Two New Zealander experts report from the 2013 PLAIN Conference

Two plain English practitioners from Wellington attended October's PLAIN 2013 Conference in Vancouver.

Case studies compared Canada's environment with a New Zealand KiwiSaver project 

 Anne-Marie Chisnall, describes the presentation about plain English in the field of finance.

‘On the second day of the conference, I spoke in a joint session with Michelle Black of Simply Read, a consultancy firm based in Canada. Michelle does a lot of work in the areas of financial, health, and legal information. So our talks were complementary.

Anne-Marie says, 'Michelle set the scene for the Canadian financial environment and I came in with a case study about KiwiSaver investment statements in New Zealand.

'The session participants were interested in the similar initiatives in financial literacy in the two countries. And in how to achieve a plain document when working with many interested parties — especially legal reviewers who often tend to want to reverse plain language changes.’

The conference's inspiration is available online

And Lynda Harris, Anne-Marie’s colleague, said the conference was ‘inspiring and brim-full of information’.

‘Karen Schriver's fantastic session on evidence-based plain language, Mark Hochhauser's research on how readers think and understand, and Deborah Bosley's case studies linking research and better business, were just some of the many highlights.’

Most of the conference presentations will soon be posted on the PLAIN 2013 website so keep an eye out for them. Lynda says  that the plenary sessions were videoed. ‘They’ll be great watching.’

Visit the website of the 2013 PLAIN Conference