Chapter To Meet Feb. 22 The work of medical/technical/scientific writers and editors is never done in isolation. It takes a village to publish. At the February 22nd meeting of the Indiana Chapter of the American Medical Writers Association, Medical Illustrator Tom Weinzerl and Systems Validation Consultant Lisa Woods will share insights about their professions and how their work connects to ours. Tom Weinzerl is director of the department of Visual Media at Indiana University’s School of

Medicine where medical illustra-tors have had a presence since 1934. Mr Weinzerl has thirty years of experience in the field of medi-cal illustration, the last ten years here in Indianapolis. He’ll describe the work of a full-service visual media department, including graphic design, medical illustra-tion, sculpture and video and dis-cuss how the department is inte-grated into the school’s missions of teaching, research and service. Lisa Woods is a consultant with

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Hoosier Writer

A Newsletter of the Indiana Chapter of the American Medical Writers’ Association National: www.amwa.org Indiana chapter: www.geocities.com/hotsprings/villa/9504

Indiana-chapter member Tinker Gray received The President’s Award at the American Medical Writer’s annual confer-ence in November 2004. In presenting the award, outgoing president Flo Witte cited Gray’s pivotal work on the AMWA salary survey as one of the many rea-sons for choosing her. Gray said Witte called her with the news last summer. “I was honored that Flo thought of me. I was speechless when she told me; I said ‘you’ve gotta be kidding me!’ It’s a very nice honor.” The award is given by the AMWA president to a member of AMWA for dis-tinctive contributions to the association at the chapter or national level. The recipi-ent must have been an AMWA member for 10 years and cannot have served on

the Executive Committee. Gray has played a central role in producing recent salary surveys and presenting the results to the membership. She has also served the Indiana chapter faithfully, both as president and, most recently, as treas-urer through 2004. If you are reading your AMWA Jour-nal, you also saw Karen Burke, another Indiana chapter member, profiled in the Summer issue (No.3), by yet another Hoosier AMWAi-ian, Lana Dominguez. Lana’s member profile of Karen, “Karen wanted to become a private detective but…” won the first annual Chapter Arti-cle Award, established to encourage and recognize writers of articles published in AMWA chapter newsletters or chapter

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from the Presidentfrom the President

Chapter Meeting Tues., Feb 22 6:00 to 7:30 Eli Lilly and Co. Faris Campus (Details: Page 3) Officers ‘04-’05 President: Elaine Crab-tree President-elect: Cynthia Hooper Secretary: Tami Van Meter Treasurer: Ingrid Edge-mon Hensley Education Chair: Diana Fisher Program Committee: Deborah Frisby (chair), Peggy Emard, Tammy Graves Membership Chair: Teresa Wolfe Newsletter Editor: Cindi Zenkert-Strange

If you have any suggestions or would like to contribute to the newsletter,

please contact Kathy Hitchens at kathy@hitchensville.com

Keane, Inc. and a member of the Society for Technical Communications. She spe-cializes is assisting clients in navigating the intersection of information and technology through strategic content management. Ms Woods will present “Besides Excel: Data-base Fundamentals for Non-Developers.” Having a “data warehouse” sounds good of you write about clinical trial data, right? We like data to be in “production mode,” but should we worry if the pro-grams to display the data are in “text mode”? What does it mean when our IT colleagues say they are validating their systems? She’ll provide a basic overview of concepts and terminology related to databases and will equip us to better understand and communicate with the data-bases and database develop-ers within our organizations. For additional details about directions or parking, please see pg 3. Questions? Contact Deb Frisby, 276-1035.

Meeting Agenda February 22, 2005

5:45 Sign in at registration table in Faris II lobby 6:00 Chapter business 6:15 Speakers Tom Weinzerl/Lisa Woods 7:00 Questions/Discussion 7:15 Refreshments and Networking

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The Indiana Chapter of AMWA will present its annual chapter conference on Satur-day, June 18th. Speakers will include Nancy Taylor and R. Elliott Churchill, with both core and advanced credits available. Lunch will be served. Watch for full details.

Save the Date What: Next Chapter Meeting When: Tuesday, April 26th, Time TBA Where: Eli Lilly and Company, Faris Campus Who: Lynn Reynolds, Managing Editor, Diabetes Care

Chapter Conference Set for Saturday June 18th

Web sites. The article was nominated by then-editor Kathy Hitchens. Burke, one of the founders of the Indiana chapter, served as its presi-dent from 2003-2004. The individuals mentioned in this article have something in common, besides their AMWA membership. They have found ways to enhance their own professionalism as well as AMWA through their contributions. Is there a con-tribution you could make at the local/national level? Please take this opportunity to let us know of your inter-ests...and consider saying “yes” when asked to share your skills. Elaine

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Medical Emoticons According to a recent article in the British Medical Journal, it was a computer scientist at the Carnegie Mellon University who first suggested in 1982 that a character sequence could be used in email to mark a joke :-) . Since then, emoticons have be-come a familiar part of the email landscape. For a list of sug-gested medical emoticons, see the Jan 8, 2005 BMJ or go to http://www.blacktriangle.org/blog/index.php?p=923

We hope to see you at our meeting Tuesday, January 22nd at 6:00 PM. Registration starts at 5:45. AMWA members and guests are welcome.

If you do not work at Eli Lilly, please pre-register by contacting Peggy Emard (277-6277) or Deb Frisby (276-1035). The meeting will be in the Monet Salon, but you must sign in at the registration desk in the lobby of the Faris Building. Please note that cameras and re-cording devices are not allowed at this meeting. Parking is available in front of the building

Interplant and visitor parking at Faris Campus off Henry Street. After parking please walk across Henry Street to the Faris lobby for parking

AMWA Parking Map