From the President

November 2022

Katie Haggath, smiling. She has long brown hair and is wearing a black top with red flowers on it.This is our last newsletter for the year! Can you believe it? I just want to wish everyone well for the busy period coming up before Christmas, and to wish you strength and patience as you weather the constant stream of Christmas songs everywhere you go for the next month! Personally, I love a bit of Mariah Carey this time of year, but I know I am in the solid minority!

We’ve got a bumper newsletter for you to the end the year on, so I won’t waffle on. I just have a couple of things to announce!

We’ve got a cool opportunity to collaborate and I am very excited about it

We announced this at the conference, but I want share it here for those of you who didn’t have a chance to attend.

We have been reaching out to tech comm organisations and building relationships. One of our most exciting opportunities in the immediate future is a collaboration with the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC) in the UK as well as the Australian Society for Technical Communication (ASTC). We’ll be working together on a shared technical communication journal.

No doubt you’ll remember we used to share Southern Communicator with ASTC until it became untenable to continue producing the journal. ISTC currently offers a quarterly Communicator journal, of which 2 are digital-only and 2 are printed.

We intend to take the lessons we’ve learned forward with a new journal, which is neither Communicator nor Southern Communicator. We’re still very much in the early stages, so I don’t want to make any promises as to the specifics… but so far, we have discussed our hopes for a journal which is:

  • shared among our 3 organisations
  • primarily online, with the option for members to receive a printed copy on request
  • a source of best practice and expert advice, trends in the TC industry and emerging new skills and technology
  • an opportunity for contributors to be published internationally
  • an opportunity for our corporates and partners to advertise to other countries if they want to
  • a place where our members can find TC jobs in other countries if they’re looking to move.

It’s all very new and exciting, so watch this space!

We also asked for questions, concerns, ideas and feedback on this at the conference, during the AGM. We received some excellent suggestions and some insightful questions, all of which I’ll be taking to our next inter-organisation meeting. If you would also like to share your thoughts, please email me at thepresident@techcomm.nz

Check out our conference wrap up!

If you missed the conference and want to know what happened – or if you attended and want to reflect on what a great time you had – you can read all about it in this month’s newsletter!

Wrapping up (Re)Connect – Conference 2022

I just want to say a personal thank you to all of our presenters, attendees and board members who made it happen. Thank you!

Ngā mihi o te Kirihimete me te Tau Hou!

We’ll see you in the new year!