InDesign Conference

200 mostly advanced InDesign users from across Australia and elsewhere, with a substantial influx from New Zealand, led by top experts and speakers (I almost said entertainers!) such as Sandee Cohen and Deke McClelland, led by David Blatner.

It had to work, and though in the weeks prior to this group's first overseas conference seemed to be at best somewhat chaotic, the event ran perfectly. One of the assistants to organizer Barry Anderson admitted however that it was like the proverbial duck -- smoothly moving ahead but with the feet paddlingmadly beneath the surface.

I gained a lot, not least from the very last session where Deke gave me an understanding of XML working with InDesign in about 10 minutes, after I've spent hours and hours over the last couple of years, on the Web and buying several books, without learning anything. This makes me think that many, many publicationsshould be thinking XML for automation.

I'll write more later, but suffice to say that this Eureka moment in itself made the conference worth the cost -- so much so that I could not bring myself to take up with Barry the little things like a receipt for payment which doesn't tally with the amount on my credit card statement.

Then add the other hints from Blatner and Cohen etc such as how to create a quick duotone with a grayscale pic from within InDesign, and, for those of us who like little things, what happens when you type "bounce" overthe About box, or create a new stroke style called "Happy" or "Feet".

And the Australian presenters such as software trainer Mike McHugh certainly held their own with the big guns.