Adobe Installation and Licensing

If you do a web search for “deploy CS6″ do you know what comes up? The Nerf Deploy CS-6. What is that? A clip system Nerf blaster that was released in 2010 under the N-Strike series. How did I become such a Nerf expert? The Nerf Wiki of course. If you want to be in the know about the Deploy CS-6 then head to the Nerf Wiki page for the Deploy CS-6. If you want to be in the know about how to deploy CS6, as in how to do a mass software deployment of Creative Suite 6 using tools like the Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition (AAMEE) 3.0 then mark you calendars for Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 10AM PST for the Adobe Webinar “Deploying Creative Suite 6″ with your hosts Jody Rodgers and Rick Borstein. We will cover AAMEE, the new CS6 licensing changes, and the new command line tools Remote Update Manager and the Exceptions Deployer application. We will answer questions about imaging, activation, and possibly how to get the most performance out of your Nerf blaster.

UPDATE: Webinar recording available online:

http://seminars.adobeconnect.com/p5cusn6zish/

Jody Rodgers | Sr. Product Manager | Enterprise + Volume | CS +CCM | Adobe

We are big fans of the all things MacTech; love the website, the events and the magazine. For the record, the MacTech magazine is the only printed publication to do a review of the Adobe Application Manage Enterprise Edition aka AAMEE that I am aware of. We are still waiting for the cover of Packaging Today but maybe next month. And the MacTech events are arguably some of the best run events in the industry and we’ve enjoyed our participation at all the ones we’ve attended and presented at. With that gracious intro, we are excited to offer the faithful reader(s) of this blog a special discount to any of the upcoming 2012 events. You can save $200+ on the upcoming MacTech Boot Camp, InDepth, and Conference events by clicking on this special magic link*:

http://www.mactech.com/events/locations?rid=Adobe

*Okay, so it is just a normal link, but I recommend making a special sound with your mouth or if one is handy, a Moog keyboard, when clicking on it.

Not a Mac admin, but managing iPads and their apps? I think you’ll find the InDepth Mobile Device Management sessions in Boston and Chicago a great learning experience. That link totally works on IE, go ahead, try it.**

** The special sound does not work with IE 6. Why are you still using it?

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager | Enterprise + Volume | Creative Suite | Adobe Systems

Are you attending the Mac IT conference this week? You know the one, the one that is part of the iWorld event in San Francisco. What is iWorld? Remember MacWorld? Well they dropped the “Mac” bit and now it is just “i” saving tons of money in printing costs by dropping two letters. Do note the “W” is now capitalized, which it had not been in the past. The “i” is small. Got all that?

Well if you are there this week, I’ll let you in on a secret, I know where the party is. No, not some secret hip party in some cool bar with umlauts in the name. No offense to the legitimate bars and their name in proper umlaut countries; carry on as you were. No, the party is from 11:45am – 12:30pm on Thursday Jan 26 at Moscone West!

The topic: IT823: Deploying & Managing Adobe Desktop and iOS Touch Apps.

What should you wear? I am thinking casual since it is an IT conference, but looking fabulous never hurt anyone.

Who from Adobe is going to be there? Me! I’ll be the MC of our panel talk. You can call me MC J-Rodg if you want. I’m cool with that. Also, we’ve got: Eric Widle, Senior Engineering Manager for the Creative Suite along with my awesome boss (who doesn’t read this blog but should) Carol Linburn: Director Creative Suite Product Management, Creative Suite. And last but not, least, we’ll have Steve Gottwals, Group Product Manager from Acrobat there. That’s right, Acrobat at the MacIT conference! History my friends, history.

