Meeting Summary: Working Faster, Smarter Part II

Thu, Jun 10th, 2010 at 6:00 PM

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD

Event Details

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our June meeting, Working Faster, Smarter Part II, especially ThinkB!G.LearnSmart (http://www.thinkbiglearnsmart.com) for providing us with our featured speaker, Clair Koroma. We are also grateful to Christine Abunassar, CEO of ThinkB!G.LearnSmart, for sponsoring our meeting, and we thank David Provine, founder of Premier Mac Technologies (http://www.premiermac.com), for the generous donation in support of our Speaker Fund.

Scroll down to the end of this summary for details on additional resources: A special training offer from ThinkB!G.LearnSmart, how to contact us on LinkedIn or by email, and for upcoming meeting dates.

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To start the meeting, our Chapter Representative, Magda Saina, welcomed us. She thanked Christine Abunassar, CEO of ThinkB!G.LearnSmart for sponsoring our meeting, providing our featured speaker, and supplying the delicious eats during our networking session.

For the group business segment of our fourth meeting, we took a look back at our newly formed chapter. As of June 10, 2010, we were 237 members strong, averaging 52 attendees per meeting. Topics for our meetings are influenced by members' feedback from the surveys collected at the end of the meetings. Magda invited us to take an active role by completing these surveys, spreading the word, volunteering, finding additional sponsorship and fund-raising opportunities, and buying raffle tickets to help support and sustain our group.

Magda then introduced Don Vislay, who discussed the administrative costs required to keep a group like ours going and our group's current finances:

• The Greater Baltimore IDUG is your group and a not-for-profit entity.
  
• We rely entirely on raffle proceeds and donations to pay our expenses.
  
• We do not receive monetary support from Adobe.
  
• Donations of raffle items are our only current source of income and our only means to pay for expenses.
  
• We are seeking new and additional sponsors and fund-raising opportunities.
  
• We have a plan for acquiring future speakers to attract more attendees and members, and we are collecting donations to build our Speaker Fund.
  
• The Greater Baltimore IDUG must become self-sustaining to survive.

As a young IDUG chapter, we are learning, growing, and re-evaluating how we do things. Raffling the CS5 Design Premium package (one-time only) for $10/ticket was a way of covering our current shortfall. We also modified our raffle rules:

• Tickets are $2 each or three tickets for $5.
  
• Raffle prizes will be called from the most expensive to the least expensive item.
  
• Limit one prize per person per meeting.
  
• You must be a registered member and be present to win.
  
• You may win the software grand prize only once per calendar year

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FEATURED PRESENTATION
Clair Koroma, Creative Director of CarKore Design (http://www.carkore.com/) and Adobe Certified Trainer at ThinkB!G.LearnSmart, gave an informative presentation called "Long-Document Management: Boost Productivity by Utilizing the Robust Automated Tools in InDesign." Clair took us through the details of creating paragraph styles; putting together book files so that you can share styles, master pages, and swatches; synching styles across different documents and book files, automating page numbering; creating variables; and generating Tables of Contents automatically by using those styles. The following resources will provide you with step-by-step instructions to recap what Clair demonstrated in her presentation:

• http://help.adobe.com/en_US/InDesign/6.0/WSa285fff53dea4f8617383751001ea8cb3f-6ccba.html
  These instructions are from the Adobe Resource Center. Choose "Long Document Features" in the left navigation menu. This online manual is interactive! You can actually ask for clarifications on instructions and see what others who tried the instructions have to say.
  
  
• In addition, InDesign Help and Support can be found at http://www.adobe.com/support/indesign/.
  
  
• Finally, the following link is to a quick video on syncing the book files in a long document: http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/?id=vid0216.

The featured presentation was followed by a Q&A Session with our panel of experts: Clair Koroma, who answered questions about InDesign and certification exams; Christine Abunassar, who told us about customized Adobe training and e-learning; and David Provine, who gave us the details on upgrading your Mac as well as proper upgrades and maintenance prior to CS5 installation.

The night concluded with the selection of the raffle winners with the top prize being Adobe CS5 Design Premium!

