Contents
- ISTC News
- ISTC Community
- A bit of AI … poking and prodding
- Upcoming events
- Training courses
- About InfoPlus
- Back Page
ISTC News
Sad News about Linda Robins
We are very sorry to inform you that after a short illness Linda passed away on 28th January. Her family were with her at the time. As per her wishes, there will be no funeral.
The ISTC was hugely important to Linda. She was a long-term member who joined Council in 2006, became President in 2020 and was involved with numerous activities for all of this time, including Membership, Awards (including a role as Head Judge), CPD, Course Accreditation and Communicator as well as being a Company Director.
We will be putting together a tribute to her which will be published in the Summer Communicator. If you have any memories you would like to share please email the ISTC office so that they can be included.
Renewals
All ISTC members were asked to renew their membership by 31st January. If you haven’t renewed yet, please can you do so as soon as possible. You can use the renewals page of the ISTC website or contact Chantel at the office.
Benefits of membership include four copies of Communicator in your choice of posted or digital copies, access to the Communicator archives dating back to 2004, access to the member area of the website which includes resources and discussion forums and access to the International Journal of Technical Communication.
ISTC Website – New Landing Page for Members
As part of our reinvigoration of the ISTC website, we have created a Member Portal landing page that appears once you have logged in. It was switched on in the middle of January 2025, so if you haven’t logged on in a while, you will see it the next time that you do.
It has all the main features that a member would want to see, from the latest issues of Communicator and InfoPlus and a link to the IJTC website.
Underneath it has links to the exclusives that you get with being a member of the ISTC along with the various forums, including the jobs board.
Annual Survey
The ISTC Annual Survey covering employment is available for all technical communicators in the UK. The purpose of this survey is to collect data relating to qualifications, experience and pay of technical communicators in the UK.
Please click on the link here to get started.
Do not hesitate or delay. It will take you 10 minutes at most (guaranteed). The deadline for the survey is Monday 31st March 2025.
UK Technical Communication Awards
Entries are now open for 2025 through the ISTC website. Please check here for details. Then fill out the entry form to nominate yourself, your team or someone else. If you need any help with your online submission, contact us at istc@istc.org.uk.
We are keeping the established guidelines. The Awards are open to any individual or team, whether employed, self-employed, contracting, volunteering, permanent, temporary, full-time, or part-time. We continue to encourage entries of all types, from traditional documentation to those demonstrating technical innovation and look forward to receiving yours.
Some serious news about the STC
Our fellow TechComm association in the US, The Society for Technical Communication (STC) has just announced that they’re having to close their doors completely. This is terrible news for our field, as we share a lot of history. The STC are the US equivalent of the ISTC. Like our own roots, theirs go way back to the early 1950s, with the current name starting in 1971.
They recently posted a message on their website (29th January) that they are having to close down completely. A snippet from their statement:
“After an exhaustive look at finances and extensive research and discussion with the organization’s legal counsel, we have decided to dissolve the organization.
Effective immediately, STC will permanently close its doors and cease all activities. This includes, but is not limited to, membership renewals and new member applications, elections, education programs (including conferences), certification courses and exams, committee and subcommittee activities, recognitions, awards, competitions, publications, and financial activities.”
We’re sad to see this happen. They’ve made tremendous contributions to the field both at home and internationally and have worked to develop the profession in ways we’ve all benefited from. We stand with our fellow technical and scientific communicators and feel a giant loss for the whole community.
IJTC Update
As our sister publications in Australia and New Zealand are currently on their summer holidays, we haven’t got much in the way of new articles to brag about.
I’ve put my first part of my NotebookLM work up. This had to be split across two articles because there was an update to NotebookLM by Google in January and I ended up making the first article into one just about NotebookLM, and not the project itself. It’s a great research tool.
The second part of my article will follow soon and that’s where the results from my queries about a decade’s worth of old Communicator articles (over 40 separate PDFs) from the years 2004 through to 2014 will be covered.
We also have a few articles from CJ Walker from Firehead. These are initially uploaded to her own website and then they are added to IJTC afterwards. There’s two available initially, with many more to follow throughout the whole of 2025.
If you have anything that you would like to publish then get in touch with me via the editor@ijtc.net address.
Advertise in InfoPlus
Get your company or products noticed in the TechComms community! We are offering new opportunities for advertising in our monthly InfoPlus newsletter.
These adverts are banners to be positioned as you choose. Placement examples are included in this PDF, which also contains all the necessary steps and costs involved to place an advert in future editions of InfoPlus.
If you would like to advertise with us please contact Chantel Sankey – istc@istc.org.uk.
ISTC Community

Become more involved in the professional community through the ISTC Area Groups, join us online at one of our monthly ISTC Meets events, and find us on social media (links below). Members (once logged in) also have access to the ISTC Discussion Forums.
