I started out my career as a graphic designer, getting my hands dirty on every design product Adobe could come up with. But after a few years I learned that I had an even bigger love for teaching Adobe products to designers in a classroom environment and speaking at conferences. So that’s what I did for the next 8 years, through out Europe, the US and Australia, before I joined Adobe in 2015.

Last year, I was a guest speaker at Adobe MAX 2016 in San Diego. And I was thrilled to learn that my suggestion to organise an Adobe InDesign session for advanced users was approved. Not only was I excited to put on my (classroom) trainer shoes again, I got to host a hands-on lab session for 100 people at a time. And the best thing of it all was that I got to do that 3 times in total during the MAX conference.

Why I came up with my session

During my years of learning Adobe software and visiting conferences and fairs, I found that my biggest gripe was that I almost never found people or speakers with real top level knowledge. So during events I’d come up with my list of questions that I wanted to ask the speaker or trainer at the end of their session (yeah, I was THAT guy), but was disappointed to learn that it was hard to get definitive answers from them. Plus, many of the “advanced” sessions I did were also usually too basic, probably to try and get more attendees by making them more accessible. So for Adobe MAX, I wanted to give the attendees a session they could really benefit from, with techniques they could use almost every day based on my own experience as a designer and trainer. But also fast-paced, using advanced functionality that would inspire InDesign veterans to do more with the product. So I came up with projects and scenarios for the automation of common print projects like catalogs, business cards and brochures using style automation, shortcuts and regular expressions. And I named my lab session the InDesign CC Deep Dive.

The women of Walt Disney’s Animation

At the end of one of my Deep Dive sessions a lady approached me, enquiring if she could ask me a few extra questions. Her name was Tamara Khalaf and she’s the Head of Design for Walt Disney Animation Studios in Los Angeles. Her questions were related to a large project she was working on and I could tell this project had a very high priority. Tamara was working on a huge 400 page book called “Ink & Paint – The women of Walt Disney’s Animation” by Mindy Johnson. A book that talks about the history and contribution of women in Disney’s studio, and how they painstakingly brought pencil drawings to vibrant, dimensional life. Sensing the importance of her project, I suggested Tamara to meet up with her a few hours later at the conference Community Pavilion, where we could sit down to further discuss her project. Of course Tamara came well prepared and brought the entire project with her on a USB drive. I spent the next hour combing through her InDesign document, trying to understand how it was structured, styled, how text input was managed and what Tamara’s main questions were. And just like Tamara suspected, despite having a well structured document, she was losing way too much time on individual text frames, call out boxes, spacing, captions, headers and other design elements. Luckily for her I was able to teach her a few tricks and techniques that allowed her to automate most of these aspects so she could spend more time on the rest of the layout. In the end, I gave her as much information as I could during the limited time we had and she was visibly happy with the things she had learned. She saved her work and packed up the notes she so vigorously took during that hour and went on her way. A few months later I received a thank you message via LinkedIn from Tamara, saying she finally finished the book and that it was ready for print. She even wanted to send me a printed copy but in the end the 2.8kg book was proven too expensive to ship to Belgium.

InDesign CC Deep Dive – 2017

Fast forward to today. Recently, I was asked back to Adobe MAX 2017 in Las Vegas to teach the same InDesign Deep Dive session. My 2016 session had apparently awarded me a “MAX Master” title and I received further kudos for being the top overall speaker.

Adobe InDesign CC 2017 Deep Dive

And to my surprise, I had received another message from Tamara saying she was again attending Adobe MAX and that she brought a printed copy for me to take home. And before I knew it, I was kicking off my lab session and noticed her sitting behind one of the lab computers again. Following along, taking notes, and learning as much as she can from the updated course exercises. After my session had ended she came up to the stage to say hi again and explained how she finished the project during the months following our initial acquaintance. And in her hands she was holding a massive book. “Here”, she said. “We finally printed it, and I brought you a copy, as promised”.

