This past weekend I had the privilege of speaking at the first ever Designer/Developer Workflow Conference (D2WC) in Kansas City, MO. I thought I would recap some of the highlights of the conference and talk about my presentation. The focus on this conference is the workflow between designers and the developers who work on projects together, be it applications, websites, Cold Fusion projects, etc.
There were many high-profile speakers there including Doug Winnie, Adobe Principal Product Manager for Adobe Flash Catalyst, Flash Platform Workflow and WorkflowLab (as he put it: the longest title at Adobe); Tom Green (not the comedian), Adobe Higher Education Leader, Product Advisory Boards member for Flash Media Server and Fireworks at the Adobe Corporation and Layers Magazine contributor, and Pariah Burke, Adobe InDesign Instructor and former technical lead for InDesign, InCopy, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Acrobat.
Doug Winnie opens the conference with his keynote address.
Doug Winnie opened the conference with a great keynote on “The Designer/Developers of Kansas City” which included “episodes” detailing common breakdowns in a typical workflow and how Adobe products help to address these problems.
My Designer Track presentation was “Fast Web Prototyping Using Adobe Creative Suite”. My focus was on using Adobe Products that designers are familiar with to bring ideas to the web for clients as a working prototype that can then be passed along to a developer cleanly. First up was Adobe Illustrator, which I presented how to properly save out a vector image as an SVG file format.
Next was Photoshop. The main points were layer organization, optimizing graphics for the web with proper sizes and formats, and how to import into Adobe Fireworks. As expected, not many people had used or even seen Fireworks before. Using Fireworks, I took the flat Photoshop file, added buttons, rollovers and interactive elements with simple-to-use interface elements. I then added multiple web pages and linked each one to the Master page. Finally we tested the protoype in our web browser and exported.
Finally I was able to show how a designer can create an HTML email using Photoshop, slices and links to create stunning creations. The final step was to export out the HTML and images and import into a waiting Dreamweaver template with header and footer coding already supplied. Just cut the Photoshop HTML code and paste into the awaiting space and you are all set. Pass it over to your website admin for upload!
Speaking at the Designer/Developer "Shootout".
My second session was a Designer/Developer “Shootout,” where I participated in a panel discussion with JP Revel, Chad Udell, James Polanco and Pariah Burke. This discussion focused on issues between designers and developers in the working community. Shifts in paradigm with ad agencies, quoting projects, when to consult and communication were all hot topics. Both sides left the session with a greater understanding of the other and much more respect for the work that goes into each portion of a hybrid project.
Rob Huddleston presenting Flash Catalyst workflows.
Other sessions that were really well received covered Flash Catalyst with Rob Huddleston, Killing the “Transition” between art and code by Seb Lee-Delisle (from the UK – the farthest traveling speaker), and Tom Green’s Shaking the Toolbox presentation.
Speaking with several attendees at the start of Day 2, they were very pleased and excited about the speakers, topics and overall conference. I am happy to report that this is only the first year of this conference and speakers are already planning their trip for next year.
Many thanks to Dee Sadler, Adobe Community Professional and Certified Instructor for organizing (and inviting me to) this amazing conference. It was a huge success. Hopefully all of you will be able to attend next year and experience a first-class series of presentations from not only Adobe related speakers, but also the experts who work with this everyday.
D2WC Speakers enjoying dinner and "geek speak" before the conference.
Photos courtesy of Aaron Pederson (@aaronpederson) and Lisa Heselton (@kavka).
