2024 ASTC Conference

2024 Conference Presenters

We're so pleased to share the list of presenters for this year's conference. Each presenter brings their experience, ideas, and enthusiasm to the conference to provide attendees with something new.

We thank each of them for their time and effort.

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Katherine Barcham

Katherine Barcham is obsessed with making content accessible for everyone.

We are the champions of accessible content!

Creating accessible content involves balancing context, nuance, and complexity in language with the need to make content clear and understandable.

You need a human to consider the human experience that writers think about while they’re creating content. And to consider whether that human experience has any inherent accessibility barriers.

Kate Burridge

Kate Burridge is Professor of Linguistics at Monash University and Fellow of both the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. Her main areas of research are language change (focus on changing vocabulary and grammar), the notion of linguistic taboo, the structure and history of English, popular perceptions of language (and fall-out).

She's authored or edited more than 20 books on different aspects of language. Kate is a regular presenter of language segments on radio and writes for The Conversation; she was a weekly panellist on ABC TV’s Can We Help (2007-11) and has given a TEDx Talk Telling it like it isn’t.

“Survival of the fittest” — why does some slanguage endure?

A puzzling feature of slang is its life cycle. James Hardy Vaux’s (1812) glossary of convict slang shows that most expressions are “the mayflies of language” — vibrant but short-lived (e.g. barnacles ‘spectacles’; lush ‘to drink’). The few that survive become part of the mainstream — time drains them of their vibrancy (e.g. dollop ‘large quantity’; patter ‘talk’). But there is a small handful that not only survive, they remain remarkably contemporary-sounding — some still even a little “disgraceful”, as Vaux described them (e.g. croak ‘to die’; grub ‘food’). In this session, Kate will present examples of slanguage success stories in an attempt to pinpoint factors that might account for why some expressions are more than just a fleeting fad.

Marc Chee

Marc Chee is an Engineering Educator at Canva. Coming from a Tertiary Education background, Marc has taught thousands of students Computer Science at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and has a strong passion for teaching and learning.

Technical Communicators are often called upon to develop and give presentations. Marc will give us some hints and tricks about how to make our presentations better.

Dave Gash

Dave is a programmer, writer, musician, and technical publications specialist from California. He has over 30 years of training and documentation experience with companies like Microsoft and Google, and is a great friend of the ASTC.

Dave will present two sessions:

CSS Colours Demystified: How the CSS hex colour scheme really works!

This fun and informative session explores the science behind optical colors, covers the hexadecimal
numbering system used to describe them, and explains
exactly how to use those funny-looking codes to get exactly the colors you need.

We Don't Serve Your Type Here: Most of what we believe about fonts is wrong.

Most of us know various design facts about fonts: which fonts are best for on-screen viewing vs. print,
which are inherently good or bad, which specifically improve readability for older or dyslexic readers, which enhance or impair overall user experience, and so on. This session challenges some of those "facts" and backs up its assertions with actual scientific studies, leading to a few surprising conclusions!

Neil James

After careers in government and the media, Neil worked as a freelance writer and editor before specialising in plain English. He co-founded the Plain English Foundation in Australia with Dr Peta Spear in 2003, and served as its Executive Director for more than 20 years.

Neil is also active in plain language internationally. He was founding chair of the International Plain Language Federation in 2008 and served as chair of the Federation’s Certification Committee in 2021-22 before returning as overall Federation Chair in 2023.

Neil will outline how current efforts will reshape plain language for the future, including:

Eight ISO plain language standards being drafted or planned
The publication of a range of supporting guidelines and references
Plain language certification for organisations and individuals
A resource bank of plain language information
Best practice guidelines for plain language training
Advocacy for plain language in more countries and languages.

Rebecca McIntosh

Rebecca is a Melbourne-based technical communicator currently working in banking software.She uses her skills in communication, investigation, and English language to identify requirements, collect information, and craft guides.

Rebecca will talk about 5 uniquely human tech writing skills:

Interrogate: We can identify when the information we receive is not quite right.
Filter: We know what it's like to be human. We know how humans read and where we need to filter information for readability.
Imagine: We can think of ways in which seemingly obvious things can be misconstrued, and conceive of imaginative new ways of representing information.
Consult: We can proactively reach out to stakeholders to find out what documentation would make their lives easier.
Train: We can educate our non-tech writer teammates, making visible the value of clear communication and improving the overall communication in our teams.

Gareth Oakes

Presenter change

Gareth is a content technology strategist and leader with 25 years experience solving problems across many international industry sectors. He is a software enthusiast with deep knowledge of specialist tools and technologies covering technical publications, eLearning, scientific journals, codes and standards, legislation, rules and regulations.
Gareth always brings fresh ideas and helps push teams to leverage the best of technology to exceed expectations and achieve more than ever before.

