West of Scotland Area Group meeting 21 October 2013: meeting report

Four participants met at the scheduled venue (Waxy O’Connors pub at 44 West George Street, Glasgow) at 7.30 p.m. It was a ground breaking experience for me, as I work as a lone communicator in an engineering business, and don’t have any personal contact with other communicators on a daily basis. In fact this has been my first contact with other such professionals since I started working in my current position, 4.5 years ago.
The meeting was an informal gathering at which the two new attendees (myself and another, Anne) were able to introduce ourselves to the two stalwarts, Katja and Charles, and we were able to discuss our current employment circumstances, and Katja gave a short debrief of her attendance at the Technical Communication UK conference last month. Charles was also able to provide some valuable received wisdom identifying current trends in tech. pubs, although it is clear that it is a diverse profession, and there a many ways of working, tools to use and user interfaces. We also talked about the dearth of authorship training, for such a burgeoning profession. I really enjoyed attending the meeting and look forward to continuing the discussions at subsequent meetings, if my work commitments allow.
Graham Devlin FISTC