Just Flew In...

…And boy are my arms tired.

I just got back from a rapid­ly set­up 1‑day con­sul­ta­tion in Dallas, Texas. It was the work­flow obser­va­tion and under­stand­ing phase, where I go in, learn how a cre­ative work­flow runs cur­rent­ly and the agen­cy’s goals mov­ing for­ward in that workflow.

Now that I’m home (an hour now), I go through my com­piled data, sam­ples of the clien­t’s deliv­er­ables, and my notes (10 pages of notes today). I’ll use all that to flesh out the work­flow opti­miza­tion strat­e­gy I had already start­ed build­ing in my head on-site, then pro­duce a detailed report of my rec­om­men­da­tions and an action plan. That’s when the real fun begins–executing the work­flow optimization.

Though only a 1 day trip, it was remark­ably pro­duc­tive. Both the clien­t’s team and my team left this after­noon excit­ed­ly opti­mistic and with a sol­id foun­da­tion for the actions to come.

What else have I been doing? Or, as Chris may ask: What else has been keep­ing me from mail­ing him his copy of Illustrator CS2 @Work? Quite a lot.

• I wrote the cur­rent fea­ture sto­ry on PDFZone​.com, “Using PDF Layers,” which explains how–and more impor­tant­ly why–proof­ing clients with lay­ered PDFs can save time and hassle.
• I’m work­ing on my por­tions of what will undoubt­ed­ly be a very cool fea­ture arti­cle in the next issue of InDesign Magazine. (I’m not going to spill the beans–you’ll have to check it out for yourself.)
• I wrote “XPress to InDesign: Overcoming the Top Three Pain Points” for Publish​.com.
• I’m hard at work writ­ing the last two arti­cles in the Quark VS InDesign​.com fea­ture series “InCopy CS2: In Production.”
• I’ve been man­ag­ing and build­ing Designorati.
• Applications from tal­ent­ed writ­ers and edi­tors inter­est­ed in join­ing Designorati have been pour­ing in, and the audi­tion com­mit­tee and I have been pour­ing over them. We’ll be announc­ing new team mem­bers next week.
• Speaking of next week… I’ll be Baton Rouge, LA (can you believe I man­aged to find the one hotel room avail­able?) doing what promis­es to be a very excit­ing work­flow migra­tion con­sul­ta­tion: Freehand to Illustrator CS2. I help tran­si­tion cre­ative and adver­tis­ing work­flows from PageMaker or QuarkXPress to InDesign and Word to InCopy fre­quent­ly, but Freehand to Illustrator is not as com­mon a need. It’s a real treat for me.
• I exposed the pub­lic leak of high­ly con­fi­den­tial Adobe and Quark infor­ma­tion in LEAKED! Creative Suite 3, InDesign CS3, QuarkXPress 7 Features
• I have some oth­er arti­cles in the works for Publish​.com and InDesign Magazine.
• I’ve been expand­ing and updat­ing REVdrink​.com, a site list­ing my var­i­ous cre­ative how-to writ­ings (books, mag­a­zine arti­cles, web­sites, and so on) as well as pro­vid­ing orig­i­nal con­tent resources.
• Of course, I’ve been out pro­mot­ing my book, Adobe Illustrator CS2 @Work (exclu­sive excerpt) as well as Cate Indiano’s InDesign book in the same series, Adobe InDesign CS2 @Work (exclu­sive excerpt).
• I’ve been deploy­ing sig­nif­i­cant new con­tent deliv­ery and oth­er sys­tems tech­nolo­gies across all my websites.
• A redesign of Quark VS InDesign​.com and a design realign­ment of Designorati are in the works.
• I’m get­ting ready for some very excit­ing upcom­ing lec­tures and work­shops (more on that later).
• And… I took out the trash with­out being asked.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to the last few weeks. Granted, it isn’t very much, but it’s kept me enter­tained. I’ve also been work­ing on a cou­ple of projects not list­ed above (every­thing in its own time) and have sev­er­al inter­est­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties on the horizon.

Chris, I will get the book mailed before Baton Rouge!