Chicago InDesign User Group

Meeting Notes Archive

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Hosted by Digital Bootcamp, Chicago, thanks to Mike Carruth, Commander in Chief

Topic: Adobe InDesign Server
Presenters (in order of appearance):

Tom Petrillo, Adobe Systems
Sanjeev “CJ” Teku, Business Development Manager, Apsiva, Des Plaines, IL;
Jim Cooper, Vice President, Apsiva,

The meeting began with our fearless leader, Clint Funk, informing the group that he will be leaving Chicago for the more pastoral landscape of Colorado. Clint, we’re so sorry to see you go! You did a great job leading this group for some number of years, bringing to it your usual charm, wit and grace, not to mention an excellent grasp of Adobe technology. In his place, Clint has chosen Jim Maivald as his replacement for team leader. Jim comes from a longtime background in desktop publishing technology, with lots of heavy-duty project experience in the trenches and delivering lots of training as well. We welcome Jim as our new leader!

After a brisk Q&A, Tom Petrillo, our Adobe “mensch,” started out with a quick summary of how Macromedia and Adobe are blending their technologies and cultures. Up until now, Flash competed with Acrobat. But now that we’re all one family, the focus is on getting content to a target audience. Today that can show up as Flash content “pushed” to your cell phone (Tom passed around a phone with a cute Go Sushi “video” game to keep you occupied when the line’s busy). Or a Flashcast which uses server technology to push that content to you via the web, or also to your cell phone. Flashcasts are in heavy use in Asia and are moving to the US. Keep your eyes open (always). Servers… good segue to our main topic for the evening.

InDesign Server is a product that currently has a fairly low profile but is gaining visibility in many publishing markets. ID Server is InDesign, having all the same functionality but with an unusual twist. It runs on a server—and has no UI (user interface). The program just waits for information and then it takes off. With the help of a few slides, Tom made a convincing case that automating the production of pages is the next big push in the publishing industry—especially when high volumes demand heavy cranking, and publishers are desperate for a sea change.

Workgroup automation is the answer to high-end editorial workflow. Today you can build a dynamic publishing system that can save you big bucks and work tirelessly for you, and very possibly without the hand-tooling of designers. (Designers watch out!) A perfect candidate is a franchise business. The corporate office uses a web-based UI to push content out to their franchisees, who get to customize that content for their specific market, choosing from a menu of options. That data goes back to the home server for finished pages to be produced, building in the customized options. Or finished PDFs can also be pushed back out to the franchisees for printing and distribution. What more could you ask? ID Server can do anything a designer can do—well, except think! But when properly instructed via C++, plugins, and whatnot, it sure can automate most production tasks, even employing such things as nested styles, creating PDFs, and more. OK, you can all go home now and apply for new jobs! (just kidding.) This is a solution that can revolutionize enterprise publishing and a wide range of vertical publishing markets.

InDesign Server is no off-the-shelf product you can buy from a mail order house. For a company to use ID Server, they work closely with Adobe to develop a custom solution for their particular workflow. It’s systems design and Adobe is an active member of the development team, working with their clients to make a tailored solution work.

Tom’s presentation was followed by both “CJ” Teku and Jim Cooper, who work together to produce catalog production software. Jim is a Vice President at Apsiva, software that’s been developed using ID Server. Here’s the typical scenario. A company has 1000 reps around the world. Each one needs to print some part of the company catalog, displaying the company branding. Three segments of that company make it all happen. Marketing controls the output by setting up the templates, or “stencils” as they call it. Editorial controls the content that comes from the database. Finally, the sales reps create the PDF catalogs on the fly, created to their specs, with branding intact.

Another scenario, CJ had an ad. Based on a SKU#, the system pulls in data for this screwdriver, all content coming from a SQL database, using XML. Using Apsiva software, the content is plugged into the “stencil,” which is a list of attributes populated by database field names, and out comes a finished ad, ready to go. It’s even good for multi-channel publishing, print- and web-ready.

ID Server seemed like an abstract concept when the evening started but seeing how it can work to streamline publishing in a totally automated workflow was, in short, dazzling. This was no sleeper of a meeting. The packed room soaked it in and went home with minds and mouths a-buzzing!

The meeting ended with a generous disbursing of raffle prizes.

—The Chicago InDesign User Group meeting notes have been prepared by Eda Warren, Adobe Certified Training Provider and Adobe Certified Expert on InDesign CS2, http://www.go-training.com/.

Meeting Notes Archive
View notes from past meetings of the Chicago InDesign user group.
• Read notes from other meetings!

Meeting Topics Archive
With user group chapters across the United States, Europe, and Australia, we have gathered quite a bit of information from presenters, Adobe representatives, attendees, and industry experts during the past four years.
• Read all of the notes