Gareth will explore the bewildering range of tools and technologies available to the technical communicator. He will provide ideas to help navigate this landscape and help boost our performance?
The essential points covered in the presentation will be:

Current technology tools and trends for technical writers
An overview of AI:
- How does it work?
- Where does it work well?
- Where doesn’t it?
Concrete examples for AI
AI accessibility:
Can we prepare our content in a way that helps get the most out of AI?

Dave Newdick

Dave started his career as an aircraft technician in the Royal Australian Air Force. Dave now works as a technical communicator across many different industries. His experiences includes manufacturing, engineering, technology, mining, explosives, government, logistics, health and safety, and defence.

Dave is a national coordinator in the Simplified Technical English Maintenance Group (STEMG), an international group of representatives who maintain and update the Simplified Technical English specification.

Dave is also a long time member and past President and Vice President of the ASTC.

Dave will speak about "the principles of Simplified Technical English (STE), which in reality is just good technical writing.

He'll present information about the global literacy levels and how authors can identify their readers with some actual facts

Jason Quarberg

Jason is the Director of Strategy at Global Publishing Solutions Limited (GPSL).

GPSL shapes the future of working with content for customers with complex publishing needs. GPSL builds long-lasting relationships with customers of all sizes in all parts of the world through a combination of deep sectoral expertise, visionary solutions and a pragmatic, personal approach. GPSL operates as a tight-knit, high-performing team of equals fostering a sense of belonging attracting the best talent. GPSL's goal is to transform the sector and redefine the way that humans and computers collaborate to create, publish and consume content.

As Director of Strategy, Jason oversees GPSL product development efforts in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Graph technology. Jason has a background working in the US and Australia, initially in Defence, and expanded into a variety of industry sectors.

Jason will speak to us about how AI is being applied to support technical writing.

Peter Riches

Peter Riches established Red Pony in 2006 to provide writing, editing and communications
consultancy services to business and government. He's written and edited content for websites, social media platforms, tenders, proposals, reports and a wide range of technical documentation. As Red Pony’s project manager, he's overseen large collaborative editing projects for the Victorian State Government.

With multiple editors working on the same project (and possibly even the same document), how do you get them to stay on the same page when they're not in the same room? Advances in technology mean that editors (and technical writers) often find themselves working in distributed project teams where most interactions with the client and other team members are via the computer.

Peter shares some lessons from the Geelong Cats 2022 AFLM premiership team for managing challenges such as maintaining a consistent editorial voice, managing communications within the team and with the client, as well as how you can effectively track time and schedule deliverables while remaining within budget.

Peter will explore some of the software tools and project management tips he has found useful in nearly 20 years of working on corporate and government editing projects.

Kylie Weaver

Kylie has a background as a technical writer, business analyst, project manager and Agile coach, sometimes all at once. She has an honours degree in English Literature, but a career mainly in software development. Her ambition is to have an impact on workplace wellbeing in Australia: less stress and more enthusiasm. She has her own company, Clearly Focused, that allows her to deliver training, coaching and consulting services, including business and technical writing.

Kylie will talk to us about how to sway a non-believer towards Plain English.

Most technical communicators use a human-focused writing style (plain English) but many will work with stakeholders who maintain that a more formal writing style is the better option.

Her session covers how to influence people who might be struggling make the transition from formal to plain language.

David Whitbread

David is the author of The Design Manual - A book that has received an Australian Award for Excellence in Educational Publishing.

David asks you to consider sustainability and the environmental impact of both your print and digital output, including screen design and AI issues. True sustainability. All sorts of environmental issues. Facts and figures. It’s about the real costs of the Cloud.

Most people will know the huge changes made in the print industry over 25 years that have
made it more sustainable. We will briefly look at the decisions you can make with print
projects that will protect the environment.

But it’s not only print that impacts on the environment. There are many environmental implications for how we use our screens, searches and AI. Then there are the impacts of hardware and software. The real costs of the Internet of Things, supply chains, WiFi and our constant connectedness.

Ana Young

Ana worked in the software development area for several years. She then became a technical communicator and trainer and has worked as one for over 20 years in various industries.

In the past eight years, Ana has developed S1000D-compliant documentation using Pennant’s suite of products. Being a certified ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English (STE) Trainer, Ana also makes sure that the documentation obeys the STE principles. Recently, Ana was invited to be part of the STEST-POC (Simplified Technical English Support Team – Portuguese Countries), a group that will support the STE Management Group (STEMG).

Across the Defence and Aviation Industries, S1000D has been adopted as the specification to create technical documentation. Each piece of documentation is assigned a unique code, which relates it to the component it describes.

S1000D in these industries is making suppliers of major material equipment rethink how they develop and deliver their documentation to these major industries.

Ana will give us an overview of:

S1000D and why you should know about it
S1000D project building blocks
Requirements for an S1000D project
What is a CSDB and why you need one
What are Data Modules and Data Module components
What are the S1000D illustrations.