Peachpit has provided an accessible, up to date guide to maximizing your Adobe Acrobat experiences and creating the most efficient and useful PDFs around, so don’t miss your chance to pick it up for free!  For the cost of clicking the retweet button, you can start learning the best ways to save time and make your documents the envy of the office.

Over the next week, keep your eyes on our Twitter account (@Acrobat) for the first of our #DidYouKnow tweets, and stay tuned to our blog for the latest winners.  Thanks for joining us!

The contest opens 9 a.m., Friday, October 14th, 2011, and closes 2 p.m., Friday, October 21st, 2011. The prize drawing will occur on or before 5 p.m., October 21st, 2011, with the winner announcement occurring that day as well. The drawings are open to residents in North America only.

- Rebecca Staley

Using Adobe FormsCentral, CAU training teams can quickly create registration forms for new faculty learning seminars in a matter of minutes. At the same time, the easy-to-access digital forms make it faster and easier for faculty to register for training and seminars, versus having to complete and route paper-based forms. They can also initiate and complete routine requests, such as submitting forms to check out multimedia equipment for classroom use.

Adobe FormsCentral not only allowed CAU to cut paper use, but also substantially decreased document distribution times. Candyce Jefferson, instructional media and support specialist for CAU also noted, “Unlike some of the other forms solutions we’ve tried, FormsCentral offers a hassle-free way to create interactive forms across operating systems—including iOS. Regardless of who is viewing, their location, or device, we are confident that we can reliably engage our target audience.”

Since the more automated processes are so easy to use, response rates to upcoming trainings also dramatically increased, with all of the forms and registration documents available on CAU’s intranet. To learn more about how CAU uses Adobe FormsCentral to update outdated processes, click here.

Randy Swineford, group product manager, Acrobat Solutions

Well, day one of Adobe MAX 2011 has come; I write this from the break area of the show floor, where I’m sharing a table with several people whom I have never met. This, I think, is one if many things that makes MAX such an amazing experience: everyone comes to this massive convention center in downtown LA, knowing perhaps no one and perhaps a few others from his or her own company. Now, only halfway through the first of three long days, people are mingling. They share tech-y jokes and participate in the same “bring your own device” labs, they sit with other strangers at lunch and wander in tandem across the massive showroom floor. Developers and designers rub elbows while attending demos or watching this morning’s keynote speech – and the energy has been palpable. We’re all here to learn from each other and be inspired, and the first few hours have been no disappointment. Scroll down to see the first few pictures of this space and the booths that fill it, especially our own Acrobat pods in the main Adobe booth!

–Rebecca Staley

1. Speed: E-signing takes minutes, whereas chasing ink-on-paper signatures can waste days or weeks.
2. Savings: Paper is expensive. So is printing out multiple copies of documents, shipping them, driving to meetings to retrieve them and devoting human resources to those activities.
3. Sustainability: Customers respect companies that make smart choices that benefit the environment while improving service.

Two of our customers in very different industries exemplify the benefits that come from greening contract work. The first is Aetna, one of the nation’s leading providers of health care insurance. The company was the first in its market to deploy electronic contract processing for physicians, hospitals and other health care facilities. Not only did Aetna cut its contract processing time from as much as three weeks to as few as two days, it also decreased its paper usage by 1 million pieces per year.

Meanwhile, one of our customers in the transportation industry is also proving that going green is good for business. Celadon Trucking, one of North America’s largest truckload carriers, uses e-signatures to turn contracts over faster and reduce dependency on paper. The company processes scores of contracts each week, and getting those contracts signed online gives its sales staff more time for selling, while improving the experience for customers. And the environmental benefits of e-signing help Celadon fulfill its mission as a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s SmartWay program.

As it turns out, it is easy being green – as easy as e-signing a cloud-based contract.

Headed to Adobe MAX? Don’t forget to stop by the EchoSign pod in the Adobe booth and see how much time you can shave off your next contract.

Jason Lemkin, vice president of web business services at Adobe 

If you missed an earlier poll, visit the Facebook questions page where you’ll find a list of all poll questions and results. Thanks for sharing your answers and stay tuned for a results summary on the blog!

To help achieve that goal, the innovative firm adopted Adobe Acrobat software to accelerate assembling case documents, more securely redact information, improve collaboration across legal teams, and support completing and processing business forms. In just assembling case documents alone, the firm is using Acrobat to cut the time needed to build and repaginate case books from hours to minutes.

An added advantage of using Acrobat is the ability to more securely share information across legal teams, inside and outside the firm. In addition to reliably redacting sensitive content from case documents, the firm’s staff can encrypt and password protect PDF files that are delivered to outside teams, helping better safeguard sensitive case details. For Herbert Smith, Acrobat is becoming an integral tool to support many everyday operations at the firm—to learn more about the time and efficiency gains the busy legal teams at Herbert Smith have achieved click here: http://adobe.ly/mPRhPl

Thankfully, processing building permits at the City of Barcelona doesn’t take as long! Miquel Garcia, director of Urban Action Services at the City of Barcelona, recently talked to us about how Barcelona city architects, engineers, and municipal engineers rely on Adobe Acrobat software to review permit requests electronically and reduce processing time. The City of Barcelona created eObras, a fully digital system for managing and maintaining electronic records of building permits. By adopting Adobe Acrobat software as part of eObras, the pioneering city has virtually eliminated the use of paper and manual creation of permit requests.

With Adobe Acrobat, city staff can quickly add electronic notes on permit documents in PDF and verify measurements on technical drawings, bringing much greater efficiency and enhanced collaboration to the permitting process. Reviewed documents can be stored in PDF for reliable access now and in the future. The advantages of the more automated permit processes are clear to busy municipal staff, as well as to the businesses and citizens who benefit from clearer communications and faster reviews. To learn more about how the City of Barcelona is using Adobe Acrobat to transform building permit processes, click here.

And if you have not been to Barcelona yet, I highly recommend doing so. It will be well worth it.

Ali Hanyaloglu, senior marketing manager, Acrobat Solutions

You can find the latest Acrobat Poll on our Facebook page here.  By chiming in, you can help us make FormsCentral, and the Acrobat family, an even better tool for social business!  We’re always thrilled to see new feedback from our users, so thanks very much for participating.  Don’t forget to check back soon here at the Acrobat blog for poll results and analysis!

• AdobeEchoSign – Securely sign, send, track, and store contracts online
• Adobe FormsCentral – Easily create, distribute, collect, and analyze online forms and surveys
• Adobe SendNow – Instantly send and manage digital documents without the hassle of overnight delivery services and FTP sites
• Adobe CreatePDF and ExportPDF – Create PDF documents online and convert PDF files to Word
• Acrobat.com – Improve team collaboration with web conferencing and shared workspaces

So join William Lau, senior product marketing manager, and Mangesh Bhandarkar, principal product manager, of the Acrobat Solutions team on Tuesday, Oct. 4^th at 2:45PM in room 511C!  You can register here.

If you’re attending AdobeMAX, don’t miss this great opportunity to learn how your business can run smoothly and save you money using our unique business solutions.  See you there!