Why One-day Conferences Appeal - Proofnow Proofreader & Primary Tutor

When I heard the North East Editors (@NEEditors) were organising a one-day SfEP mini conference in Newcastle, I was very tempted.

I mentioned to Mr Deakins that, as he had spent 4 years there studying Art and had a great affection for the place, he might want to accompany me and ‘do culture’ (art galleries, museums) while I was learning.

Thankfully, he was REALLY keen so we hatched a plan that was win-win: we would have a mini-break by train from Essex in May, and I would get some Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and upgrade points.

#SfEPNEConf here I come!

On the morning of the conference, we left the Holiday Inn really early and sauntered to the cathedral to admire the architecture. At the appointed hour, I headed to the venue – the rather stunning Royal Station Hotel – adjacent to the railway station. A perfect location.

Victoria Suite was sumptuous with huge windows through which the bright sun shone all day and impressive, glistening candelabras. Very glamorous and extremely spacious for the 68 delegates.

An interesting variety of sessions had been planned. At this point I must credit Eleanor Abraham (@EABediting) who wrote excellent summaries in her live tweeting throughout all the sessions. I have relied on some of her tweets for accuracy.

Sessions

Denise Cowle: Marketing Your Editing Business
Matt Deacon (from Wearset): The Changing World of Academic Publishing (and the ripple effects on editors)
Melissa Middleton: Ministry of (Business) Training MO(B)T
Hester Higton: Efficient Editing – How to Make the Most of Your Fee
Panel Discussion chaired by Luke Finley: Navigating a Course in Publishing. With Sarah Wray, Debbie Taylor, Alex Niven

Session 1 – Denise Cowle

Denise is the SfEP marketing director and she belongs to the Content Marketing Academy. Some of her points included:

It’s important to make the shift from ‘freelance’ to ‘business owner’.
Have a website. Everybody can have a social media profile, but any of the platforms could disappear tomorrow. Your website is yours to do with what you want.
Be brave and network with editor colleagues, including those from your specialism.
Like, comment and share content from colleagues.
Be helpful and demonstrate your knowledge.
Add value. Give away brilliant free stuff on your website (be like Louise Harnby!).
Record outcomes – “What gets measured gets improved”.

Time for coffee and CAKE! Marieke Krijnen even brought Stroopwaffels from Amsterdam.

Session 2 – Wearset

Next, Matt Deacon, Project Manager at Wearset, conference sponsors, talked about the pressures that publishers, in this case academic experts, are against. Pressures from profit-driven markets, the internet, expectations on speed of delivery, globalisation and increased competition. All affecting editors.

He asked if artificial intelligence and natural language processing apps are going to take our jobs? No. Context, style and subtlety of language need the human element. Tools (such as PerfectIt) help with mundane tasks and reduce the time taken to edit, leaving us to focus on language and sense.

Matt gave guidance on how to future-proof editing: spot change, embrace and innovate, and spearhead development. How can we as editors encourage standardisation of templates amongst publishers? He suggested that the SfEP has a role to play in encouraging cleaner formats for editing by sharing discussions with publishing clients. Food for thought.

Session 3 – Melissa Middleton

After a quick change-over, Melissa Middleton’s session was hilarious. She runs Project North East Enterprise promoting Enterprise and CPD. Apparently, there is one local to you – part of the National Enterprise Network. She had us eating out of her hands with her Geordie humour!

In groups, we listed all the ways we do CPD daily – many more than we first thought. Her final workshop activity had us writing our top skill on a post-it to be placed on a poster of collective skills; then writing a skill we want to improve on a separate post-it for a second poster.

By the end of the session we had created a Skill Swap Shop. Very simple, clever and effective.

As a post-script, a couple of the SfEP (now CIEP) directors reminded us that website offer a similar support: members ask a question, and those with relevant knowledge answer. Many of us learn from the way different professionals answer the question with techniques they have used. Melissa finished her session by sharing an Interactive CPD Toolkit – a very useful resource.

Session 4 – Hester Higton

After lunch, Hester’s session was fascinating, if intensive. Her aim was to help us judge what can and can’t be done when clients are cutting costs and driving down schedules.

Given examples of non-fiction texts to discuss and prepare for copy-edit, the task was to analyse the brief and project; calculate how much time could be allocated to each task, bearing in mind the rate of pay for the job and the time scale.

Hester’s tips

Can the essential work be done within budget? And by the deadline? Often, when copy-editing, there was little time to put aside for dealing with the actual text.
Know what your key priorities are and stick to them.
How often, when an editor says the text is ‘clean’, do you believe them …?
Use clean-up automaton routines, keep track of the project, and analyse when finished for timings and cost.

Session 5 – Panel discussion

Luke Finley chaired the last session which was a Panel Discussion: Navigating a Course in Publishing. On the panel were Sarah Wray, Debbie Taylor and Alex Niven. The panel discussed such questions as:

How do editors deal with …?
How have you tackled a ‘muscular’ (favourite word of the conference) or heavy editing job?
When do you get time to work on your own novel when you are an editor/publisher and enjoy writing?

One-day conferences

This is my second one-day conference. The first one I attended was the Educational Publishers Development Day in November 2018 at De Vere West One (DVWO) in London. Both conferences were hugely popular with impressive speakers and plenty of opportunities to network.

In summary, one-day conferences appeal to me for a variety of reasons:

Lasting only a day means they are not expensive in terms of time or money.
Their location may be nearer to you than the main SfEP annual conference.
They present more regular networking opportunities than waiting for the annual conference.
They are eligible for upgrade points.

The FINAL (unofficial) session moved venues and headed to a bar for well-earned drinks. Unfortunately, I had to miss it as my husband and I reconvened at the station for our train home.

Bravo and cheers to the NE Editors: Kia Thomas, Nik Prowse, Caroline Orr, Jenny Warren, et al, for a valuable day!