Distinguished international and Australian friends

John Brockman

In the early 1980s, John began running his documentation courses in Australia. His courses and his enthusiasm brought a new professional focus to technical communication among Australian practitioners and it was at one of his courses, that Dave Boughton, John Sims, Reg Hardman and others decided to start the NSW Society of Technical Communication.

John encouraged and supported our fledgling organisation and came out as a keynote speaker for one of our early conferences. His book, Writing Better Computer Documentation for Users, became a must-have reference for technical writers and was republished in 1990 to include writing for the new world of hypertext.

Today, R. John Brockman is Professor, Business & Technical Writing, University of Delaware where his research focus is 19th century technical communication. He continues to receive our newsletter and plans at some stage to write about the first Australian computer, CSIRAC.

Dr JoAnn T. Hackos

JoAnn is a world-renowned expert in information technologies. She is President of Comtech Services, a content-management and information-design firm based in Denver,Colorado, which she founded in 1978. JoAnn is also founder and director of the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM).

In 1992-93, JoAnn held the presidency of the Society for Technical Communication in the United States.

JoAnn's association with the ASTC (NSW) began in the early 1990s and continues to this day. Many of our members have attended JoAnn's courses in documentation design, information usability and documentation project management. Her books, such as Standards for Online Documentation and User Task Analysis for Interface Design, are also well-used references in our professional libraries.

The ASTC has gained much from her friendship and encouragement. In her workshops, JoAnn promoted active membership of professional communications organisations and she distributed information about the ASTC and the STC. She has been the keynote speaker at three of our annual conferences, 1992, 1994 and 2001, giving generously of her time and sharing her insights readily with conference participants.

JoAnn and ComTech Services are represented in Australia by N&H Communications.

Professor Robert Eagleson

Robert Eagleson is an acknowledged world authority in plain English. He was involved in ground-breaking work in Australia, contributing extensively to the development of the first plain English legal document (a car insurance policy) in 1976.

Since retiring from the University of Sydney in 1991, Robert has consulted to many commercial, industrial and legal firms, government departments, legislative counsel and courts.

His contribution has gone beyond Australia. He has been a consultant to Law Reform Commissions in Canada and New Zealand and has conducted workshops in Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand, UK and USA.

In 1990 he received a Special Award for Outstanding Contribution to Literacy from the Australian Government. In 1996, 1999 and 2000 he won awards for plain legal language from Clarity, the international body dedicated to promoting clear language.

Robert Eagleson joined our society in its early years and remains a key supporter of our activities. Most recently, he presented his paper, Documents are meant for people, as the keynote address at Conference 2002.

In 2001 he was elected to life membership of the ASTC.