Theme of ID Conference: Make InDesign Work for You

The prevailing theme of the InDesign Conference Master Class in Seattle last week was definitely "taking control." Not that the attendees weren't talented creative types, but this group seemed to be particularly concerned with how to work as elegantly, efficiently, and painlessly as possible. Sessions on .INX, XML, and scripts were where it was at. InDesigners have clearly taken responsibility for finding workflows or writing scripts that solve their own problems. Dave Saunders, the guru of InDesign scripting, was everywhere, often answering questions with the phrase "I've got a script for that." (He did also point out that O'Reilly's new Short Cut, Scripting InDesign with JavaScript, was "the only thing out there" for people who wanted to learn how to solve their own problems.)

Empowerment (for lack of a less touchy-feely word) was also the message from Adobe Sr. Product Manager for InDesign/InCopy, Chad Siegel. In the general morning session on Wednesday, Siegel showed us a very brief look at some CS3 features in the works, all of which are designed to help users gain control. (David Blatner, the conference chair, did a great wrap up of the CS3 preview here.) Of course, Siegel mentioned universal binary. (I'm convinced there is an internal Adobe memo somewhere that insists all demos of any CS3 product must be done on a Mactel and use the words "screaming fast.") Later, Seigel hosted a session where this very technically savvy set of users talked about their wish list for CS3. The room had Adobe engineers scattered around the edges weighing in and asking follow-up questions, and a laptop-equipped Adobe note-taker writing it all down. My guess is that popular scripts probably give Adobe a fairly good idea of what power users are looking for in the next version of InDesign.