National organisation workshop
August's meeting report
On 3 August, you, the members of SocEdsQ, discussed a series of questions related to the national organisation issues paper. Your responses are listed below.
Questions 1 and 2
What should the national organisation’s functions be? What activities should it be responsible for?
• Accredit professional editors. Make known to clients the value of employing accredited professional editors (and advising employers against employing unaccredited ‘editors’).
• Set and maintain the Standards and monitor members’ levels of competence (as measured against these Standards).
• Arrange for professional indemnity insurance.
• Reflect trends and changes.
• Maintain a central register/repository of information, with less replication of effort by different states and territories. Disseminate information.
• Undertake research and development.
• Act as the public face of the profession/the single point of contact/the national presence.
• Provide a more obvious public face for the profession (peak national body).
• Provide a national voice (talks, seminars) and a national language policy.
• Represent professional editors at all levels of society, in relation to other publishing professionals, and promote the recognition of their skills.
• Maintain the professionalism of editing.
• Draft a contract for IPEd editors to use with their clients.
• Provide a single point of contact, including a common web portal. This could include training and
information to keep everyone up-to-date.
• Publish a single national newsletter/magazine.
• Publish a single national newsletter, with state/territory-specific local content.
• Should not run conferences, otherwise IPEd people will burn out. Leave that to the societies.
• States/territories should develop training content to be available to all.
• Coordinate and standardise training.
• Organise interstate exchange of training.
• Provide training/mentoring, via internship, new courses and setting the environment for
induction.
• Contribute to the curriculum used by training institutions.
• Lobby for editors to be considered for national/state or territory awards/scholarships/recognition.
• Organise promotion and/or education of potential users/clients. This needs thorough analysis before any promotion program is considered. Find the right platform; target the market carefully.
• Gain national recognition.
• Organise a national promotion campaign, after a thorough analysis — promotion v. education of potential users.
Question 3
How do you see the national organisation working with the societies?
• The national organisation should handle national issues such as accreditation and promotion and let the societies get on with what they do now.
• It should provide advocacy for editors and be a training body that travels from state to state (and territory).
• IPEd should work with the societies as a project manager works with senior editors and their teams.
• IPEd should have paid, part-time board members who apply for these positions and are appointed by their societies.
• The Accreditation Board should be a subset of IPEd. Appointments should also represent societies.
• We need to establish a balance between continuity and change, with mentoring of members of the IPEd board and the Accreditation Board.
• Set up a permanent secretariat.
• Set up a paid secretariat to coordinate and maintain continuity of services.
• Offer the secretary’s job to a senior editor, or offer the (part-time) job of secretary to an editor.
• Financing after the fact cannot work.
• Have a proportionality of membership fees based on a levy per member, with a scale of fees to be negotiated with goodwill and creativity.
• Societies will have to raise their fees (CPAs pay $600 pa).
• Have a national body with regional membership.
• Let’s look at the Canadian model. In Canada, most of the business is done in the branches. There’s a national newsletter and web site, regional competitions, courses (and web sites); they have meetings of national reps.
• Leave politics out of it.
Question 4
Which model do you prefer?
• A company limited by guarantee.
• The Institute should be based in Canberra, with all individual members belonging to it and branches in Australian states and territories, New Zealand and other regions in this part of the world.
• It’s premature to discuss models at this stage. We need to look at the activities of the national organisation and all the implications and then decide.
• We should contact other organisations already registered in Australia and ask them how their respective models are working for them. Are they satisfied with the existing arrangements?
• IPEd should examine the processes of other national bodies — architects, engineers, teachers.
• The national organisation must have a registered office. It could be based in ASA premises, in an academic department, or with the Australian Publishers Association.
• IPEd needs to find a base; with a secretariat. Operating out of somebody’s home would be unprofessional.
Several members who were unable to take part in the workshop have also passed their comments on to Robin; many thanks to those people for their thoughtful responses. If you have concerns you
want to raise or suggestions to make, speak up and send your comments to Robin via e-mail! Those comments will help determine the future of our profession in Australia; they will be passed on to IPEd for consideration in October.