And before I knew it we were going through this amazing book. And not only was it beautifully and professionally designed, it also had so many stories about how all the classic Disney characters came to life. Inside the book I also found a hand written thank you note from Tamara, which I still keep at my desk at home, next to the book. A wonderful souvenir.

Last thoughts

I attend many events and conferences through out the year. And it’s hard to keep track of the many times when I’m showing off Adobe tricks during a live presentation or somewhere on the web. Tricks that matter and really influence the way designers work. And because of that it’s sometimes easy to forget that, as a presenter, we really have to keep that close relationship with the end user. Whether they’re working as freelancers, working for a small agency, or for a worldwide enterprise, designers are the same, everywhere. And the size of their contract or employer has nothing to do with the fact that every designer wants to learn techniques they can actually use and apply in their daily projects. And sitting down for a little while to actually talk about their work and suggest how they can make it better can go a long way. So never underestimate the power of a conference because it can change lives.

If you’re interested in purchasing the book, it’s available via Amazon.com

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Adobe MAX 2017

With around 11,000 registered attendees, this year’s Adobe MAX conference is the biggest ever. And with that also the largest creative event in the world. Special keynotes, new technology reveals, special guests, a few hundred breakout sessions and a great party, MAX has it all. Like the pilgrimage to Mecca, it’s my opinion that designers worldwide should visit Adobe MAX at least once in their lifetime.

This year I’ll be doing my InDesign Deep Dive lab session again, just like last year (though with updated materials). I was lucky enough to have been awarded with the highest overall presenter and session score for my session at MAX 2016. So I made sure to deliver a top quality session again this year. With 4 sessions of 100 attendees each sold out I’m hoping everyone is as excited as I am.

Other conferences

I’m also visiting and presenting at other conferences this year. Unfortunately not outside of Europe. As you may know by now I cover the Benelux region (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg) so the bulk of my activities always happen there. Though I really enjoyed the Making Design conference in Oslo last June, that was an amazing experience.

If you’re from the region you can still see me present

• The Dutch Design Week at Sint Lucas College in Eindhoven on 26 and 27th Oct.
• The Adobe Symposium in Amsterdam on 6th Nov.
• After MAX event in Antwerp on 9th Nov.
• UsbyNight in Antwerp on 23-24-25th Nov.

It’s been a while

Yes, I know. I haven’t updated this blog in a long time. And needless to say, I’ve been very busy, both professionally and in my personal life. But this year has brought so many exciting things and Adobe has really been producing a lot of new content like

• The frequent Adobe XD updates
• Team Projects for Adobe’s video apps
• The new Adobe Scan app
• Project Felix
• Really cool updates for Adobe Stock for Enterprise
• Adobe Sign improvements
• The strategic partnership between Microsoft and Adobe
• Very exciting updates to the video tools

… and of course the upcoming new features which will be launched during Adobe MAX in a few days. So stay tuned for those. In the mean time you can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter if you want to connect or have me as a speaker at your conference. Talk soon!

The post It’s that time of the year again appeared first on Bart Van de Wiele.

Though already “old news”. A few weeks ago I learned that I was named an Adobe MAX Master for my InDesign sessions. This means I was one of the top 20 speakers at the conference. And not only that, I was also awarded the speaker with the highest overall score. So a big thank you to everyone who attended my sessions and supported me. I hope to see all of you again this year in Las Vegas during MAX 2017!

I’m ecstatic to announce I’ll be speaking at the Adobe MAX 2016 conference in San Diego this year.  I’ve spoken at several other events and conferences overseas. But the sheer size of the conference (probably around 9.000 creatives this year), labs, sessions, announcements and other overall craziness makes MAX a totally unique event that you should attend at least once in your creative life. Something to scratch off the bucket list!

Ok, so what’s the gig?

I’ll be hosting a 90-min hands-on lab for Adobe InDesign users. MAX has a whole range of InDesign sessions available going from an introduction to Adobe InDesign to other specialties like handling good typography, creating ePUBS and other fun sessions.

