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EdsQ new committee named

EdsQ held its Annual Branch Meeting (ABM) in August with 22 professional financial members in virtual attendance. Our guest speaker was University of Queensland Press’s Jacqueline Blanchard, winner of the inaugural Rosie Award, who gave an informative and entertaining talk on the role of editors in trade publishing. Unfortunately, we had a technical glitch with the recording, but Jacqueline has kindly offered us her notes and PowerPoint presentation for those people who registered but were unable to attend on the night.

For those unable to attend the ABM, our membership at the end of the financial year was 256 active financial members, up from 238 at the same time last year. Thanks in part to the success of our Zoom events, we finished the financial year with a healthy surplus of $2963.

I delivered the annual report, which included an overview of our speaker events and professional development (sans networking picnic, which was rained out in January and locked down in June).

We also appointed the incoming EdsQ management committee:

  • President – Christine Atkinson
  • Vice-President – Ruth Davies
  • Secretary – Sue McQuay
  • Budget Officer – Kerry Davies
  • Executive Member – Charlotte Cottier
  • Communication Officers – Julia Sudull & Glenine Hamlyn
  • Events Officer – Ian Mathieson
  • Events Support Officer – Lee Ellwood
  • Training Officer – Ian Mathieson
  • Freelance Coordinator – Claire Heath
  • Mentoring Coordinator – Gail Tagarro
  • Regional Coordinator (Sunshine Coast) – Lisa Hill
  • Facebook Admin – Patrice Shaw
  • Twitter Admin – Tamyka Bell

Ruth Davies is Queensland’s IPEd Director and Desolie Page is the Accreditation Board representative. We did not receive any nominations for the Affiliates Coordinator so if you’re interested in learning more about the role, please let me know.

At the ABM I also thanked our outgoing committee, which I think is worth repeating for those who weren’t able to make it. Our executive committee for the past year has been me as President, Ruth Davies as Vice-President, Kerry Davies as Budget Officer, Charlotte Cottier as Secretary and Glenine Hamlyn as Executive Member (and also as Website Editor). In that time, we’ve seen a seamless transition at the IPEd level of Kerry stepping down as Chair and Ruth stepping up. We have also been fortunate to have Lorraine Page as Training Officer, Claire Heath as Freelance Coordinator, Gail Tagarro as Mentoring Coordinator, Robin Bennett on catering, Desolie Page as our Accreditation Board representative, Lisa Hill as Sunshine Coast Coordinator, Patrice Shaw on Facebook and Tamyka Bell on Twitter and as Affiliates Officer, Julia Sudull as Web Admin and Newsletter Editor, and our resilient and committed events team Lee Ellwood and Ian Mathieson. Thank you all for your dedication to Editors Qld and to IPEd.

Given the current uncertainty around COVID-19, EdsQ has decided to cancel our in-person accreditation preparation workshop and encourage people to participate in IPEd’s online workshop. We will continue to hold speaker events via Zoom for the rest of this year.

See you at the next Zoom event.

Christine Atkinson
EdsQ Branch President

The value of editors: On the road to publication

by Gail Tagarro

Jacqueline Blanchard, Managing Editor at University of Queensland Press since 2013 (and IPEd’s first Rosie award winner), was the guest presenter at the EdsQ meeting on 5 August 2020.

Jacqueline’s excellent presentation focused on the often-invisible role of the editor, and the editor’s value and contribution to the publication process — especially in the context of trade publishing.

Jacqueline spoke of the ‘hard skills’ that editors provide, which include the essential aspects of grammar checking, but also of the ‘soft skills’ that are not as visible or as widely understood. Soft skills include the tact and diplomacy an editor must display in their relationship with the author, their listening and communication skills, their empathy and interpersonal skills, their knowledge of copyright law … and so much more. The need for these very human skills explains why publishing houses continue to rely on editors rather than on tools that use artificial intelligence (AI).

One of the valuable titbits that Jacqueline mentioned was the editor-author bond that can be created in a brief 30-minute phone conversation before the edit even begins. No AI tool can possibly compete with or provide the warm fuzzy feelings an author will experience from a short phone call from their editor.