By Carolyn Page AE
The Editors NSW committee met via Zoom on 14 April 2026, with 7 in attendance. Russell Noakes chaired the meeting. The chair and committee welcomed the branch’s two new events officers, Penelope (Penny) Carroll and Caroline Birch AE, who will work to support Presentations Coordinator Dr Jennifer Rowland AE.
The annual branch meeting is planned for 4 August 2026 and a returning officer is being arranged. A networking lunch was held in Coffs Harbour in March, a dinner will take place in July, and several other events are planned.
The committee discussed ways to reduce the burden of organising events on committee members and IPEd resources – particularly for the end-of-year dinner, which attracts a large number of attendees. This might include identifying venues that allow individual ordering and payment. Director Justine Dixon Cooper AE noted that this would help make our dinners more accessible to members, both in lowering the cost of meals and in managing dietary restrictions.
In line with the IPEd-wide move to give professional development credits to volunteers for their work for the organisation, Budget Officer Russell Noakes noted that the payment of honoraria to the committee would be finalised, then discontinued.
With the increasing centralised coordination of IPEd PD events, the branch needs to consider the number and topics of events that will both appeal to our audiences and meet budget needs and expectations.
Save the date: annual branch meeting
The Editors NSW annual branch meeting (ABM) will be held on Tuesday 4 August 2026. All branch members are invited to attend this online meeting.
This is an opportunity for you to hear what your committee members have been doing for you over the past year and thank them for all their hard work. We hope you will take the time to come along and support them.
Networking event report: Coffs Harbour lunch
By Donella Andersen AE and Julie Martyn
Caption: IPEd members at Aanuka Beach House, Coffs Harbour (Julie Martyn, Penelope (Penny) Carroll, Rebecca Sutherland, Rosanna (Rose) Dutson, Veronica Green AE, Donella Andersen AE). Image courtesy of Donella Andersen AE.
On Friday 20 March 2026, 6 editors (and one gorgeous baby girl) gathered for lunch at the Aanuka Beach House in Coffs Harbour. Veronica won the furthest distance travelled, having driven 2 hours from Port Macquarie on the first day of her annual leave! The rest of us were more local, coming from Nambucca Heads, Urunga, Mullaway and Coffs.
Once we moved inside away from the raucous ladies’ birthday lunch table, we were able to have a great chat about our backgrounds and current situations. The conversation ranged far and wide. With the exception of one in-house government department editor, the rest of us are freelancers working for a range of clients including book and magazine publishers, government departments, academics and indie fiction writers.
Naturally, marketing was a topic of interest, with 2 of us using newsletters set up as blogs on our websites and one using her website as an online CV. Everyone seemed to agree that word of mouth was a winner. A current useful platform for editors is Reedsy.
This being a conversation held in 2026, a recurring theme was whether and how AI can best be integrated into our work. Julie found her 12 weeks of training in AI for editors very insightful. We all felt that it isn’t able to replace human editors … yet. We also shared our thoughts on other software that we found useful for editing, such as PerfectIt, macros and Draftsmith.
The question of how to handle sensitive conversations with clients via email and in-document comments was something we thought we could lean into and learn more about. We also looked to the future – apparently, ISBNs (international standard book numbers) are not a mandatory requirement, and we wondered whether DOIs (digital object identifiers) might end up being a substitute for ISBNs over time.