I’ll be hosting an “InDesign Deep Dive” session showing off more advanced techniques. This session is ideal for anyone who has a basic understanding of Adobe InDesign and wants to take their skills to a higher level. A few features that we’ll be using  are (but not limited to):

• Advanced style settings, including Nested and Object Styles.
• An introduction to basic and advanced GREP expressions to automate formatting.
• How to use InDesign’s Preflight options and avoid common print errors.
• How to use variable data using Text Variables and Data Merge.
• Set up a collaborative workflow using CC Libraries and Adobe Stock.
• A series of time saving tips and tricks, and much more!

Off course I’m not only happy to be part of the MAX speaking community this year. I’ll also have the chance to meet up with so many friends of mine from around the world.

You can sign up for my session here.

Two years ago I attended my first MAX (pre-Adobe) and wrote  down my impressions. Read the old article here.

I hope to see you all there!

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I just got back from my first Adobe MAX 2014 in Los Angeles and have to say I was impressed with the event organisation. Long time ago I attended the only 2 MAX editions that were organised in Europe. These were in Barcelona 2007 and Milan 2008. But the original MAX in L.A. is a whole different ball game. The scale of the event was a lot larger and felt better organised and more professional. Just like the previous years Adobe chose the L.A. Convention Center as their primary location for all the networking, sessions and hands-on labs. While the main keynotes and “Sneaks” were held in the Nokia Theatre across the street. And these facilities were easily able to hold the nearly 5.000 attendees while keeping them happy and entertained. Here’s my Adobe MAX 2014 report.

My MAX

The main MAX event took place on monday to wednesday, 6-8 October, but was preceded with 2 days of pre-conference sessions on saturday and sunday. These sessions allowed you to deep-dive into specific topics like Adobe Photoshop techniques (with mad professor and Photoshop expert Russel Brown), Adobe DPS and other hands-on labs for a full day. These labs came fully equipped with Mac or PC computers and provided iPads if applicable, and this for rooms to up to 70 attendees at a time. Of course you can’t just expect every attendee to have the same pace when clicking or following instructions so Technical Assistants (TA’s) were used to support any attendee that might get into trouble or got left behind during an exercise. For my first MAX I was lucky enough to have been invited as a TA to support 5 of the Adobe DPS sessions. And because of this organisation, some of the sessions felt like a well oiled machine.

Equipment was provided, printed handouts distributed and extra information was passed on by sharing URLs or a DropBox folder. I got there on friday night after a long 25hr trip (yes there were flight delays involved) and started my “shift” on the sunday pre-conference session.

Keynotes

After having picked up my attendee badge on monday it was time for the main Adobe MAX event to start . The main keynotes were held in the Nokia Theatre, about a 5min walk from the L.A. Conference Center and after about a 10min queue in the hot Californian sun (that was a seriously hot day) I was able to claim a nice seat with a view onto the main stage. After the spectacular MAX introduction video it was time for Shantayu Narayen (Adobe’s CEO) to jump on stage and talk about Adobe’s focus for the coming year.

Apart from the very cool new features for our favourite Creative Cloud products it seems that the main Adobe message had to do with tablets and mobile devices.

“Mobile devices are no longer used for just consuming content, but also for creating content.”

And a few demos on the mobile interface of Adobe Illustrator on the Microsoft Surface Tablet 3 did convince me that this device can be used as a tool for designers. And who was better to explain this than Microsoft’s CEO himself, Satya Nadella. Adobe and Microsoft also announced an upcoming partnership and work together on upcoming technology. I’ve always been a Mac guy and would never go back to Windows. I love my iPad and iPhone and know they’re not perfect, but what device is? And I think that Adobe also knows that a lot of designers are Mac users so how can Adobe and Microsoft start convincing designers of exploring or test driving Microsoft technology? Well, giving all 5.000 attendees a free Microsoft Surface Pro3, a Surface Pro keyboard and a year subscription to Office 365 sure helped. I have to say I’ve never seen 5.000 people (of which most were Mac users) give a standing ovation that fast.

The Surface Pro came pre-installed with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop so designers could test drive their new toy the moment they opened up the box. Good move Adobe and Microsoft, and thanks! The rest of the monday morning keynote showed off a few of the new features that Creative Cloud had to offer including the new mobile apps (read on for more about those).

