Re: Q: Tech comm conferences in Europe?

[Damien Braniff <Damien_Braniff -at- PAC -dot- CO -dot- UK>]

Marjo,
There are several conferences around Europe (just missed one in UK!).
Possibly best advice is to contact the various regional TW societies - I
know there's at least 5/6 in Europe. Most societies either arrange
conferences or (at least) know what conferences are on where and when.
Societies also come under the umbrella of INTECOM which allows information
to be passed between societies.  In the UK it is the ISTC (see their web
page at www.istc.org.uk for details of INTECOM) and they hold a conference
every September.  In Leicester next year and in 2000 they are hosting Forum
2000 in London.  If you don't know, Forum, is an "unusual" conference with
no (or very few) formal talks and no seats!!  Started in 1975 by a Swede,
Ulf-L Anderson, who had been to a conference which he found to be full of
very dry talks but he really enjoyed the breaks, talking to other
communicators about different topics, problems encountered and so on. He
therefore decided to arrange a new kind of conference which he described as
a 3-day break!  What you have are a series of "talk shops" where a
facilitor (not the name used but effectively the same think) talks about a
specific topic (e.g. HTML etc) for a set period of time and interested
people just go and listen, contribute etc.  When time is up, if lots of
interest, you can adjourn to separate rooms to continue the discussion.
Basically it's one large networking conference.  As you may have guessed it
been talked a lot about at the ISTC conference!  Forum is a joint project
with, for 2000, ISTC, STC, TEKOM and IEEE pc are involved (ISTC admin, STC
content, and so on).  Anyway, I digress slightly!  As I said, contact the
local societies for info on European conferences.  I do, however, know of
the following which are coming up:

   "Where East meets West: Technical Communications and Usability" - 21-31
   October, Ljubljana, Slovenia.  Contact Carol Chubiz - tel:386 61 1865
   2000

   TEKOM Conference - main theme Document Management Systems - 1-13
   November, Munich, Germany. Contact TEKOM office - www.tekom.de

   NFTI Confernce (Norwegian Society for Tech Comms) - 12 November, Oslo,
   Norway. Contact NFTI fax: +47 2202 6050, email : tove -dot- ostberg -at- comtext -dot- no

   Forum 2000 - 13-14 June (2000!), Commonwealth Centre, London

For those of you who may be interested in Forum 2000 there is a quaterly
magazine (TC Forum) which is produced between conferences to keep people
informed and up to date with what's going on.  Currently covering issues:
Controlled language, Translation Issues, Readability/Usability/Quality,
Tools, Forum 2000 and Education and Training.  Also gives details of
professional events.  If interested you can contact Hans Springer at :

     Springer -dot- H -at- geod -dot- geonet -dot- de

Damien Braniff
Technical Author
PAC International


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