From the President

February 2018

Meredith Evans

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope you all managed some sort of relaxing break with or without associated overconsumption of food and adult beverages.

I’ve just returned from a few nights holiday in Golden Bay, where we had stunning weather, clear, warm water, and much relaxing. I’m feeling ready for a busy and fun 2018.

Salary Survey

Thanks to everyone who took the time to complete our 2017/2018 Salary Survey. We had 174 people complete it, which is a great response.

This survey has now closed and we’ll have the results available to members in the next few weeks. If you’re interested in previous years’ results, you can check them out here (you’ll need to log in to see the results).

Congratulations to the winners of the $100 Prezzy Card:

  • Noel Anderton
  • Graeme Wilson
  • Mary Searle

I’ll be in touch with you to organise delivery!

Workshops and Webinars

It’s fantastic to see the amazing response to the Shelly Davies webinar series, which started Friday the 2nd February. I'm loving Shelly's fresh and fun take on Plain Language and can't wait to hone my skills over the next few weeks.

There are other workshops and webinars in the pipeline so watch this space for more details.

March 2018 Census

Next month brings us the NZ Census. As part of our ongoing drive to standardise the term "technical communication" we'd like to encourage everyone to use the terms Technical Communicator and Technical Communication wherever possible. This was a recommendation from Andrew Hancock of Stats NZ. After all:

“Encouraged by an informal email campaign, over 53,000 people listed themselves (their religion) as Jedi in New Zealand's 2001 census (over 1.5% of responses). If the Jedi response had been accepted as valid it would have been the largest non-Christian religion in New Zealand, and second-largest religion overall. However, Statistics New Zealand treated Jedi responses as "Answer understood, but will not be counted"." The New Zealand Herald, 2002

If everyone who identifies as part of the genus TC uses that title, we'll be classified as a sizeable group and referred to in the results.And to anyone who wants to call themselves a Technical Communication Jedi - go for it!

Studying in 2018

Best of luck to those of you undertaking study this year, especially anyone taking on Ara’s Certificate in Information Design. If there’s anyone out there considering a career in Tech Comms or Information Design, who wants more information or perhaps some work experience, please get in touch, as I’m sure we can help.

Other Happenings

The TechCommNZ Board gets back into things in February, with our Christchurch Board meeting. I know many Board members have been been working hard through the holiday period, especially Roy, our Business Manager, and Katie, who puts together this fabulous newsletter. Thanks so much you two, for keeping things going.

I’ve enjoyed using our TechCommNZ Slack channel more frequently over the past few months. It’s a great way to chat with members, ask advice, or share interesting blogs, sites, or apps. If you’re not on our Slack channel, get in touch with Abhay to request an invite.

Over my holiday break I discovered something called Bullet Journaling. It’s been around for a few years, but this was the first I’d heard of it. If you love keeping notes on paper (I know, so uncool), and you’re really into pens and notebooks, this might be worth checking out. Interestingly, I can see a lot of parallels with technical writing. The idea of creating topics, writing short, action-based sentences, creating references… Sound familiar?

I’ve only started month 1 of my bullet journal so I’ll let you know I get on with it.

Meredith Evans