Contents
- ISTC News
- ISTC Community
- A bit of AI … poking and prodding
- Upcoming events
- Training courses
- About InfoPlus
- Back Page
ISTC News
TCUK25 – News Update!
TCUK25 will be live, and in-person, at Radisson Blu, East Midlands Airport on 24th and 25th November.
Get TCUK25 tickets at 2023 prices!
We’re sticking to our promise of keeping TCUK tickets affordable. See ticket options and get your early bird ticket now!
Keynote Speaker for TCUK25
We’re thrilled that Rahel Anne Bailie, Content Solutions Director at Altuent and Horace Hockley Award Winner, will kick off TCUK25 with the keynote Surviving the savanna: adapting to an evolving career landscape.
How to get to TCUK25
We have included all the information, regardless of your method of transport, to get to TCUK25 on this page.
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.
Volunteers wanted – help us make TCUK25 the best it can be!
We are a great, but small team of volunteers, and your contribution could make the difference between a good conference and the conference we dream of! Some of us volunteer to learn from more experienced people, others to give back to the community.
To sign up or hear more, please get in touch with us at tcuk@istc.org.uk.
Submit your TCUK25 proposal now! The deadline is 15th August!
We’re hoping for a diverse lineup of experience as well as new 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 the call for proposals.
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
July has been a busy month for the volunteers of the website strategy group, with support for the ISTC’s annual conference, TCUK25, taking centre stage.
We’ve helped the TCUK25 organisers by authoring and publishing details about the conference, including keynote speaker announcements, travel options, ticket pricing, and ticket booking forms. You can book your ticket directly from the website and find out more about TCUK25.
As well as the crucial organisational details, we’ve been publishing articles about our work behind the scenes. We hope you enjoy reading about what goes on in a volunteer group — and even feel inspired to join us! We are always able to provide volunteers with interesting work to help with for the ISTC website and TCUK25 event. If you’d like to find out more about volunteering with the ISTC, get in touch at istc@istc.org.uk.
Although the past month has largely been focused on supporting TCUK25, and in early August we are pausing some activities to allow for summer holidays, we’ve found time to progress our content improvements and strategy work for the ISTC website. We’ve continued to discuss and make decisions on the following areas of the website:
- Improvements to existing content: We’ve continued to make good progress with updates to the About Us page, and those changes will be published later in the summer. We’ve identified the Membership area as one to improve next.
- Writing style: We’ve been revisiting the style guide, which covers more than editorial technicalities — it also includes tone of voice and terminology.
- Sharing our technical knowledge: With further WordPress training sessions delivered by one of our own team, the group have learned more about using the WordPress block editor and to create layouts and manage text styling.
- Website inventory and audit: A schedule for updating the inventory and holding a collaborative remote workshops to audit and subsequently analyse the structure has been agreed. The work begins in late August and we plan to have completed the structural audit and content analysis in October.
That’s the latest from our volunteer website strategy group. If you’d like to help the ISTC improve its website and collaborate with other ISTC members in the process, send an email to istc@istc.org.uk. We’re a friendly team and there’s no pressure to volunteer a particular number of hours — you can help out as and when your availability allows.
IJTC Update
The July Newsletter was sent out last week and there are a further 9 articles (although 4 are older ones that we’ve now updated) available from CJ Walker at Firehead.
We finally got past the 100 articles mark (now at 104) but we’d still like your help to get even more articles. 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 ISTC, plus an audience of technical communicators based in Australia and New Zealand.
Take a 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
The Eastern England Group was created as a virtual group to cover the area from East Anglia to Northumberland. Since its inception the group has turned into a general group for authors from any location who cannot make it to other events or just want to meet other authors. Members and non-members of the ISTC are welcome.
The Eastern England group meets on Zoom. The regular day and time for each monthly meeting is the second Tuesday of each month and starts at 19:30.
At the next meeting, on Tuesday 12th August, Bruce Officer will give a short talk entitled Commissioning Translations: Trials and Tribulations. Bruce is a technical author at Sencon UK, where he writes user manuals for industrial measurement equipment. Over the years he has encountered many issues getting manuals and software translated, some frustrating, some outright amusing.
The Eastern England Group is run by Andy Smith. Email him (easternengland@istc.org.uk) for a meeting link.
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 20th August. This meeting is online and further details will be posted in the WhatsApp chat for the group nearer the time.
ISTC Meets (on a break)
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
We recently pared back our social media areas to make them easier to manage and post to. Our FB pages for ISTC and TCUK will remain for the time being whilst they are archived, then they will be removed permanently.
Volunteer request
Do you have experience of running a Facebook group and/or ensuring regular news items reach relevant areas of social media? We’re looking for an ISTC volunteer to take the reins and engage with our membership. If you’re interested, please send an initial email to istc@istc.org.uk.
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.
Google announced that it will be rolling out its AI version of Google Search in the UK.
Google said it was responding to changes in the way people use its search engine to ask more complicated questions. For example, if you spilled coffee on your carpet, using the older search engine, you would have searched for ‘clean carpet stain’.
Using the new AI-based search, your query can now be as complicated as “I spilled coffee on my Berber carpet, I’m looking for a cleaner that is pet friendly’.
It should be available for all UK users by the time InfoPlus is sent out.
More details available from the Google Blog page.
In the latest bit of “caught red handed using AI” and, unlike Meta and Anthropic, this person didn’t get away with it.
A singer from the United States has been accused of manipulating music streaming platforms using AI technologies and bots to fraudulently inflate his stream statistics and earn millions of dollars in royalties.
The singer, hailing from North Carolina, faces charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. The full story is available on AINews.
I’m so glad that I didn’t release my “Technical Author Blues” on Spotify …
Upcoming Events
There are multiple in-person and/or online-only conferences coming up from August onwards. All of their details are below:
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: Management Summit
Date: September 23rd-24th, 2025
Online/In-Person: Lisbon, Portugal
Website: https://www.managementsummit.org/
How To Create Value Faster is the event’s tagline. It is a new kind of conference about a new way to create value in a fast-changing world. Over the two days, there will be 15 fast-paced modules. Each 30-minute module delivers:
- One powerful idea.
- Two real-world stories.
- One focused discussion.
The full list of what is covered in each module is available under their Agenda menu.
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 conference will be held at bUm Berlin. More information about the venue will be available closer to the event.
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.
Title: Plain Language Conference
Date: November 5th-7th, 2025
Online/In-Person: Brussels, Belgium
Website: https://www.iiid.net/plain-language-conference/
Organised by Clarity and PLAIN, but there’s not much else known about this event yet, because it’s still in a “call for papers” phase. As soon as more information is available, this entry will be updated.
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
TCTrain Expert course for experienced technical writers:
- October 20th 2025
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.
- DITA Concepts
- Make Search Better: An Introduction to Keywording
- Structuring Prompts for Technical Communicators and Content Developers
- Presenting in English with Equal Impact
- Content Strategy Overview
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 September 2025 edition to newsletter.editor@istc.org.uk by Monday 18th August 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
To save another blank Back Page, I’ve created another WordSearch – I can hear the groans from here.
(They’re almost as loud as those heard when another selection of puns appear in this section.)
Download the Wordsearch here. The answers will appear in next month’s InfoPlus.
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 18th August 2025.