@ADOBEUK

Over the next few days, we’re in Amsterdam for this year’s IBC Show, and we’re excited to announce that we’ll be showcasing some great new video technologies that are really helping the broadcast and video industries to evolve and meet the demands of today’s viewing public!

One of the highlights for us will be the reveal of Adobe Anywhere for video – a modern, collaborative workflow platform that will give teams using our professional video tools – such as Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects – the ability to work together across virtually any network, using shared media. They’re products that together with the rest of our Creative Suite Production Premium and Creative Cloud, are being using by a number of the leading broadcasters and global news agencies, including the Associated Press, Bloomberg and CNN.

We’re also announcing several new collaborations with broadcast solution partners at the show who will support integrated workflows with our video tools. These include media asset management and graphics companies who are leading in the broadcast news and sports sectors – such as Chyron, Dalet, EVS and Vizr.

Not only that, but anyone with Final Cut Pro or Avid who fancies switching to Adobe CS6 Production Premium or Creative Cloud, can take advantage of a promotion we’re currently running offering up to 40% off! You can find all the information on the Adobe website.

If you’re at the show, be sure to pay us a visit. We’ll be at the Adobe booth in Hall 7, Booth 7.G27 in the RAI Exhibition and Congress Centre. For anyone that didn’t make it to Amsterdam, we’ll be keeping everyone up to speed on the show from here.

Let us know what you think of this year’s show and are most excited about seeing!

It’s just over a month now until Create the Web London!

The event is a fantastic opportunity to learn about the latest tools and techniques for creating content for the modern web. You’ll also find out how Adobe is helping shape the future of the web and get a sneak peak at new tools, technologies and services for web designers and developers. Topics covered will include HTML5, CSS3, motion graphics, web development and more.

This free, full day event held in London on 2^nd October is filling up fast, so if you don’t want to miss out make sure you register here today.

Here’s a lowdown of what to expect: 

10:00 – Keynote/General Session

In the opening keynote, Adobe will layout its commitment to the web as the primary platform of the future, and will announce and demonstrate new tools and technologies that enable web designers and developers to create the experiences that push the boundaries of what is possible on the web.

10:30 – A Journey Through the Graphical Web

Vincent Hardy (Director of Engineering, Web Platform)

This presentation will walk us through the quest towards a more graphical web with an immersive presentation of the key features (and characters) that are, have been or will be available to the create graphical content on the web. The goal of this playful presentation is to inspire and show the vision of a web with a wide graphical creative surface.

11:15 An introduction to the modern Web for the creative professional

HTML5 and CSS3 introduce new features that expand the creative capabilities of the web. In this session, you will get an introduction to some of the newest and most expressive features in HTML5 and CSS3, as well as an overview of what new features are coming in the future.

1:00 Move the Web : Introduction to Motion Graphics on the Web

Mike Chambers (Director of Developer Advocacy)

Discover all the ways that animation is coming to the modern web. Hear about how to make use of CSS3 transitions and animation, JavaScript libraries that can help with animation, and suggestions for best practices around creating animations with web technologies.

1:30 Adobe Edge Animate: Creating the interactive web

Lee Brimelow (Developer Evangelist)

Adobe Edge Animate is a tool for creating web animations with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. In this session you’ll see how you can start using Edge Animate to create animations that run on browsers and mobile devices.

2:15 – Brackets: Code the Web

Adam Lehman (Sr. Product Manager, Interactive Development)

Brackets is an open source code editor that challenges the status quo with innovations like inline Quick Editing and live browser connectivity built with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. This session will provide an overview of Brackets and demonstrate how to hack on the project so you can customize and extend it to meet your needs.

2:45 - PhoneGap & Shadow: Building & Testing Mobile Apps with Web Standards

Every web developer needs to think about a mobile strategy when it comes to deploying content. This session will take a look at new APIs in HTML5 that make the most of mobile device features, how to test and debug content with tools like Adobe “Shadow”, and workflows for creating mobile applications from web technologies with PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build.

3:35 - CreateJS: Creating Rich, Interactive Experiences for HTML5

Grant Skinner (CEO / Technical Director gskinner.com)

CreateJS is a suite of JavaScript libraries for building expressive content that targets HTML5 Canvas. Find out how to use libraries that let you easily manipulate content on top of HTML5 Canvas, manipulate sound, animate content, and manage loading of assets.

4:15 - Design Responsively: Creating a Site that Works Across Screens

Responsive design is forcing designers and developers to think about their content differently.  The huge variation of screen sizes and device capabilities is enabling a whole new level of experiences.  In this session you’ll learn the principles of responsive design and get a sneak peak at what Adobe’s been working on.

Look forward to seeing you there, and make sure you follow the conversation on Twitter with #CreateTheWeb.

I’m sure most teachers will agree that hearing about their peers’ experiences and getting their advice is incredibly valuable. Learning new techniques and approaches, what’s worked and what hasn’t, is what helps keep teaching fresh and inspired. That’s why we’ve just launched a new public discussion forum on the Adobe Education Exchange.

In a nutshell, the forum enables members to share ideas so they can keep up to date with the latest tools and innovations. There are more than a dozen different forum topics including teaching & learning and educational technology, so members can discover as well as contribute new ideas that will help others spark creativity in the classroom.