Area Groups
If you wish to start your own Area Group, contact istc@istc.org.uk.
Cambridge Area Group
We are awaiting confirmation from an interested party to take over the Cambridge group. As soon as there are more concrete details, we will send out an update in the next issue of InfoPlus.
Midlands Area Group
A few more people have asked to join, but as of yet, there’s no-one who has volunteered to run the group. If you’d be interested in running this group, or generally being part of it, please contact istc@istc.org.uk.
Thames Valley Area Group
The Thames Valley local group meeting is at the Bird-in-Hand pub in Knowle Hill, RG10 9UP on the first Tuesday of each month from 7.30pm. All are welcome.
They rarely have a set subject but the conversation always has a strong tech comms flavour. Maybe something from recent news, something that has happened at work, or some new technology to discuss.
London Area Group
The next London Area Group meetup is pencilled in for Wednesday 19th February.
The location is, by default, near the Royal Festival Hall at The Southbank Centre.
We can meet either inside (in the foyer) or outside (at the bench outside of the Foyles). You can confirm the exact location in the WhatsApp chat for the group at the time of meeting as it’s decided in the moment, depending on the environment.
ISTC Meets
ISTC Meets is our monthly series of live online presentations and discussions from industry experts across the Technical Communication spectrum.
Unfortunately, it’s a bit quiet out there on the speaker front, so February’s ISTC Meets will not be happening. However, if there are people out there willing to give a 30 minute or so talk on their aspects of tech comms (via Zoom), please get in touch with ISTC Meets.
For full details of all of our previous speakers, and for all future ISTC Meets, please visit our website.
If you contact ISTC directly, istc@istc.org.uk, they can add you to the ISTC Meets mailing list.
Social Media
- Twitter (now X)
- ISTC Community (Facebook group)
- ISTC (Facebook page)
- TCUK (Facebook page)
- ISTC (LinkedIn group)
- TCUK (LinkedIn group)
Community Forums
The forums are available to all members once you have logged into the ISTC website.
A Request for Back Issues
In ISTC Towers we’ve recently been looking at all of our back issues of our magazine, Communicator – or The Communicator, as it was originally called. Currently we are missing a few scans of our older issues and we’d like to find these gap fillers.
Some of these are 50+ years old, so you might spot them in a charity shop or a specialised magazine reseller.
Do any of our membership have PDFs of the following issues, or maybe the original magazines that we can borrow and preserve?
Early issues of ‘The Communicator’ used the older numbering scheme of a numerical issue number, ranging from 1 through to 77. These ran from 1968 through to 1988.
- The Communicator 1968 – Issues 02, 03 & 04
- The Communicator 1970 – Issues 07, 08 & 09
- The Communicator 1972 – Issue 13
From 1989 onwards, we began using our current title of ‘Communicator’. We have the following issues missing:
- Communicator 1990 – Issues 08, 09, 10, 11 & 12
- Communicator 1991 – Issues 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07 & 11
- Communicator 1992 – Issues 02, 07, 08 & 12
In 1995, we changed from the monthly issues to the current convention of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter editions. We only have the one issue missing and that’s the Spring 2000 edition.
Any help would be appreciated if you have the above issues so that we can complete our collection in 2025, making it our 57th year of our magazine. Please contact me if you’re able to help via InfoPlus email: newsletter.editor@istc.org.uk
A bit of AI … poking and prodding.
A slightly different slant on the AI news this month, especially for those of us who are using Microsoft Office on a subscription basis. If your copy is paid for by your employer, then this probably won’t affect you.
For those who, like myself, have a personal/family licensed copy of Microsoft Office 365, you will have noticed a change in the name. It’s now branded as ‘Microsoft 365 CoPilot’. CoPilot is front-and-centre whenever you start up any of the main Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. My subscription will be going up from £79.99 to £104.99 and only due to this new feature. There may be other new features, but this is the most annoying one because you can’t switch it off. At least not yet.
It’s like Clippy (if you can remember that far back) finally left its annoying spotty teenage phase and grew up. But Microsoft hasn’t forgiven everyone for turning it off in the old days. Instead of an animated paperclip getting in your way, CoPilot will be ever present asking you “so what do you want to write / calculate / generate some slides about?”. All. Of. The. Time.
For the moment, whilst Microsoft have mooted plans of including an “off” button, there is no current method of switching it off permanently. There are a few hack-type ways to temporarily turn it off, but it’s not the permanent “get stuffed!” that some users will want. For that to happen, you have to downgrade your subscription.
The old days of starting up Word with a “blank sheet” – depending on your use of templates – will not longer exist. CoPilot will always be there, asking you what you want to write about. If that’s how you work, then you will be fine. For those who just want to open an app up and work without being hassled with “help to cross the road”, it will be a different story.
