From the President

July 2022

An image of Katie smiling - she has long dark brown hair with blonde at the ends, and is wearing a black dress with bright red flowers on itIt feels like the year is flying by! It’s already July and a lot has happened since my last President’s report.

I’m delighted to announce that our board is growing, our conference committee is hard at work, and the Plain Language Awards are back!

Save the date for Conference 2022

It’s finally happening! After years of lockdown and COVID-cancellations, conference is finally coming.

We’ll be going ahead with a full in-person conference this year. Our two conference days will be Thursday 13 and Friday 14 October 2022. There will be a dinner on Thursday night, and a half-day of workshops on Saturday 15 October 2022.

The theme is ‘connecting and reconnecting’ – we thought it was appropriate after our long hiatus!

Save the dates and start looking at flights to Christchurch!

Are you interested in being a speaker at Conference 2022?

If you have a great idea for a presentation and you are based in New Zealand, we would love to hear from you! Contact thepresident@techcomm.nz

Unfortunately, we have made the difficult decision not to bring in overseas presenters this year because of the ongoing uncertainty around international travel and COVID-19. But if you are based overseas and still want to present, contact me at thepresident@techcomm.nz about connecting by video call!

Be our student representative on the board!

We’re looking for a student to join the board as a student representative.

Have your say in how TechCommNZ is run, gain work experience and be the voice of up-and-coming technical communicators in New Zealand.

As our student board member, you’ll get all the benefits of being a board member, but only need to commit for one year. Benefits include:

  • free student membership for one year
  • work experience and leadership experience for your CV (and a letter of reference from the President when you leave)
  • satisfaction that you’ve contributed to the tech comm community
  • free access to webinars via our archive
  • free attendance at a workshop or conference if there’s something in it for TechCommNZ
  • free attendance at our conference.

As a non-executive board member, you have more flexibility over your responsibilities. We’ll ask you to help out with one of the projects we’ve got running this year, but it is up to you which one you choose.

Email thepresident@techcomm.nz or get in touch with Katie_H on Slack if you (or someone you know) are interested.

And if you know a student or school-leaver who might be interested, pass this article along!

We’re delighted to welcome our newest board member, Donna Manuel!

Donna brings with her a wealth of experience in strategic planning, implementation and improvement. She’s led many teams through the technical documentation process and has a particular penchant for information architecture and governance.

Donna officially joined us for her first board meeting in June and has taken up the role of social media coordinator. She’s keen to start by re-establishing our presence on LinkedIn, so watch this space!

Read Donna’s full bio