It’s really simple to start a new discussion – all you need to do is click on the collaborate tab on the top level navigation bar and fire away your questions or top tips. With more than 50,000 members, there is bound to be a member out there who shares your interests! Current discussions include everything from how to incorporate HTML5 into the classroom to the best ways to teach students how to use Photoshop.

So what are you waiting for? Check out the Adobe Education Exchange website for more information and start sharing today!

Adobe Muse is a new tool available to Creative Cloud subscribers which lets graphic designers create websites without writing code. Today, we’re releasing a new version of Muse that includes built-in support for contact forms. In addition, this new version is now available in Japanese.

The new support for built-in contact forms allows you to easily add, configure, and style contact forms within your website designs. By using this new feature, you no longer have to embed HTML code from 3rd-party online form providers. This is just the beginning of work the Muse product team is doing to bring more extensive content management capabilities directly into the product through tighter integration with our site hosting platform, Adobe Business Catalyst. This video shows how easy it is to work with contact forms.

We’ve also added the ability to add and link to downloadable files of any type including .pdf, .zip, .dmg, & .exe, as well as support for HTML5 animations created with Adobe Edge. There’s more, so be sure to read the release notes to find out all the new goodies in this updated version of Muse.

If you already have Muse installed, just open the app and click “Install Now” on the updater screen to get these new features. If you have yet to try it, download it here on Creative Cloud.

Marc Blinder, Director, European Operations, Adobe

Just as data from the computer age helped shape finance in the 1970’s, it has also become the digital revolution’s gift to marketing. Gone are the days where marketers are on the back foot as to justifying how their campaigns are working; the availability of real time data gives them instant access to exactly what is and isn’t working on their campaign so they can tweak and optimise it accordingly. This coupled with the availability of tools which predict and measure campaign results, has given marketers a much bigger say into the company strategy and budgets – much like the role of the finance team.

In order to get to this stage however, marketers need to understand exactly which metrics to measure for each channel, in order to successfully play back that channel’s ROI in the boardroom. With the ease of capturing behavioural data online there’s certainly no shortage of such metrics, but the trick is to know what key indicators are important for each channel and observe these accordingly.

Take Facebook ads for example. There has recently been some interesting debate around just how effective this form of marketing is. On one hand, reports have suggested Face­book adver­tis­ing is not very effec­tive and in com­par­i­son to Google pro­vides sig­nif­i­cantly less value. Other reports however have highlighted brand successes through the same method which begs the question, are people measuring this form of marketing correctly?

Typically, Facebook ads should be mea­sured by soft and hard met­rics. Soft metrics include reach and engage­ment and hard metrics include the impact on rev­enue, profit, mar­gin and offline store sales across all mar­ket­ing and sales chan­nels of a business. Where some marketers have struggled in the past however is because they feel that social chan­nels should be mea­sured using the same mea­sure­ment mod­els and account­abil­ity as search mar­ket­ing efforts.

Unfortunately, this method is flawed because consumers are not spending time on social chan­nels to imme­di­ately buy goods and ser­vices, like they often are when engag­ing in online searches. Instead, they tend to use social plat­forms to con­nect with their friends, social­ise, share con­tent, and par­tic­i­pate in dia­logue around things that they are expe­ri­enc­ing and think­ing.  Advertising on Face­book, for brands who don’t sell online games or flash deals, is more like adver­tis­ing on TV – it increases the likeliness to buy, but it often takes time for a user to convert.

Read on for some common themes we have seen from some of our clients’ suc­cess­ful Face­book campaigns….

1. Sig­nif­i­cant and sus­tained ad budgets – suc­cess­ful Face­book cam­paigns must have mean­ing­ful ad bud­gets with sig­nif­i­cant reach, as a Facebook ad only sees the desired effects when it reaches a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of users.
2. A strate­gic long term view -  the best social cam­paigns are well thought out with strate­gies designed to build audi­ences and engage with them in a mean­ing­ful way, so they: 1) grow a fan base, and 2) increase loy­alty to the brand. For the mar­keter this means a strat­egy to cre­ate mean­ing­ful con­tent that is rel­e­vant to the fan base at a given point of time, and con­stantly updat­ing con­tent so that the mes­sage remains fresh.
3. Data is used as an asset – the remark­able thing about Face­book adver­tis­ing is both the tar­get­ing and data that the adver­tiser can obtain with appro­pri­ate per­mis­sions from the user. A good exam­ple is to build apps where the user vol­un­tar­ily agrees to pro­vide infor­ma­tion and then launch and mar­ket to them with the sup­port of Face­book ad buys. Through this, the ad buys drive audi­ences to the app and the data from the app can be lever­aged to make the app expe­ri­ence more inter­est­ing and the whole process more effi­cient.
4. Good con­tent is key – adver­tis­ing will have min­i­mal impact if you don’t have mean­ing­ful con­tent. You need a good com­mu­nity man­ager and mod­er­a­tor to under­stand when to place con­tent, what con­tent to place and how to mea­sure the effi­cacy of con­tent. If you fail to develop good con­tent, your fans and the Face­book plat­form will ignore your mes­sage.