I’m not anti-CoPilot as I use it as an app from time-to-time. That’s usually when I’ve got a case of idea-blindness, or, a quick bit of help is required to help my old brain remember how to create a particular thing. This can happen in Excel and PowerPoint as well, not just in Word. If I need it, I will open it. Now that it will be ever present, asking me if I can remember how to ‘tie my laces’ or if I’d ‘brushed my teeth’ today, but with a tech comms slant. You get the nursemaid whether you want it or not.
Also, Microsoft has removed the right-click “Smart Lookup” option as of 1st January 2025. This ties in with the addition of CoPilot by default.
The one fly in the ointment that I didn’t realise, until I looked at my Microsoft Subscription status page, is that you get 60 AI credits each month that come with the new higher price. So I can only use it 60 times in a month, and then what happens? More charges?
You can, however, downgrade to Microsoft Office Family Classic, but only if you cancel your existing Subscriptions and on that screen will be the above option.
I only found out about what’s really gone on after watching this video. Guess who doesn’t read all their emails from Microsoft! That will teach me to use a single (25+ year old) Hotmail email address for all Microsoft-related emails. The announcement was buried in the Junk folder of my account, along with all the Xbox-related stuff they send me.
For those of you who don’t use Microsoft Office, you might now have a wry smile. But how long will it be before Google Docs (and others) follow suit? These tools are usually owned by big companies who have all invested their billions in AI and will want their money back. Those running the open source tools may escape this forced kind of option for a little bit longer, but for how long?
So, please be nice to those Microsoft Office users who might be gnashing their teeth when they see CoPilot. Every day. And remember to tell them about the ‘Family Classic’ option if they really don’t want to shell out those additional funds.
Good luck to all out there and I’ll be back with the usual ‘fun’ aspects of AI next month.
Upcoming Events
There are three in-person and online only conferences coming up in February. Followed by one in March, one in April and one in May. All of their details are below:
Title: Composing with Generative AI in TechComm: Insights from Digital Marketing
Date: Thursday, February 6 at 4:00 PM CET (UTC+1)
Online/In-Person: Free to attend. To participate, please contact Yvonne Cleary: Yvonne.Cleary@ul.ie
Website: https://www.technical-communication.org/technical-writing/international-university-network-in-technical-communication-1
Requirements: Zoom account and Zoom app required. Access code: tekom110
Presenter: Daniel L. Hocutt https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielhocutt/
About:
Digital advertising platforms for search engine and social media marketing have embraced and integrated machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) ubiquitously into their ad creation workflows. The result for marketing communicators is that composing digital advertisements on these platforms combines the efforts of human communicators and AI. Few opt-out options are available for marketing communicators to compose their own ads without AI intervention. This presentation envisions a similar possible future for technical communicators, who will be asked to compose support docs and technical specifications in platforms that incorporate ML and AI. From summarizing content or documenting APIs to creating and publishing scripts, technical writers are integrating AI into their daily work.
Title: DITA Europe Conference
Date: Copenhagen Feb 17-18, 2025
Online/In-Person: Copenhagen, Denmark.
Website: https://ditaeurope.infomanagementcenter.com/
About:
DITA Europe is designed with your specific needs in mind – providing strategies you can use immediately as you create and manage technical content, and expanding your professional network with information development experts from around the world.
Discount available:
Save 10% off the cost of registration when you use discount code – TCW – on checkout.
Title: Axe-Con 2025
Date: Tuesday, February 25 to Thursday, February 27, 2025
Online/In-Person: Online only
Website: https://www.deque.com/axe-con/
About:
Building accessible digital experiences requires a team effort, across design, development, management, testing, accessibility experts, and of course, legal. Axe-con is the first of its kind, dedicating topics to each of these key players. This is not an assistive technology convention.
Title: NORDIC TechKomm 2025
Date: March 12th–13th, 2025
Online/In-Person: In-Person at the Downtown Camper by Scandic in Stockholm
Website: https://se.nordic-techkomm.com/
About:
The main conference theme is “Technical Information in Heavily Regulated Industries”.
Key topics for NORDIC TechKomm Stockholm:
- Future Trends in Regulatory Compliance
- Regulatory Landscapes
- Technical Documentation Best Practices
- Technology’s Role in Compliance
- Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals Case Studies
- Cybersecurity and Data Protection
- Global Standards vs. Local Regulations
- Risk Management through Documentation
- Training for Technical Writers
Title: Convex, San Jose, California
Date: April 22nd- April 23rd, 2025
Online/In-Person: In-Person
Website: https://convex.infomanagementcenter.com/
About:
There are 3 days of sessions with 4 Tracks, the ever popular Technology Test Kitchen, content management solutions representatives, and the very best in industry networking.
