From the committee
At our final meeting of the present Editors NSW committee, we were delighted to discuss the details of the new committee. It is now complete and ready to serve, following the formalities of our Annual Branch Meeting in August.
With the speaker presentations now on Zoom, much more work is involved behind the scenes both before and during the meetings, so it will be great to have two Professional Development (PD) Online Support Coordinators — new roles for our committee this year.
We shall be a bigger gathering each month, but that brings fresh minds and new ideas, all to the benefit of the New South Wales branch.
Then came the important decision about our accreditation exam workshop. There has been much effort, soul searching and consideration about whether to still try for a face-to-face workshop. In the end, we decided that, in light of the current and shifting circumstances, it would be safer for all concerned not to do so. We instead called on the Accreditation Board to extend its online workshop series to Editors NSW members, and bookings for this are now open on the IPEd Events page.
The future of our regular workshops is a similar concern to the committee. We have been finding it impossible to keep shifting the goalposts as we try to anticipate how circumstances might change over the coming months. After much discussion, we decided it best to postpone the end-of-year seminar planned for November, and start researching options for holding workshops online for the time being.
We have had quite a rollercoaster ride with our event planning this year, so it is a relief to get off for a while and take a collective breath. Meanwhile, we are excited to start exploring avenues for delivering professional development online, as this brings great benefits to the wider branch community and to our IPEd-wide colleagues.
In past notices, we flagged the possibility of making recordings of our speaker meetings available to those unable to attend on the night. Our Meetings Coordinator, Caroline Hunter, advises that she has now secured permission to do so from our speakers for the rest of 2020, which is fantastic. Forthcoming invitations will include full details on how to access the recordings after the event.
We also received an update on the IPEd website and newsletter from Editor Elisabeth Thomas. She has done a wonderful job of overseeing the transition from reporting in our branch newsletter to presenting our news as part of Gatherings, and we are happy to see our new branch pages have recently gone live on the IPEd website.
The dust settles, then, on another committee year, and we look forward to announcing soon who will be representing us for the year ahead.
Susie Pilkington and Julie Ganner
Events
When possible, given the COVID-19 pandemic, member meetings will continue to be held via video conference using Zoom.
Members are urged to check their email for the latest information on any event.
Topic: Australian Manual of Style (AMOS)
Date: Tuesday 1 September 2020, 7pm AEST
Location: online via Zoom
Details: Biotext developed the Australian manual of scientific style (AMOSS; available at sciencestyle.com.au), which is now co-published with Macquarie University. AMOSS is an online resource that provides practical and expert guidance on presenting scientific information clearly, consistently and effectively.
Along with many Australian editors, Biotext saw a large gap resulting from the lack of an update to the Australian Government Style manual, the 6th edition of which was published in 2002. Biotext and Macquarie University have now filled that gap by expanding AMOSS to become the Australian manual of style (AMOS). AMOS includes both general and scientific style. It aims to meet the communication needs of a wide range of professional writers, editors, designers, students, academics and the Australian public.
Andina Faragher will present the main features of AMOS, focusing on the changes that have been made in the evolution of AMOSS to become AMOS. These include the addition of more general (non-scientific) content and a new section — ‘Engaging’ — to complement the existing ‘Writing’, ‘Editing’ and ‘Showing’ sections. Engaging audiences includes making content usable, readable and accessible.
Presenter: Andina Faragher is a science writer and editor at Biotext in Canberra. She has a PhD in molecular biology and many years’ experience in science administration. She has been at Biotext for more than 10 years and is one of the chief editors of AMOS.
Cost: $10 members, $15 non-members, no concessions for this event
Bookings close on Friday 28 September and a link to join the Zoom meeting will be emailed to all registrants on Saturday 29 September. Book via the IPEd Events page.
Topic: Sensitivity readers
Date: Tuesday 6 October 2020, 7pm AEDT
Location: online via Zoom
Details will be announced closer to the date
Presenter: Radhiah Chowdhury
Cost: $10 members, $15 non-members, no concessions for this event
Bookings close on Friday 2 October and a link to join the Zoom meeting will be emailed to all registrants on Saturday 3 October. Book via the IPEd Events page.