This week’s announcement that computer science will be granted EBacc status in the Government’s planned GCSE reforms is a positive step in the right direction, however it does not go far enough.

Whilst the move to include Computer Science in the mooted English Baccalaureate will no doubt help equip future generations of 14 to 16-year olds with some technology skills that higher education institutions and businesses may be looking for, it does not address the fundamental problem of omitting design and the wider arts as a core subject in the proposals. As it stands, a gaping hole remains in the Government’s planned reforms with the continued omission of arts subjects in the.

Therefore, I’m pleased to announce that today Adobe has joined the #IncludeDesign campaign, as part of our ongoing commitment to supporting creativity in education in the UK.

The creative industries constitute one of the fastest-growing sectors in the UK and the creative skills needed to be successful should be fully supported & embedded in both primary & secondary education. Our own research tells us that 77% of UK employers and University lecturers place a high value on creativity in school leavers, with 78% of people in the UK in agreement that creativity is key to driving economic growth.

The UK is renowned for its creativity thanks to its successes in fashion, art, design, film and music, so providing all students with access to creative subjects is essential to our future economic success.

A programme of study devoid of any arts or design tuition threatens to stifle creativity, which is why today we are joining some of the creative industry’s best known names and most high-profile agencies in backing #IncludeDesign. You can find out more by checking out this article on Digital Arts.

Liz Wilkins, Senior Education Marketing Manager, Adobe

This is one of the findings from the latest advertising expenditure report from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB); with advertising spend shooting up by 12.6 percent to £2.6 billion in the first half of the year.

Fuelled by the rocketing number of smartphone and tablet users, mobile advertising alone grew by 132 percent to £181.5 million in the first half of 2012, from the previous year, and now accounts for seven percent of all digital advertising spend.

These results support the findings of Adobe’s Q2 2012 Global Digital Advertising Update, which we blogged about back in July.   Our report showed that whilst conversion rates for tablets are 120 percent higher than those for PCs, Cost Per Clicks (CPC) rates are markedly less than desktops or laptops, 30 percent less in fact – opening a window of opportunity in the digital advertising market.

“Mobile traffic continues to demonstrate a significant opportunity for advertisers as the industry is still yet to normalise click through rates” comments Jonathan Beeston, director of new product innovation at Adobe. “With results remaining strong for mobile, there is a growing emphasis on mobile devices as tablet conversion rates outshine desktop conversion rates.”

However, the gap in that window of opportunity is starting to close and it won’t be long until the cost per click rate starts to increase. To make the most of this, brands need to act now to make sure they don’t get shut out by their competitors.

“There’s still time for brands to get in there and reap the benefits delivering greater ROI but they need to move quickly before this ever shrinking window shuts,” adds Beeston.

To support institutions in meeting this demand, we’ve launched a new three year license agreement, the Eduserv Adobe ELA Framework Agreement. It means that both Further Education and Higher Education institutions will be able to provide access to Adobe’s latest Creative Suite software across the whole campus for the first time. Plus staff get it too!

We’re working with loads of leading institutions to help them deliver a strong digital offering. Here’s what a few have to say about the Eduserv Adobe ELA Framework Agreement:

 Kirk Laws-Chapman, Resources Manager, Norwich University College of the Arts:

“The new Eduserv Adobe ELA Framework Agreement has provided Norwich University College of the Arts with an affordable way to give our students access to latest industry standard software across the campus. Meeting expectations against a background of rising tuition fees is a challenge, and this is a great way for us to add value to the student experience here.”

Phil Purves – Senior Lecturer, Bath Spa University:

“I’m confident that a lot of current and future students will benefit the new Eduserv Adobe ELA Framework Agreement. In addition to saving the University money, it is giving us software consistency everywhere with the latest CS6 suite available on whatever machine is capable of running it. All our creative areas have been keen to support this new agreement. It’s going to make a huge difference.”

Steve Harvey, Arts University College at Bournemouth:

“The Arts University College at Bournemouth (AUCB) feels extremely privileged to be signed up to the Eduserv Adobe ELA Framework Agreement. It enables us to offer more access to industry standard software at a good price, but also helps with the strategic development of software maintenance to align Education and Business application deployment.”

 For more information on how to sign up to the agreement, check outwww.eduserv.org.uk/ela. To be included in the next entry point in November 2012, institutions must complete all paperwork by 24^th October.

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.

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!

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.

For Investec – an international specialist bank and asset manager serving corporate investors and high net worth individuals – the challenge was to move from a single on-line presence in Johannesburg to a 15-region digital marketing platform that would allow the company to take advantage of local opportunities, often at relatively short notice.

