March 2010 – Vancouver InDesign User Group Meeting

On Tuesday March 23, 2010, was the first meeting of the year of the Vancouver InDesign User Group, arranged by Jeff Kew, The Chapter Representative. The topic this meeting was Tips & Tricks hosted by Seattle native David Blatner of InDesignSecrets. The meeting was a great turnout as nearly 120 members attended the Vancouver Film School, http://www.vfs.com.

David presented a 90-minute tips and tricks session which was packed full of interesting tips, shortcuts and tools you never even knew existed! He also introduced us to a range of extras that are available to download  to take InDesign further with even more functionality!

At the end of the meeting Jeff and David drew the winners of the numerous door prizes, I was lucky enough to come away with a copy of ‘Real World Photoshop CS4′ book.

David Blatner is the author or co-author of 15 books, including Real World InDesign and InDesign for QuarkXPress Users, and presents many InDesign titles at Lynda.com. He is the editorial director of InDesign Magazine. Over a half a million copies of his books are in print in 13 languages, and his Blatner Tools plug-ins help InDesign users improve their productivity. He has spoken at conferences and workshops around North America, Europe, Australia, Japan, and South Africa. You can find more about David at:

http://63p.com/
or
http://indesignsecretslive.com/
or
http://indesignsecrets.com/

Here are a list of some of the prizes that were donated and given away at the meeting, it is a great selection of plugins, books and programs:

Adobe CS4 Design Premium software ($1799 value) – That’s right, it’s the full bundle, not just a single title.
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/design/

One free pass to attend the InDesign Secrets Seminar mentioned below in upcoming industry events ($99.00 value)

Books and DVDs on various print to online topics:
http://www.focalpress.com/
http://oreilly.com/
http://www.peachpit.com/index.aspx

InDesign plug-ins from the following companies:

65 Bit – Multido & Reveal (these are free, get them now)
http://www.65bit.com/products/products.shtm

Markzware – PageZephyr
http://pagezephyr.com/about/

Zevrix – LinkOptimizer, BatchOutput, InPreflight
http://www.zevrix.com/index.php

Visit the Vancouver InDesign User Group for information on the next meeting
David Blatner is also hosting the InDesignSecrets Live! 2010 North American Tour which is coming to Vancouver April 21st

Need to get more done in less time? Do you use Adobe InDesign? This full-day fast-paced fun-filled seminar presented by an InDesign guru will give you the tips tricks and techniques you need to make the leap from “user” to “Power User!”

InDesign is an industrial-strength application but it can only perform well when you know what buttons to press which features to take advantage of and how best to use them.

There is an InDesign Secrets Seminar coming to Vancouver on April 21st. Go to http://idbc.eventbrite.com/ to learn more about that. IDUG members get a 10% entry discount (use the code “IDUG” without the quotes).

But now, back to our amazing April 2nd meeting. As I’ve already asked, and like it says below, *please* register to attend, and then, attend! We need critical mass to make this meeting a success.