Last week I presented at the Melbourne based cfObjective conference. My topic covered a quick look at SOA principles, how they related to ColdFusion, then introduced LiveCycle ES2.

Apart from the slides below, I was able to build an application from scratch in just under 40 minutes, including an approval process with workflow, a common data model that spanned across all UI/Forms, and built all the forms in both Flex & PDF.

I wrapped up the session on how ColdFusion & LiveCycle ES2 can be used together and how to get started. Thanks to everyone who attended!

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)

My latest round of presentations across Australia have been based on the topic of “Lowering your costs while increasing business efficiency”. Clearly in the current economic climate we’ve seen many projects put on hold due to budget cuts, yet a more agile approach would be to start with some quick wins that were aligned to the “future vision”.

In the presentation I covered four key areas;

• Collaborating in real time in live meetings & training
• Requesting reviews & feedback of information with tracking
• Managing & controlling your content inside & outside of your organisation
• Using forms & process to collect structured information

Using a combination of Adobe Acrobat, Connect & LiveCycle ES technologies I showed many examples of how organisations can improve their business in a matter of days & weeks, rather than months and years. In fact, most of the case studies shown went live in around 6 weeks. Allowing business people to create more content and interact with each other in more engaging ways than just email has immediate benefits, without extensive training.

Here are my slides;

Apart from making the slides available, below is a link to the PDF Portfolio that was sent out to the attendees. Be patient as it’s a 95Mb download (chock full of videos) but all you need to view it is Adobe Reader 9.

Adobe Breakfast Presentation – PDF Portfolio

Today I presented a talk on how government can provide a more engaging experience to citizens. This was not a product presentation but more looking at general themes of what provides an engaging experience. The content was a mix of slides and demonstrations and is listed below.

Videos;

Alan Webber
Government technology and market strategist, Forrester Research

Anthony Steve
Manager of business.gov.au, Australian Government Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research

Customer successes – Kane County Circuit Court
Putting citizens first – County agency enhances services and streamlines collaboration across government offices.

Subset of demonstrations;

Obama Inaugeration Video
Searchable online video with synchronized transcript

Certified White House PDF
PDF document certified with a valid U SGovernment digital certificate to prove its authenticity.

Twhirl
An alternative way to view Twitter information rather than through a browser

SpreadTweet
Yet another Adobe AIR based Twitter client, but this one looks like a spreadsheet!

Slides from this week’s presentation in Canberra on LiveCycle Designer ES, including some pointers on creating accessible forms from Adobe’s Andrew Kirkpatrick;

Note that the workshop was mostly hands on demonstration, so the slides are minimal.