Wrapping up (Re)Connect – Conference 2022

November 2022

Our (Re)Connect - Conference 2022 attendees

Our (Re)Connect - Conference 2022 attendees

It's a wrap!

(Re)Connect – Conference 2022 is over, and we feel like our buckets are full once more.

Christchurch put on a fantastic show with great weather, great sights, great food and a great venue for us to gather and connect.

And that’s exactly what we did!

Here's what we got up to

We had a busy few days, thinking and talking about all-things-tech-commy, including:

  • creating accessible content, with a focus on people with invisible disabilities
  • designing a great user experience (all writers are designers; go us!)
  • learning how to become better trainers by making our trainees the heroes of their story
  • promoting ourselves better and surviving organisational change – showing why we’re great at what we do and why we’re indispensable
  • promoting ourselves literally, with expert, professional portfolios that hit the mark
  • learning lessons from software developers and funky ways we can use rules and calculations to make our documentation work smarter for us
  • reflecting on our industry, what’s changing and what the future might look like
  • putting our heads together to workshop questions and challenges we face in our daily mahi
  • getting some awesome tips and tricks to take our te reo Māori understanding up a notch!

Other highlights included:

  • Shelly being unapologetically Shelly (we mean fantastic, and keeping the show running smoothly)
  • a trip down TechCommNZ memory lane
  • super-chill yoga moments
  • great conversations with our members at the AGM
  • reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones
  • plenty of jet plane lollies (it wouldn’t be a TechCommNZ conference without them)
  • sooooo many Sarahs and Andrews!

There were a couple of... minor misadventures... that we hope we’ll all look back on fondly, like:

  • seriously, where was the coffee that morning
  • who's still having a dance party at 3am... 5am... 7am... nevermind, I’m up now
  • ‘if you take the piece of meat off the top, then it’s vegetarian’ (whaaaat?)
  • a giant word that we can’t print here plastered on a building over the road – classy!

We have your feedback!

Your feedback is rolling in from the conference survey. You’ve let us know what you think about everything from the cost, the format (in-person, single stream) and the presentation material, to the AGM, goodie bags, food and venue.

We've heard some encouraging things so far:

  • 'I wanted to network with my industry peers and gain some confidence about the way we do things in our team. I think I completely got what I was hoping for.'
  • 'I came away from the conference re-enthused for the work we do and excited by how many new things there are for me to explore and learn.'
  • 'I felt like there was a good mix of technical, wellbeing and exploratory discussion sessions.'
  • 'The venue was fabulous - a great open space that lent itself perfectly to the event.'
  • 'As much as I like getting world-class presenters [from overseas] it was nice to get really approachable people that we are likely to connect to and exchange with going forward.'

You’ve also told us what we could do better next time – we hear you, we thank you, and we agree. We’ll definitely keep your feedback in mind. Thanks again for sticking with us as we put on a full conference in a much smaller and more challenging timeframe than we’ve been used to in the past.

We have some thank yous!

We give one last massive thank you to:

  • our amazing members, the beating heart of the conference
  • our rockstar MC, Shelly Davies
  • our brilliant presenters and workshop leaders:
    • Katherine Barcham
    • Chris Dorsey
    • Colleen Trolove
    • Jackie Thomas
    • Swapnil Ogale
    • Grant Mackenzie
    • Melissa Kearney
    • Abhay Chokshi
    • Shelly Davies
    • Valérie Genet-Guillou
  • our fabulous venue and conference sponsor, Ara Institute of Canterbury
  • our awesome conference committee for all your hard work to make it happen
  • our superstar president, Katie Haggath, who really led the charge!

(Disclaimer: Katie didn’t write that; Steph did!)

We have a little bit of admin...

A few notices and reminders:

  • Some of the conference presenters gave us tips and resources to share with all of our members. Keep an eye out for those in the rest of this newsletter.
  • If you attended the conference, we’ve sent you an email and set up your access for the slides and handouts.
  • Katherine and Shelly have both emailed their workshop notes to the people who attended and added their email address to the list.
  • If you haven’t done the conference survey yet but would still like to let us know what you thought, please do. It’s still open and we’re keen to hear from you.
    (Re)Connect – Conference 2022 survey