InfoPlus July 2025

ISTC News
ISTC Community
A bit of AI … poking and prodding
Upcoming events
Training courses
About InfoPlus
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ISTC News

TCUK25 – News Update!

There’s a bumper crop of updates for TCUK25 in this month’s InfoPlus. So grab your favourite brew and read on.

For those of you that might have missed last month’s InfoPlus: TCUK25 will be live, and in-person, at Radisson Blue, East Midlands Airport on 24th and 25th November.

Have a look behind the scenes of TCUK25

If you’re curious about how we’re planning TCUK25, or why we’re doing things the way we are, follow our new series of short articles behind the scenes of TCUK25.

Select speaker proposals for TCUK25

Would you like to influence the TCUK25 proposal selection process, and do you value giving all proposers a fair assessment and useful feedback? If so, please consider joining the TCUK25 proposal review committee.

What you will do?

The TCUK25 proposal review committee is responsible for reading and rating the anonymised session proposals, giving feedback to proposers, and helping to decide what the final program looks like.

Who can apply?

We are looking for people with different levels of experience, and from a range of fields and domains, to give a nuanced and fair assessment of proposals. Applications will be assessed with a view to creating a balanced and diverse panel.

Time commitment

We estimate the time commitment to average about 1 hour per week, with a mix of asynchronous work and video meetings. Due to the proposal deadline, expect the highest workload in August.

Apply here by 15th July.

For any questions about the work or how to apply, please contact us at tcuk@istc.org.uk

Volunteer and help shape TCUK25

Would you like to influence the conference, give back to your community, or learn from others?

We are looking for volunteers to help make it the best possible experience for everyone – and to have a bit of fun along the way.

What you will do?

There are lots of different tasks involved in planning and running a conference. Some activities have already kicked off, while some are only needed closer to the conference. You can help out with small, easy tasks, or you can take on more responsibility and gain more influence.

The coming weeks, we are specifically working on:

Talking to previous and new potential sponsors to come up with arrangements that are beneficial to them and to TCUK. We have materials and useful feedback from TUCK23 to get us started
Defining AV needs, then accepting or negotiating quotes
Designing social media templates for speaker announcements
Writing articles and social media posts about TCUK, or help posting and reposting content. We have drafts and prompts for you, but we also welcome your ideas.
Updating booking forms to match this year’s details
Answering questions from people who want to submit a proposal
Planning of the next phases

Who can volunteer?

ISTC members of all grades can volunteer. No specific skills are required; you can get involved in activities that suit your knowledge, skills, and interests.

Time commitment and how we work

You choose how much or little you want to do. We work partly asynchronously using our collaboration platform, partly through video meetings. We plan for flexibility, and you’ll be a key part of the team whenever you can join.

To sign up, or to ask questions about TCUK25 volunteer opportunities, please contact us at tcuk@istc.org.uk.

Speak or run a workshop at TCUK

We’re hoping for a diverse lineup of experienced as well as speakers, and we’re always looking for new and interesting content – or your unique angle on a well-known topic. For more information, support materials, and inspiration, see call for proposals.

Note: If you’re a member, you can post topic requests in our forum, and we will update the list of topics as suggestions come in.

UK Technical Communication Awards

Entries are now open for 2025 through the ISTC website. Please check here for details and 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.

The Awards are open to any individual or team, whether employed, self-employed, contracting, volunteering, permanent, temporary, full-time, or part-time. We encourage entries of all types, from traditional documentation to those demonstrating technical innovation.

The deadline for entries is 5pm on Friday 29th August 2025.

A request for an expert!

An ISTC member is looking for an experienced Technical Author that has experience and credibility in dealing with large structured documentation sets, preferably with experience of process design, document production, use and maintenance of documentation, that is willing and able to stand as an Expert Witness during an Employment Tribunal. This may be in person but is likely to be achievable via video link (Teams, Zoom or similar); date to be confirmed.

The individual will be required to provide independent expert advice to the tribunal in relation to: Technical Writing Best Practice, including minimalist language, topic-based, customer-focused, task-oriented content, DITA and single-source content in particular (General principles rather than XML code example…)

If anyone is interested or would like more information, please contact ISTC directly via newsletter.editor@istc.org.uk and we will pass your details on.

