Community Blogs: Kurt Foss: Acrobat: Neither fish nor fowl -- but ohhhh so useful

Posted: 2009-09-22

Acrobat: Neither fish nor fowl -- but ohhhh so useful

I ran into David Schomaker, CEO of conference sponsor Easel Solutions, in the speaker room here at the Acrobat & PDF Central Conference this morning. Easel offers training with a range of software products, including Adobe Acrobat.

We chatted briefly about the diversity of sessions at this year's fourth annual conference, covering the wealth of potential uses of Acrobat, from forms to eLearning to accessibility to rich-media presentations to comment & review to preflight -- and much more. Unlike many other software programs that are more narrow in scope and use, Acrobat can be a tool and a solution for a broad range of users and uses. That can be a blessing and a curse, I said; it's sometimes difficult for many people to get their heads around Acrobat and to truly understand the wealth of functionality available.

Schomaker agreed, noting that the challenge for a training company like Easel is to find that one clearly significant application of Acrobat and PDF for a particular user or company. It's often only after that first problem-solving experience that people gradually discover additional ways they can take advantage of the same Adobe program. After all, in a lot of cases, a person who many consider an Acrobat expert may actually have a limited understanding of some features and capabilities, deferring to others on questions outside their specific areas of expertise. I'm sure we'll witness some of that here during the next few days.

We'll also likely discover that many attendees will have a light-bulb experience when they discover during some of the sessions that Acrobat can be used in ways they had not yet considered, or with which they've not yet had time to explore.

The common expression at these events will be repeated many times, I predict: 'I didn't know Acrobat can do that!'

• Acrobat 9