Presidents present and past

Janet Taylor

2001 to 2006

After wearing a number of ASTC committee hats and working tirelessly for our members, Janet took on the presidency in 2001.

Janet was a very active president and led the society with enthusiasm and commitment in the face of a falling IT marketplace with its concomitant impact on technical communication. In addition to the enormous contribution that she made to the ASTC (NSW), Janet was simultaneously secretary of the Ice Speed Skating Organisation of NSW.

Janet is the Technical Editor at Lansa.

Michael Lewis

1999 to 2000

As President, Michael led the initiative to define and gain membership agreement on the ASTC (NSW) Code of Ethics and, over a number of years, shared his specialist linguistic knowledge through his What Word is That column in our newsletter.

Michael is the Principal of Brandle, a leading consultancy in workplace communication that provides consulting and training services to the government and public sector.

Jill Nicholson

1997 to 1998

Jill assumed the presidency after 5 active years on the ASTC committee, where she contributed to all areas of the ASTC, from seminars and conferences, to professional development. The regular President's column in the ASTC newsletter is just one of the many initiatives that Jill took to strengthen communications with Members.

Jill is the Principal of N&H Communications, a consulting services company that provides communication courses and documentation services. Jill also represents the services of Dr JoAnn Hackos of Comtech Services Inc., Denver, Colorado.

Phil Cohen

1994 to 1996

Phil joined the ASTC at its second meeting in the late '80s. During his watch as President, he reckons he attended over 100 committee meetings, mainly in pubs, and saw ASTC seminars become the first ASTC Conference.

Phil has represented the ASTC on Standards Australia software documentation committees since the early '90s. He chaired the committee that wrote the first Australian software documentation standard (AS4258), then represented Australia on the ISO committee that adopted the Australian standard as IS15910.

Phil established Sydney tech writing company, HCi Consulting.

Dave Boughton

1989-1993

In the late 1980s, Dave Boughton and a group of similar-minded professionals that included John Sims and Reg Hardman, met at one of John Brockmann's Writing better computer software documentation for users courses and decided to start the NSW Society for Technical Communication.

Dave was our Foundation president.