Adobe @ TC CAMP 2016

Last Saturday (January 23, 2016), I had the privilege of attending TC Camp 2016 in Santa Clara, California (close to the location of Super Bowl 50 that is coming up in a couple of weeks!). The “un-conference” was a unique event and a breath of fresh air in many respects. Adobe was proud to be the “Camp Ambassador” of TC Camp, and I had a wonderful time interacting with the highly intelligent and engaged attendees.

I conducted the “Ambassador’s Workshop”, where attendees learned how easy it is to bring Microsoft Word content into Adobe FrameMaker and be productive from day #1. We explored many of the power features of FrameMaker such as conditional text, variables, and the ability to break a large deliverable into multiple parts. These features and many more allow FrameMaker to scale to thousands or even tens of thousands of pages to support the most demanding authoring and publishing requirements. Next, we explored how FrameMaker makes it easy to publish not only PDF, but Responsive HTML5, native iOS and Android applications, eBooks (ePub and Kindle), Adobe Digital Publishing Solution (DPS), and Microsoft HTML Help. We also explored XML and the benefits it can bring to the organization and to the writer.

TC Camp included 24 sessions (6 at a time to choose from) that were selected by a vote of the attendees. The sessions that I attended were very practical and ranged from “Favorite Tools” to “Leveraging LinkedIn”. There was even a session on using humor in technical writing, although I think they spent more time laughing than discussing the topic!

Liz Fraley and her small army of volunteers did an excellent job with this event and were very gracious hosts. If you didn’t get a chance to make it to TC Camp this year, I highly recommend checking it out next year, and I hope to see you there!