The keynotes on tuesday were presented by 4 people that were not Adobe employees. These speakers included:

• Ami Vitale: who shared her life experience as a photographer and the magnificent things she’s encountered while living in conflict areas like Afrika, Kashmir and other places. The stories she had and the images she showed us were moving, sometimes sad but also sometimes pretty funny.
• Jason Seiler: a true artist who hand paints life like people portraits for magazines like Time, the New Yorker, news papers and other major publishing brands. During his presentation he guided us through his portfolio and we discovered how he works and how he approaches a new project
• Weird Al Yankovich: Weird Al isn’t that well known in Europe but I do remember him from many years ago. I watched one of his films when I was a kid and always thought his parody music video’s like “Eat it” were hilarious. Then he seemed to have dropped off of the radar for a long number of years and it’s only recently that his internet videos caught my eye. Weird Al talked about creativity, the industry and how important the internet has become for his business.
• Lee Hirsch: a moviemaker who has started a nationwide campagne against bullying. After being bullied himself as a child he took it upon himself to help other children and create awareness of this phenomenon that sometimes even drives 11 year olds to commit suicide. His session was pretty emotional and he was able to promote his upcoming movie “Bully” to the audience. And to help him out even more Adobe decided to donate $5 for every tweet that had the hashtag #AdobeMAX that morning. And after having seen the amount of mobile devices in the room I’m sure they were able to raise a lot of money.

New mobile apps

Thanks to growing screen sizes and spectacular increase of technical performance Adobe was ready to launch a total of 7 new mobile applications. Applications for drawing, creating Photoshop brushes and even compositing video for Adobe Premiere, it looks like creative designers have more tools (or should I say toys?) than ever to express themselves using their mobile devices.

Personally I’m not entirely convinced yet about all the applications that were presented that morning. I really like a few of these applications like Adobe Brush to create custom brushes thanks to an intuitive touch interface and your camera. Or quick video compositing using Adobe Premiere Clip. But some of the apps like Adobe Shape, which allows to trace over objects with vector curves directly from your camera, don’t really seem that productive to me. Sure they’re fun to play around with but the idea of using it as an accurate production tool for recreating shapes or objects with vector curves doesn’t fly with me. But whatever happens, my main hope is that Adobe will continue to support these mobile apps instead of discontinuing them after 2 years like we’ve seen with the previous generation of Adobe mobile apps. But I do have to say they seem to have given these apps a lot more thought then the previous generation of apps.

Sessions

I’ve never seen so many different sessions and speakers before during an event. With around 200 speakers and around 300 different sessions and hands-on labs there surely was something for everyone to enjoy. Of course there were repeats in case you had conflicts in your personal session agenda, plus not all sessions were technical. There were also enough speakers that only talked about trends, creativity and inspiration. Most of the sessions and speakers I saw were pretty good and the presenters were able to manage themselves quite well on stage. Some might have been a tad boring but others were hilarious. Because I was TA’ing 5 sessions throughout the conference I wasn’t able to attend as many sessions as I wanted to myself.

But the learning experience from helping out during the presentations did make up for that a little bit. The sessions I did manage to attend had to do with Adobe DPS and others with HTML5 animations since I wanted to learn more about HTML for future tablet publishing projects. But I’m happy with the sessions I was able to assist and even got to present a specific section of the DPS App Building session together with Bob Bringhurst.

Entertainment

Everyone got spoiled at MAX. The food, drinks and especially the service was great and I can’t really see how anyone could have had any complaints. Everyone received a free Surface Pro and was able to take advantage of other commercial deals that were offered by the sponsors in the Community Pavilion. The pavilion also allowed you to take a break and just have fun between sessions. There were craft tables where you could be creative with objects, paint and glitter, you could build your own lego race car and test it on the track, play huge versions of scrabble, play video games, design your own t-shirts, challenge someone in a Photoshop show off, get your professional picture taken for your social media profile or just sit and relax on one of the swings.