What are we going to discuss? Creative Suite deployment tools like the forthcoming AAMEE 3.0 and our new Remote Update Manager tool we are working on. Our new Creative Cloud offering and what it might mean to IT. Also, we’ll discuss the emerging world of management of iOS apps, like our new Touch Apps. You’ll want to be there for that section as we’ll be giving away a few copies of the awesome new Peachpit “iOS 5 in the Enterprise” book by John Welch. John by the way has been instrumental in us getting to participate at these MacIT events and for the record has dropped more f-bombs about Adobe then anyone else on the planet. We listen to all complaints and suggestions; sugar coated ones and ones that are more, well, let’s coin a word: Welchian.

Hope to see you there. Please stop by and introduce yourself. It is always a pleasure to meet the IT admins who work with our tools first hand!

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager | Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite | Adobe Systems

I have this DVD of a fireplace. It is simply a closeup of a few logs burning slowly. It is probably one of my favorite DVDs I own. I bet I have watched it more often then the “classics” I own; Citizen Kane, Casablanca and Star Trek II Wraith of Khan. Even if I had a real fireplace I think I’d still watch it because this fire never dies down. Hot embers never pop out and burn the rug. I am convinced this is the reason why TVs were made.

And it is that time of year that I take off for Adobe’s annual shut-down and throw that DVD on, have a glass of wine or winter beer and reflect on the year. And in doing so, I just keep getting an overwhelming feeling of thankfulness. I am a thankful to so many people who have made this a great year. I want to start with our customers and especially the IT admins who bust their —you know whats— for their organizations. You NEVER get thanked enough, so I am going to say it twice: Thank you! Thank you! And as always we appreciate you for your support with our efforts and honest feedback here on this blog, in emails, and in person. We are are trying to make your lives just a little bit better for you and you deserve it!

Listen to that fire crackle in Dolby Surround! I also want to thank our deployment vendor partners! You all are golden! We share the same customers and vision and together we make it happen. Thank you! Looking forward to working with you in 2012 and expanding out into the management of Touch Apps for the tablets. I love me some uncharted territory!

Last but not least I have to thank the great people who I work with here at Adobe. I have to start with the AAMEE crew. You guys rock. Special shout outs to Sachin, Sourabh, Abhishek, Dany and Rahul. I am missing some folks, contributors of the past for sure. Tushar, Saransh and Sumita. So many people have helped out. I am forgetting others. I feel like the actor at the awards podium who forgets to thanks his wife. (Yep, someone just won an award but is sleeping on the couch tonight! ) I can’t not thank the dynamic duo of Aditya and Mansukh enough. They architect the direction of AAMEE and the other IT tools with me and never laugh (in my face at least) when I say I want to do______ by ________. And thanks to our new Program Manager Dheeraj! And of course Charat and GG. And then where would we be without the vision in the management of Nagendra and Barry? AAMEE wouldn’t even exist without those two. And there is Eric who has been such a great mentor that he now actually thinks I don’t need any more guidance and leaves me on my own to get in trouble. My awesome manager Carol who soooo doesn’t read this blog but I call her out publicly as awesome anyway, because it is true. Oh no, the music is playing. They are shooing me off the stage. Wait, what about Karl, our CS Systems Engineer who is rocking in his new role? What about Manju and all the great work she does on helping people with AUSST. Two hired beauties are escorting me off the stage now! What about the designers: Shivam and oh, Vikas. Wait I forgot my wife! My wife! I don’t want to sleep on the couch with the cat!

No really, thanks everyone! We’ve got some cool stuff coming down the pike for 2012. We’ll be showing our new command line tool that can be used to invoke the CS updater remotely at the MacIT section of Macworld/iWorld on Thursday, January 26th. Thanks John for making that happen! We’ll post more on that in early January. We’ve also got a great new version of AAMEE we are working on. Lots of good stuff. Looking forward to working with all of you who I thanked above and especially whoever I accidentally left out. Like my admin. Yikes. Sorry Karen.

May your log burn forever!

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager | Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite | Adobe Systems

For those JAMF admins in the Bay Area I have a treat for you if you meet one of these criteria:

1) You didn’t attend the JAMF National User Conference last month

2) Attended the conference but had a session schedule conflict preventing you for seeing our talk

3) Attended our talk but fell asleep right when I said “Hello Minneapolis!”

