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Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators

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InfoPlus November 2025

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ISTC News

TCUK25 – News Update!

TCUK25 will be live, and in-person, at Radisson Blu, East Midlands Airport on 24th and 25th November.

Note: Ticket sales end on Sunday, 9th November. After this date, booking requires individual approval from the venue and may be rejected. 

GET READY FOR A GREAT PROGRAMME!

Embrace the future with Rahel Anne Bailie

Rahel Anne Bailie’s opening keynote Surviving the savanna: adapting to an evolving career landscape.

The future of technical communication is calling! See Rahel’s recent LinkedIn post.

The European Accessibility Act is here … with Piccia Neri

Piccia Neri is here to warn you: The European Accessibility Act Is here to bite you in the arse (if it hasn’t already)!

Our second keynote speaker is Piccia Neri and she is on a mission to prove that inclusive design doesn’t kill profit, or creativity: in fact, it fuels both. As a UX and accessible design consultant and trainer, she leads and audits global projects for companies of all sizes.

Piccia will also be running a workshop at TCUK25 on Accessible Data Visualisations.

Workshop: Enrol in the Accessible Data Visualisations workshop

Presentations and Workshops – Full timetable

We have two ‘ready reckoners’ to help you at the event:

These two pages should help you to organise your favourite presentations and workshops, with an option to create a printer-friendly version.

The timetable will display correctly on any mobile device so you can be sure where you need to be and when at the event.

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.

Join The Team

There is still time to make your mark on TCUK25. 

Examples of what you can get involved in are: 

  • Greet speakers and keep time as session host during the conference
  • Help with check-in and swag bags
  • Update and improve surveys
  • Analyse surveys after the event
  • Attend speaker dry-runs before the conference
  • Start planning for future events

To sign up or hear more, please get in touch with us at tcuk@istc.org.uk

We look forward to seeing you at TCUK25!

Website Volunteer Team update

Here’s an overview of what the Website Team have been working on during October.

TCUK 2025

With the conference date nudging closer this month, the website team were busy updating the ISTC website with the latest news and programme details. See the TCUK section of the website for information.

Website strategy progress

Two of the team contributed a lot of time this past month to powering through the website audit, which involved assessing the site inventory made last year and critically reviewing each page. Thanks to the team’s efforts, the audit was completed this month.

The team is now ready to move onto the next stage of the website strategy, which will be to analyse the audit’s findings. Design thinking exercises such as card sorting and tree testing will be used to aid the team’s analysis.

Website content improvements

A couple of the website team worked exceptionally hard throughout October to refresh the content across several pages of the site. Namely, the large About and Membership sections.

Indexes of Communicator

The ISTC website provides visitors with detailed indexes of Communicator. The indexes are organised by topic, contributor surname, and article title. A significant amount of work was done by certain team members to update the tools and methods that the indexes depend on. Now, the website indexes are easier to use and maintain. The index by surname now contains all of the data up until Autumn 2025. The other two indexes will follow soon.

Reusable content and WordPress technologies

One of the team who has great WordPress knowledge investigated reusable content blocks in WordPress, and helped other team members with layout and CSS requirements.

Best practices

Website content guidelines were another big topic for the team in October. The team discussed some authoritative examples from the industry and agreed to spend time researching those to inform the development of the ISTC’s existing style guide to modernise it and include content design guidelines that cover areas such as writing for the web.

Want to lend a hand?

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 newsletter was issued on the 17th of October and listed ten new articles by various authors. We now have 128 articles on the site for all members to look at.

If you aren’t getting the newsletters (171 IJTC members are currently missing out), then you just need to login to IJTC again. You will be sent an email to reactivate your account.

Ghost have rolled out a new feature where the reactivation email contains a one-time-code that you can enter at the website directly. This is for those users that the magic link button doesn’t work for. I’ve included an example email below which shows both options in the email:

Once you have rejoined, you’ll be welcomed back with open arms!

We want your articles!

There aren’t many rules for sending in your articles:

  • it doesn’t have to be of an epic length.
  • there’s nothing stopping you from sending in multiple small articles for a series, along the lines of our series from Jean Rollinson and CJ Walker.
  • it has to be relevant to the technical communicators who are part of the ISTC – as well as our Australian and New Zealand colleagues.
  • it must not be generated using AI. You can, however, write about AI tools used within the tech comms field.

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.

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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.

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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.

ISTC Slack now available

The details of where to find our Slack channel can be found in the email sent to all ISTC members on September 17th, with the title ‘A problem shared is a problem halved’.

Before joining please remember:
This is a professional space, and all areas, including any private messages, may be reviewed by the ISTC and are subject to the ISTC’s Code of Conduct.

We look forward to seeing you in there.

Area Groups

If you wish to start your own Area Group, 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 Wednesday 19th November . This meeting is online and the meeting invite 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.

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

There isn’t an ISTC Meets this month as we’ve been busy preparing for TCUK25. We hope to be back with one in December 2025.

Mailing list

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

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. This will be followed by the ISTC Community (Facebook group) which will be archived and removed before the end of the year.

Community Forums

The forums are available to all members once you have logged into the ISTC website.

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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.

A bit of AI … poking and prodding.

A few articles I’ve found covering opposite sides of the AI is good/bad fence for this month’s selection.

  • The AWS outage on 20th October probably caused a few “Oh no, where’s my AI gone?” instances. Luckily it didn’t last for too long and everything seemed to be switched back on and working within 12-18 hours.
  • The success of Sora (by OpenAI) in generating AI video shorts (for all social media sites) has beaten the previous successes of similar AI video generators. Earlier this year, social media was flooded with videos of Bigfoot and Yeti (created using Google’s Veo 3 and Google Flow).