And then there was the evening entertainment. On tuesday we all got to enjoy Sneaks, a one hour session in the Nokia Theatre where Adobe shows off the new technology they’re working on. This session was hosted by Adobe’s Ben Forta and actor / director Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

The technology I saw was pretty spectacular and I’m very excited about what Adobe is going to do with it. Part of the charm was that the presenters for these new technologies were the actual developers themselves. Most of them had a very strong foreign accent but were still able to do their presentation in English, sometimes by adding a lot of silly jokes. And then it was time for the infamous MAX Bash. Adobe rented the outside area in front of the Staples Center (which is next to the Conference Center) and transformed it into an open air party. And there you could find an open bar, great food, dance music, light effects and art. Not to forget the 5.000 people who were up for a party. And the cherry on the cake was a 45min private concert from Kings of Leon. Not too shabby for an industry conference.

Kings Of Leon in action at Adobe MAX 2014

Making a conference work

I’ve always loved going to conferences, especially in the United States. The advantages you get from these conferences can be big. My personal gains from conferences are;

1. Sessions: my primary focus is of course learning and attending sessions. So I need to be sure that I’ll pick up tips, new programs, or a new (or updated) sense of direction.
2. Organisation: because I’m personally involved with organising small events in Belgium I think attending sessions overseas gives me a great learning platform because I get to be an attendee myself. So the personal experience I get as an attendee helps me to get things organised for my own sessions and events. The things I pick up could be about how I enrolled, how communication is done, their social media policy, surveys, catering, support, etc.
3. Speakers and keynotes: because I regularly spend time in a classroom environment or on stage as a speaker I constantly pick up tips on improving my own presentations, my slides, technical setup and even get to observe how people improvise, answer questions, introduce themselves or (try to) be funny.
4. Networking: the previous bullets in this list are pretty straightforward and most people just go with the flow. But networking is different and I do believe that the word “work” in “networking” is a true fact. And it sometimes takes some courage to let yourself be heard during a session or just step up to someone out of the blue. But I’ve learned that growing your network and socialising with specialists, Adobe staff and like-minded people is key to growing your own business and staying at the top of your game. And at MAX I was able to do that. I was finally able to meet a lot of Adobe staff that until now I had only “met” only by following each other on Twitter, LinkedIn or by email. And of course I got to hang out with many of my friends and “colleagues” again like Mike Rankin, Sandee Cohen, Nigel French, Keith Gilbert, David Blatner or Anne-Marie Conception. But though you have a great opportunity to do networking it does seem that Adobe wasn’t actively driving this. For this I think a conference like PePcon does a far better job where the sense of a community was also a lot stronger.

Conclusion

Being back home I can say that the trip to Adobe MAX was well worth it. I know that not everything is as awesome as it could / should be e.g. certain sessions could have been better and I had to travel around 25 hrs to get to Los Angeles. But still I think MAX is the type of conference where you have to make it work for yourself. You have to step up, take certain initiatives and make sure you can reach your goals during the days of the conference. I have learned several new things and am happy that I can tick all four of the boxes that I described in my previous paragraphs. So I’m very much hoping to go again next year, preferably as a speaker since I’m convinced I can bring a few very interesting sessions to the table.

The post My Adobe MAX 2014 report appeared first on Bart Van de Wiele.

So if you get stuck during any of the following sessions you might see me appearing out of nowhere:

• P2026 – Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Training – Room 511C
• L2716 – Getting Started with Digital Publishing Suite
• L3445 – Learning to Build Apps with Digital Publishing Suite

The Adobe MAX audience.

If you’re not familiar with Adobe MAX 2014 then I’d suggest you quickly check your calendar, choose your favourite sessions from the site and book yourself a flight.  It’s an amazing event with:

• 191 speakers
• 228 labs
• 4000 attendees
• world class speakers and specialists
• live demos, prerelease software and sneak peaks

So I really hope to see you in Los Angeles this October!

The post I’m a technical assistant at Adobe MAX 2014 appeared first on Bart Van de Wiele.