6:00-6:30 Networking: Meet and Greet
6:30-6:45 Chapter Business
6:45-7:45 Panel Discussion/Tips and Tricks
7:45-8:00 Break
8:00-8:15 Chapter Auction (see auction.idugdenver.net for item descriptions)
8:15-8:55 Open Question & Answer Session

POWER STYLES

Still confused about styles? When to use a character style instead of a paragraph style? How to automate application of styles? If these issues have been bugging you, you don’t want to miss our “Power Styles” session at our upcoming meeting. IDUG Denver Co-Chair Erica Gamet will lead you step-by-step through setting up styles in a document, including working with the elusive Next Style function and incorporating Nested Styles, and using GREP to automate and customize styles even further. If styles and their importance confuse you, don’t miss this how-to session! 

GETTING A GRIP ON GREP

Does the mere mention of the foreign-sounding GREP send your heart racing? Do you just pretend it doesn’t exist or think it’s over your head? As a designer, you owe it to yourself to discover ways of using GREP with imported text and text you create yourself. Whether you end up creating GREP expressions on your own, or use the built-in options, you’ll wonder why you waited so long to explore the world of GREP. 

Remember you can email us at: admin@idugdenver.net and check out Adobe’s InDesign User Group site to register for the meeting. See you soon!

In other news…
Some of the members have suggested having a place on the chapter Web site where job and freelance opportunities could be posted. If people are interested, and will be active participants, I would be glad to set that up. Please leave a comment below and let me know if that would be of interest. Also…what else would you like to see? We have had a user-to-user forum that got little use. That could also be re-started. Finally, a few people (6) said at the meeting that they would be interested in a business card exchange. Let me know if you would be interested in that as well. If there are enough people we can set that up. Otherwise, doing an online directory might make more sense.

Please leave a comment to let me know. You’ll have to be approved the first time, but your comments will be posted immediately after that. Or send an email to admin@idugdenver.net. I want to hear from you on how to improve the group and communications outside of the regular meetings.

–Erica Gamet, IDUG Denver Co-Chair 

Attend this great meeting to be one of the first to see Adobe Creative Suite 5 in action! Follow the countdown to CS5 here: http://cs5launch.adobe.com/

We hope you’ll join us for the meeting. Please remember to check out all the details on the Adobe website and please register there, as well. See you all soon!

Barbara Binder, InDesign trainer and owner of Rocky Mountain Training, your online Adobe training source, will be giving our opening presentation. Sure you know how to create paragraph rules above and below a paragraph (right?), but now let’s make them fun! Check out some creative uses of the Paragraph Rules dialog box and walk away with some new ideas to spice up your documents.

After the break, we’ll have our live auction. Don’t forget to check our auction website (auction.idugdenver.net) about a week before the meeting to see what will be up for auction. More information on how the auction works is also on the site.

The second presentation, “Best Features You’re Not Using,” presented by Erica Gamet (IDUG Co-Chair) will focus on some of the hidden gems of InDesign CS4. Some of the best new features in a software release don’t get the attention they deserve. We’ll shed a little light on a few of these.

REMEMBER: You need to be a member (which is free) and register ahead of time for the meeting at the Adobe site by clicking here. We hope to see all of you on Tuesday, February 2nd!

At the meeting on Dec. 1, we played a game we like to call “Jeop-ID” that tested our members’ knowledge of InDesign. We went without buzzers or noisemakers this year and assigned silly sounds to them as their buzz-in noise. Our five brave contestants did well, won a few prizes, and, I hope, that everyone enjoyed it. Some of us were just glad that we weren’t standing up in front of the group trying to answer the questions…they weren’t always easy!

We held our auction in silent format this time around. Several of you put bids in on items and we cleared out our 2009 inventory. Thanks to everyone who bid. Remember, if you have suggestions for future items that we could feasibly have donated, please let us know and we’ll see what we can do.

Our next meeting is going to be on February 2nd, at the usual time of 6 p.m. Remember, we do a networking/meet and greet segment from 6-6:30, with the meeting itself getting started promptly at 6:30. To register (and join, both free), please use the Adobe InDesign User Group website.

Mogo Media’s InDesign Seminar Tour is coming to Denver on February 11th. I will be the featured speaker at the event, so if you haven’t had your fill of me talking about InDesign, please consider attending. More info can be found on the Mogo website. I believe there will be an IDUG discount, but I’ll have details on that soon.

Let’s kick off 2010 just right and make a resolution to learn more about InDesign, meet others in our creative communities, and have fun!

I’ve been given a couple of job opportunities to mention…and sometimes it would be too late to wait to announce them at the meeting. We still have our old forums online, but I thought we might list job opps here on this site, as well. The only issue is…you will have to email me with the opps (if you have them).

Speaking of forums…what are your preferences for member-to-member communications? We could revive our old phpBB forums, ramp up our sadly neglected Facebook page, our Linkedin page. Something else?

Let us hear, either in the comments or via email, what you’d like to see. Or come talk to me at the next meeting. Thanks, in advance, for your input!

Thank you, also, to our wonderful members. Without you guys, Brian and I…well, we’d be talking to the walls for one thing! And it wouldn’t be any fun without the wonderful energy our members bring to the meetings.

As always, please feel free to e-mail us with any questions, comments, or concerns…and we’ll see you at the next IDUG meeting in December!

1)  A folder that could be used for either the Maintenance Facility or the Training center
2) A tri-fold brochure on the Maintenance Facility
3) A brochure (possibly more than one) on the Training Center

The Maintenance Facility and the Training Center are located on the same campus, but the targeted audience would be very different from one another. We’d love to drive a lot of people to our web site (we haven’t built up pages on them yet), but then have the traditional marketing materials for individuals truly interested in renting out the site or contracting our mechanics for services.

We were hoping to get started on this project in November - and if possible, complete it by the end of the year.

IF INTERESTED, PLEASE CONTACT:
Wendy Forbes, Public Information Officer
North Metro Fire Rescue District
303.252.3017
Email: WForbes@northmetrofire.org

We will be getting those up very soon. Seems October is a very busy time for all of our members and volunteers. That’s a good thing…unless, of course, you’re waiting for the wrap-up notes.

Watch this space!