Helping Members Find More, Do More, and Join In

Work is progressing across several strands of activity as we continue to improve both the content and structure of the ISTC website.

Design work is underway for a new set of TCUK pages, focused on sharing content clearly and effectively. This includes not just visual layout and structure, but also making sure the writing itself supports ease of understanding and reflects the tone of the conference.

Alongside this, we’ve worked with the TCUK team to start publishing a series of behind-the-scenes articles about how TCUK comes together. The first pieces – covering how & why they selected the date and venue – are written by the volunteers involved, offering a personal and practical perspective. These are intended to give a better sense of the planning process and the feel of the event, especially for members who are curious about what goes on in the background. You can read them here: TCUK25 behind the scenes.

We’re also preparing improvements to key areas of the main site, starting with the About Us and Membership pages. These updates are focused on improving information design: making the structure clearer, helping users find what they need more easily, and ensuring everything is up to date. Feedback from members has helped guide this work, and these pages are proving a useful test case for broader changes.

In parallel, the team has begun reviewing the site’s overall writing style. The aim is to ensure that content across the site is accessible, fits the needs of our audience, and communicates the opportunities and benefits of ISTC membership more clearly. This work is being carried out by the Website team, but we’re always happy to hear from others — whether you’d like to get involved or simply share your thoughts. You can reach us at istc@istc.org.uk.

Finally, we’ve started running WordPress training sessions to support the wider team. These live online workshops focus on practical editing skills, specifically using the block editor. The intention is to continue these sessions over time, as team members share knowledge and help each other grow in confidence.

If you’re looking to connect with other professionals, build experience in UX, content strategy, or collaborative projects, and strengthen your portfolio, CV, or CPD, we’d love to welcome you to the Website team.

IJTC Update

The June Newsletter was sent out last week and there are a further 8 articles available from Jean Rollinson’s back catalogue of handy editing tips taken from her old columns in Communicator. There’s also a new article by Warren Singer covering glossaries.

We are almost at the 100 articles mark and we’d like your help to get over this target. We would like to hear from anyone who has an article that they want to publish on IJTC.

It doesn’t have to be of an epic length, but it has to be relevant to the technical communicators who are part of ISTC. You’re writing for your fellow members within, plus an audience of technical communicators based in Australia and New Zealand.

Look at the other articles that are already on the website and see if your subject would fit in and send it 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.

Eastern England Group

This is a new group for the Eastern England area and it’s being run by Andy Smith.

Email Andy on easternengland@istc.org.uk for a meeting link.

The Eastern England group are online only, meeting on Zoom. The regular day and time for each monthly meeting will be the second Tuesday of each month and it will start at 19:30.

There is no agenda nor speakers and the group is currently working out what sort of group to be. Come along and you can help steer them in the right direction.

Geographically, they cover the east of England from East Anglia to Northumberland but welcome people from far and wide. Members and non-members of the ISTC are welcome.

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 Wednesday 23rd July. This meeting is in person and further details will be posted in the WhatsApp chat for the group nearer the time.

ISTC Meets

ISTC Meets is our monthly series of live online presentations and discussions from industry experts across the Technical Communication spectrum.

During July and August, ISTC Meets takes a summer break and it will return in September. September’s talk will be covering Mentoring.

If you contact ISTC directly, istc@istc.org.uk, you can be added to the ISTC Meets mailing list.

For full details of all of our previous speakers, and for all future ISTC Meets, please visit our website.

Talking Heads wanted!

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.

Social Media

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.

To save repeating this list in every issue of InfoPlus going forward, we’ve added the list of missing issues to the Communicator Archive page.

On May 22nd 2025, we received our very first missing issue. The first issue from 1991 was sent in by Graham Sledge. Many thanks! We’re still missing quite a few but it’s one entry that could be removed from our archive page.

A bit of AI … poking and prodding.

It would seem that both Meta and Anthropic were cleared at their respective trials for using stolen eBooks from dodgy websites to train their AI engines (Llama and Claude respectively) recently.

Anthropic did say that, despite ‘borrowing’ seven million eBooks via a torrent site, they did then go and buy a lot more books. Ahem.

