Washington, D.C. InDesign User Group Home Meeting Summary Archive

Meeting Summary

New Tools for Your InDesign
Wed, Jan 20th, 2010 at 6:00 PM
U.S. Navy Memorial Auditorium
Event Details

On a cold January night, about 100 members of the DC-Area InDesign User Group attended the first meeting of the new decade. And, based on the survey feedback, it was worth their time. Of course, the pizza and refreshments were enjoyed by one and all, but it was the speakers that people came to see.

I’d been hearing great things about GridIron Flow long before Steve Forde’s (GridIron CEO) presentation. I’d heard Flow described as a “workflow manager,” or “job tracker,” or “file organizer.” All of those descriptions are probably true, but wholly insufficient to impart how helpful this product can be to creatives, their supervisors, and management (for independents, sometimes all three are the same person).

As a high-tech printing company, we have always been on the leading edge of what’s happening. One area that has always mystified us was finding a cost-effective way to track the time our prepress/creative folks spent working on client projects. We’ve tried time sheets, both paper and digital, but they took far too much time. Many people jump from task to task, job to job. Flow tracks all this information without requiring any additional steps and virtually no impact on system performance. People just do their work and the data “magically” appears.

For the creative, all file relationships are maintained; files don’t get lost or inadvertently destroyed. Histories are maintained. And, so much more. As several people have said to me, until you see it in action, you can’t appreciate what it can do for you.

Steve gave a great presentation. But he realized that he had just whetted our appetites. To make sure we would all get a chance to try out GridIron Flow in our own environments, he offered a FREE COPY of this $299 product to EVERY MEMBER IN ATTENDANCE. If you missed the meeting, you missed this generous present.

Check out http://www.gridironsoftware.com to learn more.

The second presentation was from one of our favorites, Mike Witherell. He did an exceptional job showing us where to find Javascripts, mostly free of charge. Some come with InDesign, while others can be found at various websites. To learn more, download the PDF at the bottom of this page.

Mike restricted his presentation to Javascripts because they are platform independent, whereas Applescripts only run on Macs.

We were reminded that scripts aren’t just for esoteric special requirements, but that they are just as important for everyday activities. Scripts that clean up text files, correct inconsistent color naming, style usage, and more. Download that PDF below or go to Mike's site, http://www.jetsetcom.net for lots of useful information to make your life a little easier.

We concluded the evening by raffling off a number of books, EEI training sessions, magazine subscriptions and, of course, a copy of InDesign CS4.

If you weren’t there, you missed a great meeting. Just look at the comments below.

Thank you

To my colleague, Laura d'All of Copy General, who handled registration, and basically organizes everything.

To Jim Gormley, "Dr. Pizza," who makes sure we have plenty of tasty, hot, and fragrant pizza pies.

To Morgan and the staff of the U.S. Navy Memorial Auditorium for their fantastic facility.

To Julien, who got the ice and is always willing to help out.

To EEI, for their consistent support.

And, finally, to Noha Edell, whose enthusiastic support and limitless willingness to share makes running this user group worthwhile. Adobe's representative to our community is really part of our family.

Comments from attendees

Steve Forde’s software (Flow) is a leap ahead, especially for versioning, rename tracking — amazing for collaboration.

Mike Witherell needs a TV show.

Steve Forde’s demo of Flow was outstanding. This is the kind of software that really changes the way we work.

Mike Witherell: You never cease to amaze me. Your scripts and sense of humor are equally great. Come back again!

Thank you! Finally, an application that can help me explain what I do AND why making all those changes is going to be costly.

Flow may be the best thing I’ve seen…ever.

With Flow, I’ll never have a missing link because I forgot a file was located on my external HD! (Thank you.)

One of the most valuable meetings I have attended.

Never heard of Flow before today, but now I NEED it. OK, my mom would correct me, but I REALLY WANT it.

Mike did an awesome job. Fantastic teacher.

And to sum it all up:

Two great speakers, lots of free software, after free pizza! What more can one ask for?

Next Meeting

March 16, 2010
Please join us as our member Victoria Richards,Visual Information Specialist at Social Security Administration, shares her tips and techniques around creating accessible content using InDesign and Acrobat.
--mark your calendar now.


Ken Chaletzky
Chapter Representative
Washington, D.C. InDesign User Group
washingtondc@indesignusergroup.com

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Attached File/s

• JetSet_JavaScripts_2010_01_20.pdf  -  Delete...