From the President
August 2023
It’s August, the first daffodil has been spotted, there are lambs in the fields… and despite it all the winter weather is still hanging on! I hope you are all keeping warm and dry and not spending too much time in a cold (hah!) war over the office thermostat.
So, what has been happening?
First and foremost, I want to say thanks for responding to the 2023 salary survey!
The results are out now and are available for members to view on our website. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who responded. Our salary survey is the only comprehensive review of tools, work types, and remuneration for Technical Communicators in New Zealand, and it is an invaluable tool for professionals around the country.
I also want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has renewed their membership for the next year. I am so proud to be a part of this awesome community and the support we offer each other! You can find the full list of membership benefits on our website, but don’t forget that we’ve got an exciting addition coming to the list next year! I’m talking, of course, about the new international journal we’ll be sharing with ISTC and ASTC.
You’ll need to be a member to access, comment on and submit articles in the new journal, which we hope to roll out next year. It’s an exciting collaboration between three countries that will offer best practice and trends in technical communication around the world, as well as international acclaim for the authors that contribute!
If you haven’t renewed your membership yet, don’t worry, you still have a few more weeks – memberships expire on 30 September 2023.
Let’s talk about being President
In my last President’s report, I started the call for nominations. In this one, I want to talk about my experience as President of TechCommNZ.
I joined the board in 2016, where I created a new role for myself as Student Outreach Co-Ordinator. At the time I was still fresh with indignation – nobody had told me in school that there was this great career in writing just waiting for me to step into it! I wanted to tell school leavers and uni students about this great industry with these great people and help new entrants to our workforce get a leg up on their career. In TechCommNZ, I found a real passion for helping each other grow. Truly, you guys are some of the most encouraging, empathic, and empowering people I have met. It is a passion that has stayed with me and shaped my decisions as Vice President and as President of this awesome organisation.
Being President is sometimes hard, in the way all things worth doing are sometimes hard. But it has been immensely rewarding.
Being President is a job that comes with a lot of long-term thinking and planning. You have to make a lot of decisions, but you don’t need to make those decisions alone. The board and our members are such a mix of clever people with so many different areas of expertise – you don’t need to know it all, you just need to listen to the people around you.
I have made connections and learned things from the most unexpected people. I have learned a truly epic amount about management, about our industry, about strategy and planning, and the multitude of different skills and talents tech communicators have. I have learned a lot about all the different ways people can work together and build each other up. I have had an epic crash course in putting together a conference.
But watching all those decisions come to fruition and seeing people benefit from it? It’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve experienced.
We’ll be accepting nominations for the next President up to the AGM, which will be in Christchurch in October. I want to give nominees the chance to ask me questions and identify areas of support before they take on the role.