Meeting Summary: Inaugural Meeting

Tue, Oct 6th, 2009 at 6:00 PM

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Event Details

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our chapter's inaugural meeting! We are especially grateful to the JHU/APL volunteers, our featured speakers, our generous sponsors, and the Greater Baltimore Chapter IDUG core members who made the event possible. The meeting was very successful, with more than 50 attendees.

We began the evening with a welcome and networking hour (over pizza, of course). Ken Chaletzky, the Washington, DC, Chapter Representative and an IDUG aficionado, provided invaluable support and shared resources to help us get our chapter up and running. Ken welcomed us all to the meeting and introduced our new Chapter Representative, Magda Saina. Magda called us all to contribute to make this IDUG the best it can be, and she laid out the founding members' vision:

• Connect with fellow professionals
• Share knowledge for mutual growth and empowerment
• Support one another through shared learning
• Inspire through accessible means
• Create dialogues
• Empower the group to be self-sustainable

We introduced some features that we hope will become popular regular events at our meetings: the Answer Desk and Share Your Shorts! (AKA How InDesign Saved the Day). The inimitable Michael Witherell shared his expertise by manning the Answer Desk, and his Share Your Shorts! demo showing how he used the new CS4 variable data merge functionality for a baseball card design project was a home run! (Even more useful resources and tips can be found on Mike's website: www.jetsetcom.net.) We also heard from our own Chapter Rep, Magda Saina, who discussed how InDesign's paragraph and object styles, master pages, and integration with other Adobe products enabled her to design an easy-to-use template that saved the day on a huge poster project.

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.

Our featured speaker, Noha Edell, Solutions Engineer for Adobe Systems, showed us some of the great new features in InDesign CS4. Some of the new interactive capabilities available are creating buttons with rollovers, applying page transitions (wipe, dissolve, fade, and more!) to individual pages or spreads, creating hyperlinks, and exporting these interactive features to SWF or PDF files. For even more complex online documents, CS4 now lets you export your designs to Flash CS4 Professional as XFL files.

Noha also showed us some of the updates to the user interface (tabbed panels!), live preflight, and customizable workspaces. She showed us the added functionality available when placing documents directly from Bridge into InDesign (scrolling through multiple images on the loaded cursor!) and how the new "smart guides" can help make you more efficient. This synergy between Bridge and InDesign was further illustrated by CS4's automated captioning from image metadata via InDesign Scripts. You can get the details on these new CS4 features and more at www.adobe.com/products/indesign/features/?view=topnew.

When you start working with CS4, remember to turn on the What's New menu item under Window > Workspace to highlight the menu commands of new and enhanced features. You can also search for topics by keyword, or browse InDesign online help at www.adobe.com/support/indesign.

RAFFLE WINNERS

Vincent Hughes, Practical Artistry: Light and Exposure for Digital Photographers (O'Reilly Books)
Fran Tucci, Adobe InDesign CS4 One-on-One (O'Reilly Books)
Diane Dorsey, YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts (O'Reilly Books)
Carol Hammer, GLUON Plug-in
Donna Jones, GLUON Plug-in
Peggy Moore, 3-month subscription to Stocklayouts.com template library
Laurel Cullen, 1-year subscription to InDesign Magazine
Richard Meyeroff, 1-year subscription to InDesign Magazine
Marian Chaprnka, 2-day training on any Adobe product at any EEI Communications location
Patricia Percich, 2-day training on any Adobe product at any EEI Communications location
Kristi Marren, 3-day Platinum Pass to InDesign Conference (Washington, DC, November 4–6, 2009)
Gregory Brooks/Angela Hughes Brooks, InDesign CS4 software

Congratulations to all of the winners! We appreciate the raffle tickets everyone bought to help support our IDUG. The Greater Baltimore IDUG is a not-for-profit organization, and all raffle proceeds go toward supporting future IDUG events, booking engaging speakers, securing our meeting location, and providing refreshments. Additional donations and sponsors are welcome!

Upcoming Industry Events

• Want to be a part of the discussion? Join our group on LinkedIn!
We envision using LinkedIn's 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.

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

• Adobe now offers free online eSeminars!
Upcoming topics include the following:

Accessible Content Workflow with Adobe InDesign CS4 and Adobe Acrobat 9
Tuesday, Oct 20th, 2009, at 2:00 p.m. EST
The production of accessible digital documents and electronic books is increasingly important to large and small publishers. Adobe provides tools to help designers and publishers create and distribute electronic documents and books that are accessible to people with disabilities. This session will focus on best practices for the production of accessible PDF documents using Adobe InDesign CS4 as the authoring tool in conjunction with Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro. The presentation will provide an overview of an accessible content production workflow, discussing both the strengths and limitations of the tools and the techniques.

Sign up today and learn:
* An overview of accessible electronic document design considerations
* Best practice techniques for authoring accessible PDF files using Adobe InDesign CS4
* Where to find more resources and information
* And more...

Register at: http://eventregs.ado-accessiblecontentworkflow.sgizmo.com/ .
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eBooks Everywhere—Engaging readers with the Adobe eBook platform
Thursday, Oct 22nd, 2009, at 1:00 p.m. EST
Discover how the Adobe eBook platform makes reading an immersive experience everywhere and across devices. Join us for an hour-long complimentary online eSeminar and explore how the Adobe eBook platform enables reader engagement through a streamlined workflow for authoring, protecting, and delivering digital books. Hosted by Adobe product experts, this eSeminar shows how to enable a seamless reading experience across multiple screen types and why an open, interoperable eBook platform serves your readers best.

Who should attend?
Publishers, booksellers, libraries, and digital content aggregators

Register at: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=1 535237&loc=en_us.
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Photoshop Lightroom eSeminar—Your path to amazing photography
Tuesday, Nov 10th at 2:00 PM EST
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 software is essential for today's digital photography workflow. Now you can quickly import, process, manage, and showcase your images—from one shot to an entire shoot. Quickly batch process, convert, and apply metadata to your photos on import. Easily make selections with multiple viewing and comparison options. Adjust and enhance color, exposure, and tonal curves nondestructively on more than 190 camera raw file formats, as well as JPEG, TIFF, and PSD files. Every change you make to an image is automatically tracked, so you can return to any state with a single click. With Lightroom 2, you spend less time in front of the computer and more time behind the lens.

Sign up today and learn how you can:
* Create proper digital exposure
* Import images
* Include metadata and keywords
* Organize images through Lightroom's Library module
* Create collections
* Make virtual copies
* Create development modules
* Export modules (Slideshow, Web, and Print)
* And more...

Register at: http://eventregs.ado-govt-pslightroom-20091007.sgizmo.com/ .

Comments from attendees

"I've been to a lot of users' groups, and you guys really have it all together."

"Phenomenal overview . . . and more! [Noha's] delivery was clear and palatable, even for beginners."

"Michael Witherell's input was invaluable."

"Wonderful! Great to have a group 'close to home.'"

"I get to laugh and learn, a great combo, and I'm motivated to learn more."

"I like the idea of having group members give a short presentation on their 'personal best.' Best meeting I've been to all year."

Next Meeting

Mark Your Calendars! Next Meeting Date: January 19, 2010
More details to come.

Photos from this Meeting

See the photos