EditorRegistration opens this Friday for the second annual PubPro unconference for managing editors and publication production specialists, co-hosted by the Editors’ Association of Canada’s BC branch and SFU Publishing Workshops. This year, the event will take place on Saturday, May 24, beginning in room 1420 at Harbour Centre, and, like last year, it will consist of a day of participant-driven presentations and group discussions and a mid-afternoon networking tea.
People who do publication project management and production tend not to have the same kinds of professional development opportunities as professionals in other areas of publishing. PubPro is an attempt to close the gap and offers us the chance to learn from one another. Presenters and discussion leaders are invited to share their slides and notes, which are shared with all registered participants.
This year, in addition to sponsorship from Friesens, Scrivener Communications, Talk Science to Me, and West Coast Editorial Associates, the Association of Book Publishers of BC is offering a travel subsidy to ABPBC members outside the Lower Mainland who want to attend. Contact Margaret Reynolds if you’d like more details.
Freelancers who want to chat up a roomful of managing editors are invited to join us for the networking tea for a mere $5. (The networking tea is included for participants who’ve registered for the unconference itself.)
At PubPro 2013, participants presented about such diverse issues as interactive editing, print on demand, and editing platforms beyond Microsoft Word and held discussions about project management software and digital workflow tools. I was heartened to see that the event reached two populations that EAC traditionally has always aimed, but has sometimes struggled, to reach: in-house and senior editors. I’m hoping that participants who came out last year and witnessed the process will be more comfortable coming forward to give a presentation or lead a discussion this year.
For those of you who plan to be there and are thinking about possible presentation or discussion topics, here are a few ideas to get you started:
- The care and feeding of freelancers: What are some simple ways to build solid relationships with your best freelance editors, indexers, and designers? What kind of training, if any, do you give your freelancers?
- Testing, testing: Do you test your new freelancers? With a test you developed in house? Is it reliable? Would you trust a third-party test? Would you trust credentials resulting from a third-party test?
- One house, many imprints: Whether you’re a book publisher that has recently merged with another or a periodical publisher that puts out several different titles, you have a lot to juggle. How have you integrated your workflows? How do you reconcile differences in style and process?
- XML first: How close are traditional publishers to an XML-first workflow? Some communities, like the technical communicators, have been “single sourcing” for years. What can we learn from them?
- Editorial archiving: After each project, you’re left with a large stack of documents—whether physical or virtual. What do you keep? What do you recycle? What do you shred? How do you store the documents for easy retrieval? What security, liability, and ethical issues do you need to consider? What is the historical value of a set of editorial archives?
- Mentorship: Thirty years ago, when publishing programs weren’t nearly as prevalent as they are today, in-house mentorship was the foundation upon which editors built their careers. Does mentorship still have a role to play? What does it look like? What should it look like?
- Indexing: Are your publications indexed? Should they be? How do you find quality indexers? What is your indexing workflow? Do you have your indexers do embedded indexing?
Please spread the word about this one-of-a-kind event. For more information about PubPro 2014, visit the event’s main page. Read a recap of last year’s event on EAC-BC’s newsletter, West Coast Editor, or my previous blog posts.
UPDATE (April 12, 2014): Registration is now open!