News
November 2022
Webinar reminder
Using technical vocabulary to bust myths in aviation
When: Thursday 8 December 2022, 11am to 12pm
Presented by: Jenny Drayton
There’s still time to register for this webinar. You’ll hear about what a technical vocabulary approach tells us about assumptions and communication between air traffic controllers, pilots and other aviation personnel.
Using technical vocabulary to bust myths in aviation
Welcome to our new student board member
We welcome Freya Morris-Cole to the board as our student representative. Students are an important part of our community, as our future technical communicators, so we look forward to the perspective Freya will bring. Check out their bio on our board members webpage.
We're collaborating with our UK and Australian peers!
Exciting news! We’ve started working with the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC) in the UK as well as the Australian Society for Technical Communication (ASTC), on a shared journal (and more). This opens up great new opportunities for our membership - Katie tells us more in her November President's report. Be sure to check it out and let us know your ideas and feedback.
Opportunity: write an article on translations with Valérie Genet-Guillou
Valérie is planning to write an article on one of the topics we workshopped during the unconference part of our conference. It's all about translations: how to, where to start, and all those other great questions!
Valérie says:
If you want to write this article with me, I'm keen to hear from you. If you want to suggest questions I should try and cover, please contact me on v.guillou@aucom.com
Valérie also ran our yoga and wellbeing sessions at the conference. She says:
Thanks to all of you who participated in our yoga sessions. It was amazing to see all of you kicking off your shoes and giving it a go. You can contact me about yoga/meditation/self-care on healingyogawithval@gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you.
Opportunity: represent technical communicators on the Toi Mai board
We have an exciting opportunity for one of our members to join the Toi Mai Workforce Development Council board. You’ll represent technical communicators in the workforce and connect the Toi Mai board with the TechCommNZ board! Interested? Let us know!
Follow us on LinkedIn!
Our awesome little community is having a springtime growth spurt over on LinkedIn. Thank you to everyone who has connected with us recently! If you haven’t had a chance yet, please take a moment today to search for and follow TechCommNZ. Connecting with us helps us out a lot and we appreciate your support!
Congratulations to the Plain Language Awards winners!
Thank you for continuing to fight the good fight for clear communication. You’re helping raise the profile of plain language and the awesome technical communicators who are nailing it across New Zealand.
If you couldn’t make the awards ceremony but want to check out who won, take a look at the Plain Language Awards website.
2022 Plain Language Awards winners
We also say a big ka pai to the Plain Language Awards team on another great ceremony this year, and thank you for the shoutout to TechCommNZ! We’re proud to be an awards sponsor and love what you do.
The Plain Language Bill is now the Plain Language Act 2022
A lot has happened since our last newsletter! In a nutshell, plain language is now law! It got royal assent on 21 October 2022 and takes effect 6 months after royal assent (so we’re roughly maths-ing that to be 21 April 2023).
We’re delighted at this step forward for New Zealand, showing that we take plain language seriously!