager and STC Fellow Dan Voss presents the basic principles of writing a successful proposal, along with a liberal dose of lurid proposal war stories from his long career at Lockheed Martin, where he participated on more than a hundred proposal teams that collectively won over $20 billion in contracts for the company.

Worry not, however, that the presentation is relevant only to fiercely competitive aerospace proposals. Originally presented to a graduate class in tech com at Mercer University in 2014 and since presented at the University of Central Florida, this presentation focuses on basic principles that apply to a much broader range of proposals in which tech com practitioners may become involved, including commercial proposals, grant proposals, and internal business proposals within corporations. It also applies to job placement and career development … resumes, portfolios, interviews, strategic career advancement … basically anything that involves “selling” a product or service … which may include YOU, as a technical communication student or tech com practitioner.

The marketing principles presented also apply to scholarship applications, awards applications, even radio and internet contests … indeed, all of these are, at the core, “proposals.” The only proposal these principles can’t promote success on are marriage proposals … Dan is still working on that!

Important to know
6:15 – 6:30: New Member Orientation
6:30 – 7:00: Networking
7:00 – 8:00: Welcome and Feature Presentation

Meeting Payment

We are thrilled to announce that in-person attendance for tonight’s meeting will be free! Since we are meeting at IHOP, we encourage you to buy some delicious pancakes to enjoy during Dan’s presentation. For those attending online, our regular rates still apply:

-$6 for STC Florida Chapter Members (part of Society for Technical Communication membership, not membership of this meetup group)
-$12 for all other attendees

Visit our Meeting Payments page for details on how to pay for the meeting.

Dan Voss

Dan Voss is a “retired” but still active proposal specialist for Lockheed Martin who also provides industry training workshops in business and technical communication. An STC Fellow, Dan is recognized for his publications and presentations on diverse subjects at STC’s international conference and was the recipient of the STC President’s Award for his efforts on student outreach. With Lori Allen, he coauthored Ethics in Technical Communication: Shades of Gray, published in 1998—for which he became the only non-engineer to receive Lockheed Martin’s coveted Author-of-the-Year recognition. He has coauthored four research articles for STC’s Technical Communication as well as four articles for intercom. Dan and now-chapter-president Bethany Aguad, then a student at UCF, co-managed STC International’s student outreach and mentoring initiative from 2012 through 2014 and presented at Leadership Day at two international STC conferences. They also coauthored Chapter 5, “Teaching the Ethics of Intercultural Communication,” in an acclaimed anthology of research articles Teaching and Training for Global Engineering, edited by Kirk St.Amant and Madelyn Flammia and published in 2017.