July 2017

We hope you enjoy the latest edition of TechCommWire. Take time to grab a cuppa and read up on the local news and views.

From the President

In this, my last President's report, I look both ways. Forward, to Rebecca Cox's July workshops in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch (have you registered yet?). Forward, to the AGM in Christchurch, starring the utterly inimitable Constance Craving. And momentarily back, with a smile and nostalgic tear.

Emma Harding

Featured TC: Rebecca Cox

Rebecca Cox is a freelance User Experience Analyst, based in Auckland. Rebecca works with people to develop websites and online resources that help users to get things done. Jim Costello spoke to Rebecca last week, and asked her about her life in UX.

W3C Announces New Publishing Standards Working Group

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recently announced a new Publishing Working Group that should arguably attract the attention of technical communicators. The group is exploring the value in combining the tradition of portable, bounded publications (books and other documents) with the "pervasive accessibility, addressability, and interconnectedness of the Open Web Platform (OWP)".

Frontispiece of a traditionally-published book

Ara Institute provides GDIDM update

There has been a lot of interest in news of Ara's revised Graduate Diploma of Information Design and Management. The teams working on this at Ara and NZQA have been working hard behind the scenes. We report on the latest news from Ara.

Ara Institute logo

Let's Tech Communicate

In this winter edition of Let’s Tech Communicate! we talk about the limitations of treating docs like code, and look at why there’s a big drive towards automation (and what we should do about it). We discover three collaboration tools for technical communicators, and explore DITA. All this and more, from around the 'Net!

Luke Pivac