You guessed it, I am bringing our talk from the National User Conference, lovingly called “Integrating Adobe’s IT Tools into Your Casper Suite Workflow” to the San Francisco JAMF User Conference next week. But don’t worry, I am not going to repeat the same presentation. I am going to make it local. So whereas I made an analogy around the CS installation process to the Saturn V rockets of the Apollo mission, I will replace the rocket metaphor with a Mission-style burrito. Specifically Papalote burritos. And if I make some random mention of beer in the talk (as I am apt to do) I will make sure that I don’t screw up and make mention of Minneapolis’ Surly Furious but instead will use Speakeasy’s Prohibition Ale as my beer stand-in of choice. See, totally different talk!

Actually, Karl Gibson, our awesome CS Enterprise Systems Engineer from Dublin, will not be in attendance. So sadly the talk will feature 85% less Irish accent action. I’ll try and fake an Irish accent during the Q&A. But I will keep that local too, making mention of the Irish Bank pub on Mark Lane which is one of my favorite pubs. Not sure how that will fit into the Q&A, but we’ll see.

December 8
Madrone Studio
Main Level Studio
3:15-4:15 PM
Integrating Adobe’s IT Tools into Your Casper Suite Workflow

To sign up or more info:

http://jamfsoftware.com/events/user-conferences/regional-user-conference-san-francisco-2011-12-08

See you there!

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager | Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite | Adobe Systems

IT admins have been patiently waiting around for more work to be thrown on their plates for sometime. “Please, if only I had another device/platform I could support on top of more current work!” is their cry. In case you have your Sarcasm Meter™ turned off or are new to reading my posts, let me assure you this is my attempt at humor. But honestly, from the conversations I’ve had with IT staff lately, this is right on the verge of not being funny. So much is being thrown at IT staff right now and the explosion of tablet usage in corporate and school environments is posing some significant challenges. Some organizations are trying to manage them to the same degree as their desktop/laptops but it seems like a lot of folks are doing the wait and see game. Similar to what we saw when Macs started finding their way into corporate environments, there were many who said “Maybe they’ll just go away.” Well they didn’t. And iPads and Android tablets aren’t either.

So now that I painted that glum picture for you, let me make it worse… and then a little better. To make things worse for you, Adobe is making some awesome touch apps for tablets that your users will most likely want installed the moment you start your coffee break. Seriously, this is some cool stuff. Apps like Adobe Collage and Adobe Photoshop Touch are likely to become standard tools within your design groups you support. I am not giving you a marketing pitch here, more like a head’s up. Some of our touch apps debuted on Android but the full set of the iOS ones are coming down the pike. In case you thought this was new territory, we already have like a dozen iOS apps in the App Store.

Now I said that I could make it better for you. It is a small gesture, but a heartfelt one nonetheless. Our friends at MacTech are putting on their first MacTech InDepth: Mobile Device Management event next week in San Francisco on December 7. We are sponsoring the event and we have a special link below that will save you $200 off the on-site registration fee. This will be a great opportunity for anyone with an existing Mobile Device Management (MDM) strategy to be exposed to solutions and strategies from experts in the field. And if your organization’s MDM strategy has been “let’s wait and see” then this is certainly the time to get your feet wet and see what is out there and how your peers are starting to manage these devices (i.e. what they are doing for security, monitoring, and managing apps.)

Your discounted link (saves $200 off the on-site registration price of $495 — just $295 and includes lunch)

http://www.mactech.com/indepth/specialreg?rid=Adobe

I’ll be there as an attendee. I am not speaking or running a table or anything like that. But if you see a bearded guy with glasses wearing a black and white AAMEE shirt, please introduce yourself. Dang, now I must remember to wash that shirt, pack it, wear it that day, not shave, nor wear contacts.

