Bill, There is already a conference, the Australasian Online Documentation Conference and has been running annually since 1998 (http://www.aodc.com.au). The next one is to be held in Sydney 28-30 April 2004. regards Monica Allen -----Original Message----- From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of HALL Bill Sent: Monday, 20 October 2003 2:22 PM To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: atw: Re: Report on TCANZ Conference As Jean mentioned in her online report on the conference, I too, was invited to the TCANZ conference to give a presentation.=20 What Jean didn't mention was that she also gave an excellent paper: "Break out of the grammar trap: Add value to content through substantive, technical and usability editing", where she reviewed ways editors can add value to the product beyond the nit picky punctuation, grammar and usage, and suggested changes to the editorial workflow to facilitate this. I would like to add my $.02 to suggest that if that the next TCANZ Conference is as good as the last, it would be well worth the cross-Tasman trip to attend. Not only was the conference itself good value from a professional point of view, but it was an ideal excuse for my wife and me to see more of the country (we made it as far as the West Coast of South Island). NZ is a green and fortunate land that makes Australia look pretty dry, dusty and mean as a tourist destination - so there are a lot of reasons for us to attend their conferences. It would also be well worth considering hosting Australian-based Trans Tasman Tech Writing conferences in alternative years to theirs. Assuming that we can get our various state tech writing groups' acts together, we should have enough resources to provide an attractive conference for the Kiwi's to attend. It might also give us a chance to get acquainted with our own interstate brethren. So far, the closest thing we seem to have in terms of genuine professional conferences are the Open Publish (http://www.openpublish.com.au) and Open Standards (http://www.open-standards.com), but these cater to a more technical audience than a genuine tech writers conference would. Bill Hall Documentation Systems Analyst Head Office, Engineering Tenix Defense Williamstown, Vic. 3016 Phone: 03 9244 4820 Email:bill.hall@xxxxxxxxx URL: http://www.tenix.com Honorary Research Fellow Knowledge Management Lab School of Information Management & Systems Monash University Caulfield East, Vic. 3145 Phone: 03 9903 1883 Email: william.hall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx URL: http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/research/km/ =20 -----Original Message----- From: Jean Hollis Weber [mailto:jean@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Sunday, 19 October 2003 2:17 PM To: Australian Technical Writers List Subject: atw: Report on TCANZ Conference I attended the TCANZ (Technical Communicators Association of New Zealand)=20 conference in early September. I was most impressed with the organization,=20 the speakers, the topics covered, and the number of people who attended the=20 conference. The theme this year was "Focus on Users". The lineup of speakers was most=20 impressive: two each from Australia and Canada, and three each from New=20 Zealand and the USA. Most of them were quite entertaining as well as=20 informative. If you're interested, I've put a full report online at=20 http://www.jeanweber.com/about/tcanz03.htm. Cheers, Jean ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ************************************************** ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************