ConVEx San Jose is designed with your specific needs in mind—providing strategies you can use immediately as you create and manage technical content.
Title: tcworld China 2025
Date: May 22nd- May 23rd, 2025
Online/In-Person: In-Person in Shanghai, China.
Website: https://www.tcworld-china.cn/en/
About:
Key Topics for tcworld China 2025:
- Technical Authoring
- AI in Technical Communication
- International Standards
- Information Design and information Development
- UX
- Software Documentation
- Globalisation/Localisation/Terminology
- Content Marketing
- Education and Career Development
- Content Management and Delivery
Training Courses
Accredited courses have been reviewed by a professional panel of experienced ISTC members. A course listed as “ISTC Accredited” means that the panel believes the course meets its stated objectives and is suitable for its intended audience.
Course providers have to apply for renewal of accreditation every 2 years, which helps to ensure the courses reflect current best practice.

Armada
The Armada course (run over 5 days) is available either online or via an in-person classroom-based course. The next dates are:
- Online: 31st March – 4th April 2025
- Bristol: 31st March – 4th April 2025
- Reading: Classroom-based & Online – 16th – 20th June 2025
There are also classes available at their Birmingham / Bromsgrove, Cardiff, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Nottingham and Sheffield Training Centres. These would need to be arranged upon request.
For further details, see www.armada.co.uk/course/tatp.
Cherryleaf
The Cherryleaf courses are available online and can be booked for single tech comm people or as a group.
Technical Writer – Induction Course: https://cherryleaf.teachable.com/p/technical-writer-induction-course
Using Generative AI in Technical Writing: https://cherryleaf.teachable.com/p/using-generative-ai
ESTON Technical/Commercial Authorship
This course run by ESTON is online-only and is available any time. A discount is offered to ISTC members.
ESTON Technical/Commercial Authorship (Premier)
TCTrainNet – tekom Certificate training in Technical Communication
There are two accredited courses available from TCTrain and the dates they are run on for 2025 are:
TCTrain Professional course for beginners and career changers:
- April 7, 2025
- June 23, 2025
- September 29, 2025
- November 24, 2025
TCTrain Expert course for experienced technical writers:
- April 7th 2025
- October 20th, 2025
For ISTC members we offer a discount of 200 Euros too.
Please note that attending an ISTC Accredited course from the trainers above does not automatically make you an ISTC Member. You will still need to apply for ISTC membership afterwards.
If the training course has whet your whistle, then come and join us.
About InfoPlus
InfoPlus is your go-to source for staying informed about our profession, featuring news not only from the ISTC but also from across the technical communication community.
This complimentary newsletter is emailed to approximately 1500 individuals.
Subscribe to InfoPlus here, you can unsubscribe at any time from within the email sent out each month.
For advertising enquiries, contact istc@istc.org.uk.
Submitting content
If you have noteworthy information to share with your peers, please send it my way at newsletter.editor@istc.org.uk. We want to ensure that your news reaches as many people as possible.
Published and distributed on the first working day of each month, InfoPlus occasionally experiences slight delays until the first week of the month. Keep this in mind when submitting time-sensitive information.
Please get the information for the March 2025 edition to newsletter.editor@istc.org.uk by Monday 24th February 2025.
About our publishers
InfoPlus, the Monthly Newsletter from the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC), is a valuable resource for the largest UK body representing scientific and technical communicators. Whether you are involved in technical writing, technical illustration, or other forms of communicating technical information, ISTC is the professional association dedicated to supporting your career.
Explore the benefits of ISTC membership and find out how to join.
Back Page
Here are some writing-related puns from one of our members, Steve Fearn MISTC. A word of warning, you will be groaning at most of them.
- I’ve been deciding to retire from my career as a graffiti artist. To be honest, the writing’s been on the wall for years.
- I bought a thesaurus the other day only to find that the pages were blank. I had no words to describe how angry I was.
- I was sorry to learn that I was dropped from my local Scrabble team. Words fail me.
- My cat swallowed an entire bag of Scrabble tiles. I took him to the vet but I’ve had no word so far.
- I’m reading a book about the history of glue. It’s so good that I can’t put it down.
- I’m writing a book about drinking beer. I’m just on my fourth draught.
- I’ve been collecting old copies of Chiropractor Monthly. I now have a lot of back issues.
- I’ve got a friend who has been writing a book about clocks and watches for the last 30 years. He said it’s about to be published and I said it’s about time.
- I’m making a list of exclusive jams and conserves. It’s a special spread sheet.
However, I always welcome more – even if it’s more puns. If you have something else, be it funny or a puzzle. You can send them to newsletter.editor@istc.org.uk by Monday 17th February 2025.