Acro bytes by Kurt Foss

As we reported previously, two sessions from the recent Acrobat & PDF Central Conference were available as live webcasts to user-group chapters, several of which scheduled local meetings to coincide with the event held October 23-24 in Council Bluffs, IA. At the time, neither the opening keynote by Ali Hanyaloglu of Adobe Systems or the first educational session by Angie Okamoto of Tech Ed Solutions could be accessed live by individual remote members.

Conference organizers have now made Okamoto’s session–titled “Remember the Users: Designing for your Readers“–available for viewing via Acrobat Connect. She discusses the different versions of Acrobat Reader and the importance of taking the functionality differences of each into account when designing a PDF form. “You want to make sure your form looks correct to all users,” she says, “and you especially don’t want to limit who’s able to use your PDF.”

The archived version of Hanyaloglu’s opening keynote on the “State of the Acrobat Union” is expected to be available for online viewing in the near future.

Members of the Acrobat user-group chapters in New York, Boston and Dallas (as of October 15) will have a chance to be transported to Council Bluffs, IA on the morning of October 23. Or perhaps more accurately, the Acrobat and PDF Central Conference being held at the western Iowa venue will beam a couple of its opening sessions as live webcasts to the participating chapters in those metro locations.

The special online feed will include the opening keynote address on the “State of the Acrobat Union” by Ali Hanyaloglu of Adobe Systems, and the first-up informational session titled “Remember the Users: Designing for your Readers,” presented by Angie Okamoto of Tech Ed Solutions in Omaha, NE, hosts of the conference. The webcasts will be available via Acrobat Connect Professional only to chapters that host local meetings at the time of the sessions. Check AcrobatUsers.com for an updated list of chapter meetings.

Remote-viewing participants will have an opportunity to ask questions after each session by utilizing the chat-pod feature in Acrobat Connect, says Hanyaloglu, who serves as the leader of the Boston chapter. It was the first to offer Connect participation to its chapter members earlier this year, and many others have since provided a similar option.

There’s also still time to register to attend the conference the old-fashioned way, which expands your access to a diverse range of topical sessions led by a respected group of Acrobat experts. AcrobatUsers.com members can save $100 by entering the “AUC2007″ discount code on the registration form.

The “first and longest-running conference dedicated exclusively to PDF and Acrobat”–the PDF Conference, hosted by Carl Young–is on the verge of another ‘first’ later this month.

With company travel budgets slashed in recent years, many employees have been unable to get approval to attend career-enriching conferences and workshops. In the same timeframe, advancements in communications technologies and tools have continued to expand the possibilities for distance education courses and similar online-only experiences.

Fellow AUC blogger Young cited both circumstances in his recent announcement that the PDF Conference, launched in 2000, is adopting a new look and format–bringing the conference to users with a series of online events. First up is “Optimize Your Workflow with PDF Forms,” being conducted March 20-21 and enabled by Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional. There are other topical online events being scheduled throughout 2007.

“By moving to an online event, I can offer the same great PDF insights to more people at a lower cost,” says Young.

The upcoming March event includes six hour-long sessions–with separate east- and west-coast starting times–over two days, and feature some of the same expert speakers as previous PDF Conferences. And the cost is as low as $38 per topical session. NOTE: Early registration has been extended to Friday, March 2.

March 20 sessions include:

• Carl Young: “Acrobat AcroForms or LiveCycle Designer XML Forms, and Can I Use Both?”

• Ted Padova: “Leverage the New Forms Features in Acrobat 8.0″

• Al Weisner: “Using LiveCycle Forms to Automate Enrollment in the VA Health Care System”

March 21 sessions include:

• Thom Parker: “JavaScript for Adobe LiveCycle Designer”

• Lori DeFurio and Joel Geraci: “Collecting Data in Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional”

• PowerPanel of PDF Experts: Will answer questions from participants

There also are several post-conference workshops on related themes that require separate registration.

“I think this new format is going to open up PDF Conference to a much wider audience,” says Young, “and I hope all who attended our hotel events will give this new format a try.”

Registration information and forms for the conference sessions and workshops are available from the PDF Conference website, along with a link to test an Acrobat Connect configuration.