InDesign Conference Chicago Closes With a Bang
Almost 800 people from around the world converged in Chicago last week for six days of InDesign and Creative Suite training, networking, and fun. This was the first year that BarryCon (the conference organizer) placed The InDesign Conference and The Creative Suite Conference back-to-back during in a single week, leading to a great cross-polination of ideas and tutorials.
During The InDesign Conference, attendees could choose from among three conference session tracks at any time, covering topics such as Tables (presented by Diane Burns), Cool Text Effects (presented by Pariah S. Burke), PDF workflow (presented by Claudia McCue), InCopy for Designers (by Anne-Marie Concepción), Advanced Color Management (by Chris Murphy), and How InDesign works with other CS applications (presented by me). There were also extra half-day tutorials on Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, InCopy, and other Suite subjects.
While the vast majority of sessions were presented by non-Adobe employees (the conference was partially sponsored by Adobe, but was clearly not an Adobe event), there were a couple of Adobe-led sessions. In one, an impressive array of InDesign engineers, architects, and managers asked for feedback on InDesign, including what features attendees wanted to see in future versions.
During the pre-conference breakfast sessions, third-party companies such as Extensis, ITIP, Triple Triangle, and Teacup Software presented their wares. For example, ITIP showed their very cool InMath plug-in for doing math typesetting in InDesign, and Teacup Software demonstrated their new DataLinker plug-in for linking InDesign documents to spreadsheets and databases.
For more information on the conference, check out these links:
I was one of those fortunate enough to be able to take a week off and immerse myself in both conferences.
Wow. What a terrific production.
Barry and his convention crew were incredibly accommodating, took care of any details that popped up, and accepted both praise and concerns with equal interest. This is production that will only get better and better.
On the training side, I found myself having received my “money’s worth” at least once a day (you know, those “aha!” moments where you slap yourself on the forehead). I’m sure there were more, but after a while my forehead had grown desensitized.
Even with two thick conference notebooks (including the trainer’s notes from every session), I took 70 pages of additional notes of my own. With so much information, it’s going to take me several weeks to begin to integrate it into my daily workflow. I already have begun making changes to my approach to InDesign and the Suite, with both improved efficiency and greater freedom to “tweak” after the fact, without having to redesign elements all over again.
Great work, everyone. Thank you for helping me improve the quality of my work.
I second James in praising Barry and the speakers but I wish to thank Bransilav Milic for being the superstar (G guys, the European kicked our… to all of us) in both conferences and especially during the game show.
Thanks James and Sam! I was really impressed by all the talent, but I agree that Branislav made a great addition to the show. He’ll also be speaking at The InDesign Conference next month in London.