In other news, Microsoft is failing to sell CoPilot to big companies, along with their increased prices for Office 365, because everyone wants ChatGPT instead.

Upcoming Events

There are multiple in-person and/or online-only conferences coming up from June onwards. All of their details are below:

Title: RAISE Summit
Date: July 8th-9th, 2025
Online/In-Person: Paris, France
Website: https://www.raisesummit.com/

RAISE Summitt promises an exclusive experience and event designed to disrupt, build, and network across AI applications. This event covers real-world use cases, outlines playbooks for AI success, and connects innovative minds with industry experts. Additionally, the event hosts a Hackathon with over 300 participants to help spark new ideas for GenAI technologies.

Title: ProductCon AI
Date: August 6th, 2025
Online/In-Person: Online only (6 hours)
Website: https://productschool.com/productcon/online-2025

ProductCon Online returns on August 6th for a six-hour event on all things AI in Product. Join over 10,000 product professionals from around the globe for a day packed with insights, trends, and practical takeaways from industry trailblazers.

Click on this link to get your free ticket.

Title: NORDIC TechKomm
Date: September 24th-25th, 2025
Online/In-Person: Copenhagen, Denmark
Website: https://dk.nordic-techkomm.com/

Like their event in March, the NORDIC TechKomm Denmark conference is a must-go for technical communication professionals. There, expect to see conferences on the latest industry trends by well-known leaders from around the world. Don’t miss their workshop sessions where attendees share concrete tools and practices for daily work.

Title: MadWorld
Date: September 29th-October 1st, 2025
Online/In-Person: Denver, Colorado
Website: https://www.madcapsoftware.com/madworld-conferences/madworld-2025/

MadWorld brands itself as THE leading event for content innovators, so don’t miss this opportunity to learn and connect with industry leaders in technical communication and learning & development. This event brings together users of Flare, Central, IXIA CCMS, and Xyleme, as well as other content creation professionals. Attendees will participate in hands-on workshops, breakout sessions, networking, and one-on-one meet-ups with MadCap’s product and support teams.

Title: LavaCon 2025
Date: October 5th-8th, 2025
Online/In-Person: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Website: https://lavacon.org/

LavaCon 2025 focuses on bridging content strategy and operations to reduce costs, drive revenue, and improve customer experiences. It’s a key event for content professionals to share best practices, network, and build lasting relationships.

Title: Write The Docs, Berlin 2025
Date: October 27th-28th, 2025
Online/In-Person: Berlin, Germany
Website: https://www.writethedocs.org/conf/berlin/2025/news/welcome/

We’re excited to announce a new conference: Write the Docs Berlin! This is a hybrid conference, with an in-person event in Berlin, Germany, and a virtual platform.

This will be our first in-person event in Europe since Prague 2019, and we’re excited to add this to our conference lineup once again. The venue will be announced soon.

Our in-person event will have two days of talks, a social event, and an unconference. On the virtual platform, you can follow all talks, participate in the Q&A after, and chat with your fellow attendees.

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:

Reading: Classroom-based & Online – 8th December – 12th December 2025
Bristol: Classroom-based – 22nd September – 26th September 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 comms 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.

Technical/Commercial Authorship Diploma Course ‐ Parts 1 & 2 (EDL2D)

ESTON Simplified English Part 3 (EDL8T)

A discount is offered to ISTC members.

TCTrainNet – tekom Certificate training in Technical Communication

There are two accredited courses available from TCTrain and the dates in 2025 when they are run are:

TCTrain Professional course for beginners and career changers:

September 29th 2025
November 24th 2025

TCTrainNet Professional

TCTrain Expert course for experienced technical writers:

October 20th 2025

TCTrainNet Expert

For ISTC members, TCTrainNet offer a discount of 200 Euros too.

Firehead

Firehead offer a number of accredited courses. They are supplied in a format of videos, PDFs, eBooks and assessments.

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 August 2025 edition to newsletter.editor@istc.org.uk by Monday 14th July 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

And we’re back at an empty back page for the second month running. If I can’t get any content for this section, I’ll have to reach for the wordsearch generator …

Although, if you have something else, be it funny or a puzzle, or even if it’s more puns, you can send them to newsletter.editor@istc.org.uk by Monday 14th July 2025.

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