Institute of Professional Editors Limited

IPEd Notes <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

News from the Institute of Professional Editors Limited

www.iped-editors.org

October 2009 

I have to record at the outset that the 4th IPEd National Editors Conference held in Adelaide over 8–10 October was not a great success: it was a stupendous success, thoroughly appreciated by the over 200 participants. 

All sessions, plenary and parallel, were packed with enthusiastic audiences, who enjoyed highly professional presentations covering topics ranging from aspects of the standard nuts and bolts of editorial practice to the sustainability of green editing. Some 25 per cent of submitted papers dealt with editing and publication in non-print media, reflecting the rapidly overwhelming importance of digital communication endeavours. My tip is that, by the next national conference, such papers will be in the majority.  

Each from their own particular professional contexts and viewpoints, the conference’s four keynote speakers—Neal Porter, Wendy McCarthy, Natasha Stott Despoja and Julian Burnside—focused sharply on Getting the message across, the conference theme.  

Neal Porter, an editor and publisher of children’s books, revealed through delightful examples and with audience participation, the intimate and reversible relationship between words and pictures in this genre. There’s more to the chicken and egg story than I’m sure most of us had thought. 

Wendy McCarthy is a champion of mentoring as a means of enabling individuals to reach their full potential and get their message across in their chosen careers. She highlighted the importance of the relationship between mentor and mentee, and that there are benefits to both parties. We much value her advice, because mentoring is of direct interest to us with the decline and fall of in-house training for editors in the publishing industry.

Julian Burnside was incisive and entertaining in his presentation that showed how we often need to dissect the message to get to the truth—or lies—of the matter. He recounted sections of the summing up of the chief <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />US prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, which laid bare the lies created and promoted by the worst of those arraigned. Regrettably, as related by Mr Burnside, such practices remain common among the usual suspects.  

Natasha Stott Despoja first entertained us with numerous amusing anecdotes from her time as a senator in the Parliament of Australia. The serious side of her presentation that followed contained many useful tips about getting the message across in politics, parliament and the community. This is something that we, as a profession, need to do if we are to raise our profile from that of pedants and punctuation pundits to communication specialists. And what better to exemplify that we are the latter than the exemplary carriage of this conference. 

The conference debate on the motion that ‘A writer needs an editor like a fish needs a bicycle’ was a hoot and laid ’em in the aisles. By audience acclamation the ‘against’ case won, but this obscene partisanship was somewhat redressed by chairman Burnside’s decision that the ‘for’ case had won on merit. Just a few cheers there.  

The IPEd Council had its first opportunity to make, to a national forum, a retrospective and prospective presentation on the Institute’s activities. This was admirably done by Virginia Wilton, the Council’s retiring chair. IPEd’s 2009 Annual General Meeting was held immediately preceding this. In another presentation, the IPEd Accreditation Board outlined its plans and prospects, and honoured on stage some 35 of the first batch of 112 IPEd Accredited Editors (AEs), together with  many of the Distinguished Editors (DEs) who contributed their expertise and experience to make possible the first accreditation examination, held in 2008. The Council hopes that, through these presentations and personal contacts made with IPEd associates during the conference, the members of the societies of editors that together constitute IPEd gained a deeper understanding of its role, aims and work.   

Congratulations are due to the Society of Editors (SA) for hosting and organising a wonderful conference, which I’m sure will be recalled with pleasure and professional pride by all who were there. If you were not, well, don’t sulk, there’s another big event in two years in Sydney. And from the content of presentation made by the Sydney team at the end of the Adelaide program, it’s again going to be a real occasion. Also, the presentations made in Adelaide will, in due course, appear on the IPEd website. Keep a lookout there.    

Ed Highley

Secretary