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager | Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite | Adobe Systems

That’s right, we’ll be all over that JAMF National User Conference this week! We are not just crashing this party, we are actually a sponsor so we might have to pay for something if we break it. You’ll be able to catch myself and Karl Gibson, our Enterprise Systems Engineer, at one of three events: a BOAF, a talk, and a lively lab/feedback session. Let me give you a head’s up: they’ll be some Adobe prizes given away at all three!

Here’s the breakdown:

Tuesday Nov 8th- 6pm
Managing Creative Suite Birds Of A Feather
Zelo, located at 831 Nicollet Mall
http://www.zelomn.com/

Wednesday Nov 9th- 2:15pm
Integrating Adobe’s IT Tools into Your Casper Suite Workflow
Dowling Studio -Level 9

Wednesday Nov 9th-3:45pm
Lab Time and Feedback Session with Adobe
Cargill Classroom -Level 8

Session Schedule
http://jamfsoftware.com/events/user-conferences/national-user-conference-2011/sessions

See you at Minneapolis!

Education is near and dear to us and Adobe. It is near and dear to me personally, in fact I once managed computer labs for the Arts Institute of Seattle. So I know first hand some of the challenges of meeting the demands of students and faculty. To learn more about what is going on in the world of education today I am headed off to the education in technology event, Educause 2011, in Philadelphia later this month.

After running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art with the theme from Rocky on my iPod, I’ll be ready to take on the world and give some AAMEE demos at the Adobe booth. Adobe’s booth is #601 and here’s the schedule for my sessions:

Wednesday Oct 19
2:30-3:30 pm
IT Deployment Tools For Adobe Desktop Suites

Thursday Oct 20
12:30pm-1:30pm
IT Deployment Tools For Adobe Desktop Suites
(Same session, but this time with more feeling and animated arm movement.)

There are lots of other great sessions at the Adobe booth so stop by and say hello.

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager | Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite | Adobe Systems

AAMEE 2.1 will have a sneak preview at the Seattle Enterprise Macintosh Administrators Group meeting on Wed 9/21/11. Any organization with a five word long name is cool by me. They go by SEMAG for short, which I just noticed is GAMES backwards. The Seattle Adobe office in lovely Fremont is actually hosting this SEMAG event which is organized by our friends at Apple.

And if getting to be first on their block to see AAMEE 2.1 in action wasn’t enough, I’ll be giving away a few prizes. Why? Because I love prizes. And pizza. Did I mention the pizza? No I forgot that. Pizza, prizes, packaging. Seriously, what more could you want out of a Wednesday?

If you are in the area and would like to attend (sorry for the short notice!) send me an email and I’ll provide you with the details. My address is the first letter of my first name, no space, my last name and then of course at adobe.com.

Cheers,

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager | Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite

Not sure how, but I failed to announce the recent release of JAMF’s newly updated tech paper “Simplifying Adobe CS5 and CS5.5 Administration with the Casper Suite” document. This has been updated for CS 5.5 and AAMEE 2.x.:

http://jamfsoftware.com/solutions/adobe-creative-suite/

Speaking of JAMF, they are holding their National User Conference this November in Minneapolis. Spoiler Alert: I’m totally going to be there. I’ll be the one with the AAMEE shirt on. And if you see me the next day, I’ll be the one with a slightly less clean AAMEE shirt on. (I’m packing light.)

I’ve never been to Minneapolis and I am excited. Home to some cool tech places, like my friends at Code 42 and (of course) JAMF. But also home to some of my all time musical faves: The Replacements, Hüsker Dü and Prince. One of my favorite design shops, Aesthetic Apparatus, is there. Plus Minneapolis has a neighborhood called Dinkytown. How awesome is that? Hope to see some of you there!

http://www.jamfsoftware.com/events/user-conferences/national-user-conference-2011/

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager | Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite | Adobe Systems