President’s report December 2023
By Margaret Trudgeon AE
I don’t know where this year has gone, but here we are at the end of 2023 with Christmas in the air and holidays just around the corner.
On 6 December, we hosted our Christmas event at Mr Tulk. Thirty members joined us to celebrate the year with drinks on the terrace, catching up on the latest news from everyone. We then enjoyed dinner and listened to Kate Burridge talk about the place of slang in our modern language.
Our Events team, Lee Elwood and Kylie Howard organised some impressive prizes which we gave away on the night, including a business audit session (value $495), a tax advice session (value $395), a myotherapy session (value $120), books kindly donated by the SPN (winners of this year’s Book of the Year award) and CUP (Renée Otmar’s Editing for Sensitivity), two Readings vouchers and bottles of wine.
On 31 October we held our last Zoom event for the year, when Tim Coronel from Small Press Network spoke about the history of the SPN, its current objectives and gave us some details on the impending conference that was held on 24 November. Congratulations to the five winners of passes to the conference! You will find them listed in Kylie’s report of Tim’s talk.
As part of our ongoing PD offerings, Hilary Cadman has just presented her popular workshop on “Editing tools to boost your productivity”, where she discussed the workings of four tools – PhraseExpress, PerfectIt, Editor’s Toolkit Plus and ProWritingAid – that can add efficiency and quality to an editor’s work.
Meanwhile, I checked out a different type of editing tool, when I helped out as a tech assistant on the Macros for PC course, run by SCPD. The two presenters, Jennifer Yankopolus and Paul Beverley, did a magnificent job of making macros straightforward to use. I’ve been putting the macros through their paces ever since. It’s a complete game changer for dealing with those repetitive tasks!
I also worked on a document with some other IPEd members that will help to shape IPEd policy on Artificial Intelligence, the hot topic of the moment, and one of major concern to many editors and writers. An IPEd statement on AI will be released shortly
I was thrilled to hear that our ex-president Stephanie Holt has been appointed Chair of IPEd for the next three years. A big congratulations from EdVic! I look forward to working with Stephanie in her new role and would also like to extend a big thank you to Ruth for the magnificent job she has done in steering us all with such professionalism and calm through the past three tumultuous years.
I would like to extend a personal thank you to the volunteers who help out on our committee and the many arms of IPEd. It’s amazing how many hours these members put in behind the scenes to bring us top quality events, PD workshops and other offerings, as well as keeping the committee running and assisting IPEd on its many standing committees and working parties.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone. I hope you all get some time off to put your feet up and relax after a busy year. I’ll be sneaking some time off in January to head down to the beach and dip my toes in the surf, read a few novels and enjoy the odd Aperol Spritz. See you all in 2024!
New members
Professional members
- Rosanna Dutson
- Dominic Symes
- Camha Pham (AE reinstated)
Associate members
- Marilyn Miller
- Anna Thwaites
- Sandra McLaren
Student/graduate members
- Cooper Walter
- Dr Matueny Marial Luke Kering
- Clarisse Stevens
- Zachary Theron Garry