This morning I gave a keynote presentation at the Future of the Book conference in Auckland, NZ. My intent was to talk about what Adobe is doing in three areas related to Book Publishing: Meeting Customer Expectations,Speeding up workflows & monetizing your ideas and effort.

My talk included an update on PDF, a look at EPUB and the support in the Adobe toolset, and how Flash & AIR are allowing us to create really engaging experiences.

Here are my slides (demo links are below)

Apart from showing how you can use InDesign CS4 to quickly create eBooks and Flash files, here are links to items mentioned during the talk;

Buzzword (part of Acrobat.com) – A free online word processor that allows multiple people to collaborate on the same document. It supports EPUB output.

Digital Editions – A free EPUB / PDF reader from Adobe.

EBooks.com – An Australian eBook site using Adobe Content Server to protect eBooks.

Adobe’s Digital Publishing Technology site – A series of articles and tools

New York Times Reader – An Adobe AIR based news reader

Sams Interactive Reader – A great application for kids (try it.. I guarantee you’ll smile)

David Harris from the Auckland ColdFusion User Group has organised a User Group meeting that coincides with my visit to Auckland this week. This means I’ll be able to show off some of the new Adobe tools!

The meeting is being held at the Auckland Media Design School and I’ll be first showing the new Flash Catalyst beta, the upcoming improvements in Flash Builder (was Flex Builder) & ColdFusion and even a quick look at the new LiveCycle Data Services beta.

The feedback on these new products has been very positive,  so come see what the fuss is about, share a beer (David assures me that there will be at least one!), and network with other Designers & Developers.

Register here: http://nzroadshow.eventbrite.com/