By Melanie Dankel AE, SA Director, and Justine Dixon Cooper AE, NSW Director
It’s hard to believe it’s been 4 months since we gathered in rainy Adelaide for the 12th IPEd conference. One of the final sessions of the conference was an open discussion about the future of editing, editors and IPEd. The ideas and comments that came out of that session highlighted how passionate our members are about their profession and their representative body.
Our commitment to everyone in that session was that all that valuable data would not disappear into a hole, that we would aim to do something meaningful with it to support our organisation and our profession. This update is partly to honour that commitment, but also to answer the question: What happens now?
What have we done so far?
After the conference, we collated the responses into 5 main themes:
- generative AI and technology
- image, branding and marketing
- advocacy and outreach
- industry conditions
- IPEd structure and services.
We then summarised all this information in a report, which we sent to all branch committees, standing committees and working parties.
We have since asked these committees and working parties to provide feedback on the ideas in the report that they think are feasible (and worthwhile) to sustainably deliver in the medium to long term. We also sought insight into what committees and working parties are already working on that might align with the ideas that came out of the conference session, as well as initiatives they have tried that proved to be impractical or unsuccessful.
Once again, we were really pleased with the responses, both in the consideration given to the questions and the wealth of ideas and insight provided. We thank all those involved for their time and effort.
What happens now?
Our next steps are to analyse these responses and, hopefully, identify strategic priorities that can inform IPEd’s next strategic plan (2027). We will communicate the relevant results to the branch committees, standing committees and working parties. And we will work with them to identify projects and activities that can benefit our membership, our profession and our organisation. We also want to acknowledge the incredible work these groups are already doing on behalf of IPEd.
We welcome any additional feedback on the plenary report, which you can email to Melanie at edsa.director@iped-editors.org or Justine at ednsw.director@iped-editors.org.