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By Elaine Richman, AMWA-MAC Regional Coordinator,
Baltimore
It was a dark and stormy night and still half
of the dozen people who had signed up for the Baltimore regional
AMWA-MAC event managed to make the meeting at Elaine Richman's home
in the Mt. Washington section of Baltimore. The October 17 event
was booked as dinner and a “show-and-tell” evening,
and was true to its word. We broke bread together and then each
described our individual niche as medical writers.
Medical book indexer Debra Patton demystified
indexing by describing the degree of concentration that goes into
the work and the software that makes the job manageable. The community
of indexers is small, she reported, and the demand is high. Newcomers
to medical writing might want to consider indexing as a career. Amy
Hodson Thompson described her work as a writer for the web, including
the Johns Hopkins University site called cognito.org. Amy is in
the process of writing a book and building a career in medical and
scientific writing.
Next was Michael Altus, longtime AMWA member
and former AMWA-MAC president. Michael told the story of his life
as a scientist and medical writer and shared details of his recently
acquired skills in business marketing. Michael's company is called
Intensive Care Communications, Inc. We all agreed about the importance
of aggressive and steady marketing for building and maintaining
a medical writing business.
Neysa Narena, who travels with a beautiful kayak
on top of her car, came from Annapolis for the meeting. Neysa provides
her clients with a variety of technical writing and desktop publishing
services. She showed an impressive array of technical guides published
by her company Narena Associates LLC. Also at the meeting was pharmacologist
Rachel Bongiorno, who is new to our field. We all know how valuable
her knowledge base is and are happy to help her make progress as
a medical writer. Finally, Elaine Richman talked about her career
as a medical writer and business owner. Elaine is president of
Richman Associates, LLC, a bioscience communications company. She
showed a book they'd done on Parkinson's disease for Harvard University
Press and a variety of projects for clients in eye and vision.
The Baltimore regional group of AMWA-MAC plans
to hold quarterly meetings. Please check the AMWA-MAC website for
announcements of upcoming events. If you have questions or ideas
for future regional events, contact Elaine
Richman, Ph.D., Baltimore regional coordinator.
TBA
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