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RAFFLE WINNERS

Christine Langr, Adobe CS5 Design Premium
Debra Healy, StockLayouts 3-month subscription
Elyse Chaprnka, 1-year license for GridIron Flow software
Annie Marcotte, Markzware, PUB2ID Plugin
Anthony Chaprnka, Markzware, Q2ID Plugin
Margaret Moore, 1-year subscription to InDesign Magazine
Patricia Valentine, 1-year subscription to InDesign Magazine
Kelly Lynch, Classroom in a Book: Adobe InDesign CS5 (Peach Pit Press)
Anne King, Real World Adobe InDesign CS4 (Peach Pit Press)
Brianna Dorsey, slide:ology (O'Reilly Media)
Kirk Frankfurth, grep Pocket Reference (O'Reilly Media)

Congratulations to all of the winners! Remember, we need additional donations and sponsors to continue our IDUG! The raffle tickets are our SOLE SOURCE to pay for the speakers, the food, and the venue, so sponsorships and donations keep us going!

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***SPECIAL OFFER for Baltimore IDUG Members from ThinkB!G.LearnSmart***
ThinkB!G.LearnSmart (http://www.thinkbiglearnsmart.com/), an Adobe Authorized Training Center in Howard County is offering IDUG members $100 off any Adobe class taken between now and the end of September. If members need one-on-one project-based training allowing them to blend in training while building their projects, ThinkB!G.LearnSmart will allow them to apply this $100 offer to this new model of learning by using their Virtual Online Live Training (VOLT).

Also offered are group training sessions either on-site or at the ThinkB!G.LearnSmart training center. Preferred pricing for IDUG members will be honored. For more details, contact:

Christine Abunassar, CEO
Office: 301-362-2250; Fax: 240-554-2563
christine@thinkbiglearnsmart.com

Thank you

We would like to thank our sponsor ThinkB!G.LearnSmart for making this meeting possible. We also thank all of our sponsors for their generous donations for raffle prizes and giveaways:
- Adobe: CS5 Design Premium ($1899 value)
- StockLayouts: 3-month subscription ($399 value)
- GridIron Flow: 1-year license ($299 value)
- Markzware: two individual plugins ($199 value)
- Premier Mac Technologies: $100 donation to our Speaker Fund
- InDesign Magazine: two individual 1-year subscriptions ($59 value)
- O'Reilly Media books
- Peach Pit Press books
- Shutterstock: giveaways and coupons to stock images library

All proceeds from raffle sales support our IDUG meetings. Donations and sponsorships are welcome. If you are interested, please contact Chapter Rep Magda Saina.

We are especially grateful to our featured speaker and the Greater Baltimore Chapter IDUG core members who made the event possible. In addition, we welcome our three newest volunteers: Donny Van Zandt, Debra Healy, and Ron Schwartz. Thank you for your support and help!

Upcoming Industry Events

Want to be a part of the discussion? Join our group on LinkedIn!
We use this collaborative networking space for discussions about upcoming meeting topics and speakers, group updates between meetings, troubleshooting, and sharing news items of interest to the group. You can join the Baltimore Chapter, Adobe InDesign Users' Group at www.linkedin.com/groupInvitation?groupID=1964618. Join today so you can share your knowledge and experiences to help us all stay connected.

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Remember to check your Member Benefits page for special offers and discounts on training, magazines, books, and workshops.

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Remember, we want to hear about your projects too! Share Your Shorts! with us by sending a PDF (under 5 MB) of no more than 20 of your images and a project description to IDUG.GreaterBaltimore@gmail.com, and your project may be selected for an upcoming meeting.

Comments from attendees

"Awesome stuff--learned a lot today. Thanks!"

"This meeting helped plus I was able to network. I plan to attend future meetings"

"Excellent speaker--very helpful presentation."

"Clair was a great speaker--very engaging and knowledgeable."

"Never too much of a good thing...Thank you for such great content."

Next Meeting

Mark Your Calendars!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010

More details to come.

Photos from this Meeting

See the photos