Detroit InDesign User Group

Meeting Summary

Complex topic clearly presented with great examples.

Attendee

VDP, XMPie, POD -- Alphabet Soup for InDesign?
Thu, Feb 5th, 2009 at 6:30 PM
Schoolcraft College

Event Details

The pizza was hot and the cookies were ready for the 160 attendees who came to Schoolcraft College on February 5. Everyone received a notepad and pen from Whitlock http://wbsusa.com and lots of product handouts.

The main topic of the evening covered VDP, POD, XMPie, pURL, RURL, ROI. No, it’s not alphabet soup, but direct mail marketing terms you need to know. For those unfamiliar with the lingo, and those who wanted to see the latest in marketing advancements, we were shown how Variable Data Printing (VDP) and Print on Demand (POD) will help to get a better Return on Investment (ROI) for direct mail pieces.

Presenting first was Scott Houck of XMPie. XMPie Inc., a business unit of Xerox Corporation, is the leading provider of software for cross-media, variable data one-to-one marketing. Its solutions help businesses create and manage highly effective cross-media campaigns, leveraging their market and customer information to achieve dramatic returns on their marketing investments. XMPie, Inc. published a detailed white paper called “Revolutionizing Marketing: The New Power of Cross-Media Communications” that addresses the unique challenges, solutions and opportunities presented by cross-media marketing. This white paper defines cross-media and illustrates both the benefits to be gained and the investments required when embarking upon multi-channel, one-to-one marketing communications. The white paper is available for download at www.xmpie.com/whitepaper.

F. Jeffery Parr from ArborOakland Group followed up with some local case studies and real-world projects.

After our break Chita Hunter demonstrated how to use the InDesign Data Merge function to create VDP files in both CS3 and CS4. She makes it look so easy!

Then Trish Witkowski, Chief Folding Fanatic, showed the FoldRite Template Master plug-in for InDesign which elicited many oooohs and aaaahs from the audience.

A bonus for the evening was a silent auction that included software Adobe donated. Funds raised will be used for special speakers and meeting needs. Thank you to all the bid winners!

We wrapped up the evening with a mega raffle. More prizes than ever before included Best Buy gift cards, books, a subscription to StockLayouts template library, an InData plug-in, a FoldRite Template Master plug-in and one copy of CS4 Design Premium.

Thank You

Thanks to the following sponsors:

* Adobe Systems Inc. www.adobe.com

* Peachpit www.peachpit.com

* O’Reilly www.orielly.com

* Wiley www.wiley.com

* Pearson Education www.pearson.com

* Xerox Corp. www.xerox.com

* ArborOakland www.arboroakland.com for the gift cards

* Stocklayout www.stocklayouts.com

* XChange International www.xchangeuk.com

* FoldRite www.foldfactory.com

* Schoolcraft College (www.schoolcraft.edu) for the meeting space and food, especially the Computer Graphics Technology Department for event support.

Comments from the evaluation sheets

Scott and Jeff were great. I only wish we had more time and more examples.

XMPie demo was very informative and looks like a very valuable tool for marketing.

Complex topic clearly presented with great examples.

I found Chita’s Data Merge presentation very valuable.

I never knew about Data Merge in InDesign but it will be useful to me.

FoldRite—cool product! I had no idea something like that existed.

FoldRite is an incredible tool. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

The light show was entertaining. [you had to be there]

Great venue, excellent food, informative speakers, overall very valuable.

I was impressed with the organization of this user group.