From the President

April 2017

Collaborate2017 is nearly here. I'm feeling quite inspired by the Upper Hutt local body's video (see this month's Let's Tech Communicate), and I just want to shout that it's going to be "Yuge", the Biggest Ever, and will undoubtedly make TechCommNZ Great (all over) Again. It's also exciting to see that there are new qualifications in the offing for our industry. Oh, and the "they pronoun"...

New UX and Information Design qualifications in the offing

When the Government announced it was establishing several new ICT Graduate Schools around NZ, TechCommNZ was keen to see that these schools embraced technical communication training as part of the offering. We're still waiting for that, but it was very good news to hear that the Wellington ICT Graduate School is offering a Masters in UX, starting in July 2017. If you're based in Wellington, and keen to get a foothold in user experience, this may well be the course for you – and you can read all about it in this month's TechCommWire.

Meanwhile Ara Institute will be at Collaborate2017 next week to give delegates the latest news of the information design qualifications they are working on: the Graduate Diploma of Information Design Management and Graduate Certificate in Information Design. We'll be reporting from the front line!

They's cool, man

It's not really cool to be a bore, but I can't help but dance a little jig at the news that ACES (American Copy Editors Society) has approved the use of "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun (once again, see this month's Let's Tech Communicate). I've written about this issue before, and it's a bit polarising. If you're frowning as you read, can we just agree to disagree?

Until May, keep being wonderful – and have a brilliant Easter break,