    With Sora it seems to involve cougars/mountain lions being fed by elderly ladies on their porches that has made their tool go viral. Just look out for the ‘Sora’ logo on the video clip before thinking it’s real!
  • Google’s NotebookLM is still going strong. More updates and more functionality has been added and yet more 3rd party plugins are available that add even more, such as adding in all the YouTube training videos you need for a certain subject, and it will generate overviews from them all, plus Flashcards and quiz questions.

    Personally, I still use it for work and for ISTC/IJTC purposes as it’s (for me) the perfect research tool.
  • Microsoft has reinvented Clippy! Mico is their new avatar for Copilot. Fingers crossed it won’t be as annoying as Clippy was back in the day (young ‘uns will need Google to find out what Clippy was!) and there’s an easter egg whereby you can change Mico to look like Clippy… I’ve not seen it yet, but I’m sure it’s heading my way. And everyone else who uses Copilot.
  • Amazon announced on 28th October that it was laying off approximatley 14000 members of staff. Beth Galetti (a senior executive at Amazon) said: “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones). We’re convicted that we need to be organized more leanly.” The full story can be found here.

I am sure there are similar articles out there, I just don’t have the time to read them all and then pass them onto the members. And remember, don’t panic! Text generated by AI bots can be quite easy to spot and, in most cases, a real (human) technical communicator will be required to ‘clean up the mess’ for some time to come.

If you find one before me, you can always message me via the ISTC Slack.

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Upcoming Events

There are multiple in-person and/or online-only conferences coming up in November and that includes our very own TCUK25 and we hope to see you there.

December, however, is usually the time when there aren’t any events on at all. So this section will be quite empty in the next issue.

All of the November event details are below:

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, this is a three day event held at various locations in Brussels.

Clear Language@TEF (November 5th)
A morning programme at the Translating Europe Forum 2025 dedicated to clear language addressing topics such as consensus on using clear language across organisations and clear language in the media.

Uniting for a brighter future (November 5th)
The afternoon will kick off with vibrant plenary, keynote and poster sessions, followed by a networking dinner and awards gala.

Where linguistic expertise meets democratic access (November 6th)
Hosted by the European Parliament, this full-day conference includes a mix of plenary sessions, breakouts, and updates from the world of plain language.

Celebrating success in plain language (November 7th)
The Belgian Government is hosting PLAIN and Clarity for a full day of sessions, celebrating the success of plain language around the world and sharing best practices.

Note: All of their talks will be made available on their YouTube channel at some point after the event.

Title: tcworld conference 2025, Stuttgart
Date: November 11th-13th, 2025
In-Person: Stuttgart, Germany
Website: tcworld conference 2025

The tcworld conference, the world’s largest event for technical communication, takes place in Stuttgart, Germany. This in-person conference brings together experts, practitioners, and industry leaders from around the world.

Attendees can look forward to three days packed with talks, workshops, and networking opportunities covering the latest trends, tools, and best practices in technical communication. Topics range from AI and Terminology to Law and Standardization and UX.

Remember: As an ISTC member, you can register at the discounted member rate for this event.

Title: Google DevFest 2025
Date: November 22nd, 2025
Online/In-Person: LSE Centre Building (CBG) – Houghton Street Greater London, WC2A 2AE
Website: https://gdg.community.dev/events/details/google-gdg-london-presents-devfest-london-2025-1/

DevFest, the massive, community-driven tech conference hosted by Google Developer Groups (GDGs) worldwide, returns to London in 2025.

Your local GDG London and GDG Cloud London are curating a DevFest experience designed to empower London’s tech scene. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting your journey, DevFest 2025 has something for everyone.

Title: TCUK25
Date: November 24th-25th, 2025
Online/In-Person: In-Person at Radisson Blu, East Midlands Airport
Website: https://istc.org.uk/tcuk/

Our very own event and we hope to see you there!

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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 is run over 5 days. You can attend in-person at our dedicated training facilities at Bristol, Bromsgrove, Manchester or Reading, or participate live online.

The next course dates are:

  • Reading: Classroom-based & Online – 8th December – 12th December 2025
  • Manchester: Classroom-based – 12th March – 13th March 2026
  • Birmingham/Bromsgrove: Classroom-based – 4th – 5th June 2026

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:

  • November 24th 2025
  • January 26th, 2026
  • April 2026

TCTrainNet Professional

TCTrain Expert course for experienced technical writers: 

  • April 20th, 2026
  • October 12th, 2026

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.

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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 December 2025 edition to newsletter.editor@istc.org.uk by Tuesday 18th November 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.

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Back Page

Continuing with last month’s “new” section, here are a selection of other mishaps in the tech comms field as supplied (anonymously) by our members.

First of two – sent in by separate readers – and all names have been removed to protect the innocent technical communicators.

“I once had to update a user guide called “Points Manual”. It was a hefty tome and was on about its third or fourth version. There was no explanation of what a ‘point’ actually was. Previous authors didn’t see the point of adding that :)”

The other one:

“I once found a UI element so awful to document that I promised to buy anyone who could find a worse example, a bottle of champagne. Nobody ever claimed the prize.

This was an English sentence made up of a combination of pop-ups, drop-downs, fields that dimmed the UI text along with the box if you cleared it.”

Can you do any better, with much worse examples?

If so, you can send them to newsletter.editor@istc.org.uk, or send me a message via the ISTC Slack channel, by Tuesday 18th November 2025. Or if you’re attending TCUK25, you can anonymously tell me about them then.

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