On a hot summer weekend, we had a thoroughly enjoyable one-day conference in London. Nearly 30 members attended, and we enjoyed talks from a variety of speakers. Justin Darley presented on DITA, Phillip Barratt of Ovidius talked about the return on investment when rolling out a content management system, Richard Truscott told us about how our eyes work, and the implications of that on the colours we use in our documents, Nick Rosenthal showed us some insider secrets of translation memory systems, Tina Hoffmann gave us a round up on using wikis and blogs, and Mark Clifford reviewed the state of our profession. Add in a sumptuous lunch, plenty of coffee breaks and a champagne reception to celebrate our tenth birthday, and you have all the ingredients for a conference we will remember fondly.

We also held our AGM at the weekend. David Farbey has ended his period as chapter president, and was warmly thanked by all present. I have now taken over as STC UK chapter president, with Nick Rosenthal as VP1. Anthony Davey, who first got involved with chapter events at last November's DITA / XML weekend in Coventry, has become our new VP2. We also have other new members of the chapter management team: Richard Truscott joins us as Programme Manager, and Peter Hiron steps up as LIG manager, overseeing the excellent work done by our "local interest groups" (that's "regional groups" to you and me!)

I am incredibly heartened to have new people join the management team this year. New blood on a council always invigorates the team, and it always leads to new opportunities and events. It will be an interesting year - I hope you all look forward to it as much as I am.

We chose to hold this conference in the Britannia Hampstead, which is the hotel we will use as the venue for the exciting international conference on October 13 and 14 2006. If you haven't heard about it, it will be a great event, so watch for full details on the website or in the next STC UK newsletter. I hope you'll keep those dates clear in your diary and join your European and American and Israeli fellow STC members for a very business focussed, forward-thinking conference this autumn.

Thanks

Nancy Halverson - STC UK President