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April 18, 2007

What a day April 18^th was. People were lined up out the door and down the sidewalk waiting for registration to open at the Washington area’s launch of CS3. More than 450 attendees and sponsors had signed up for this sold-out all-day event organized by the DC-Area InDesign User Group.

Upon signing in, each attendee received a personalized tote bag filled with goodies: Layers magazine, info from the sponsors, a half-gig flash drive containing everything about CS3 and special offers.

Then it was on to the refreshments and exhibits, though many went into the theatre first to secure good seats. Hot coffee and snacks complemented the tables of equipment and information provided by our sponsors. This time, we had almost all the sponsors from the CS2 launch returning: Adobe, Apple, Copy General, EEI Communications, MacMedics, Mac Business Solutions, Typefi and Xerox.

The morning started with a welcome from Chapter Rep, Ken Chaletzky of Copy General. He reviewed the schedule for the day and thanked all those who helped make this event a success.

Our featured presenters, the ever-popular Noha Edell and Chris Converse began by giving everyone a new features highlight for CS3 covering InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and Bridge. Then they dug in deep into what the improvements are to each package.

Even in a full day, not everything could be covered. But the cheering and applauding crowd made it clear that they loved what they saw. Real time demos of real applications at work, that was what everyone wanted to see. And, when things didn’t go as expected—well, people loved that, too. It kind of reflected real life.

After the lunch break, Noha and Chris continued with more demos of features. Later in the afternoon, guest speaker Janice Reese covered, “JDF: Bridge the Communications Gap from Creation to Prepress.”  This was followed by Chris Converse finishing up with Dreamweaver and Flash.

Snowflake Animation Script
Here is the source file which contains the random snowflake generator. This file have been save backwards to be compatible with Flash 8.
Download [ZIP: 55 KB]  

AJAX (using Adobe's Spry framework)
These files are used to complete the Travel Guide website. The file "tour_schedule.html" contains the Spry objects, while the file "tours.xml" contains all of the data accessed by Spry objects.
Download [ZIP: 550 KB]  

We ended the event with our customary raffle where we gave away over thirty prizes including two copies of CS3 Design Premium Edition. Our venue, The Shakespeare Theatre got into the act (pardon the pun) by offering attendees 50% off tickets to the current performance (except Friday and Saturday nights). Just call or visit the box offce and mention “Copy General” to receive your discount. No on-line orders.

Here's what attendees had to say

"The humor and wit lent the presentations a nice, light feel. A fun day of learning!"

"I LOVED THIS PRESENTATION!!! Very imformative. Speakers make this event fantastic! Very enjoyable. Phenominal. The energy these 2 presenters have is wonderful! I want to attend all events these 2 present! Work well together."

"Thanks for all the hard work getting this together."

"Keep doing these programs."

"Networking with other people in a similar industry is very important to remaining technically competent in my field. This seminar is a key component to doing that."

The excitement and enthusiasm could be felt through the crowd as they exited the building at the end. Everyone was off to order (or try to get their boss to order) CS3 so that they could try out what they had just seen.

Special thanks to the staff of Copy General who put in hours and hours creating and stuffing the bags, buying the goodies, setting-up and taking-down. Also, thanks to Mitch Osborne for taking the great photos displayed on this site.

Ken Chaletzky
Copy General Corp.
Washington, D.C. Chapter Representative

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