Using Adobe CQ, part of Adobe Digital Marketing Suite, Investec now has a global web experience platform that delivers a distinct, local visual and user experience without being limited to generic-looking templates or designs.

What does this mean for Investec? It now has a highly decentralised web experience management platform with powerful content authoring tools and global brand management capabilities. In practice this means its digital marketing team can now react quickly to local opportunities and changing customer trends with relevant regional and customer-specific content.

And the results? Because Adobe CQ takes away the organisational complexity normally associated with multi-region content creation and publishing, Investec has been able to focus on delivering compelling, creative content that drives the business forward. For example, when Investec signed a midnight deal to sponsor Tottenham Hotspur football club in the English Premier League (seasons 2010/2011 and 2011/2012), the firm was able to launch a major microsite the following morning

Online traffic has also doubled since the system went live, along with a vast increase in the volume of both global and locally published content. It has also laid the foundations for multichannel communication, enabling Investec to respond to, and engage with, its customers regardless of time-zone, location or device.

“Our web presence plays a vital role in providing the level of service our clients expect from a world-class firm,” says Diarmaid Crean, Global Online Marketing, Investec. “Having our web infrastructure on Adobe CQ makes it simple for personnel throughout our organization to author and publish content, everywhere we do business, quickly and easily.”

Manny Vaghuela, Adobe’s Solution Consulting Director and Fahim Salim, Investec’s Web Development Manager can be seen discussing Investec’s moving to the Adobe CQ platform (a process described as re-platforming) during a recent webinar.

The discussion also covers the evolution of content management software and how Investec is using Adobe CQ to optimise its content to meet marketing goals and keep up with evolving consumer and technological demands.

The full case study, with more information on the Adobe CQ platform including how it allows Investec to add local, dynamic content can be found here.

Check out our webinar around replatforming web marketing systems in the age of the multi-channel consumer below.

Article by Anke Schnedler, marketing manager, Adobe Systems

In a fast-paced industry with a huge digital output and major security implications, the need for a robust document management system is not just important, it’s critical. For busy law professionals the ability to easily access, share and work on documents is par for the course: when it works, no one notices, but when it goes wrong, all eyes fall on the IT manager.

As we all know, solicitors, lawyers and barristers have always spent a serious amount of time assembling cases, filling in forms, and compiling letters, briefs and presentations. They then need to exchange these documents with clients, outside counsel and the courts and need a trusted method to control access to, and limit distribution of, confidential information.

As courts implement new electronic filing systems, IT departments need to support staff by equipping them with document collaboration tools that not only increase efficiency through the review and repagination process, but enable them to protect sensitive information, even when documents travel outside of the document management system and corporate firewall. Also key is the ability to have searchable solutions that archive and maintain an audit trail of emails and their attachments.

As a result, many firms are looking at their current document management solutions and cost effectively standardising them across their business. Herbert Smith LLP, a law firm headquartered in London which advises clients from its network of offices across Asia, Europe and the Middle East, is a great example of a firm that is boosting efficiencies, managing and protecting sensitive information and in turn offering an improved client service. Its aim was to revamp many of its administrative, document-based processes in order to drive efficiency across the organisation.

Using Adobe Acrobat, they were able to assemble case documents efficiently, redact sensitive information securely, improve collaboration across legal teams and complete forms electronically. In addition to reliably redacting sensitive content from case documents, the firm’s staff can now encrypt and password protect PDF files that are delivered to outside teams, helping better safeguard sensitive case details. Indeed, document controls and security rules ensure that only those with permission can access documents and control who opens, views, prints, copies, and modifies files – both inside and outside the firewall.

For further information on how Adobe is helping Herbert Smith LLP prepare, protect, and deliver professional communications in PDF click here.

The conference was a unique opportunity to hear from leading educators about how they implement digital media in film, video and design schools, as well as gaining insight into how technology ties into teaching goals.

We kicked the conference off on Tuesday evening with some welcome drinks at Bahçeşehir Üniversitesi, which gave us the opportunity to get to know the speakers and attendees we would be spending the next two days with.

Wednesday and Thursday were full of interesting workshops and heated debates, where we had the chance to hear from some of the best speakers in the industry including Andy Balzdell (CelAction), Lee Brimelow (Platform Evangelist, Adobe) and Sue Tong (The Illuminated Film Company).

Here’s a snapshot of what some of you were saying on Twitter:

Thanks so much to everyone that joined us in Istanbul – we couldn’t have done it without you.

If you haven’t joined our LinkedIn group yet then you can do so by clicking here.

We went out with a bang on Day 5 of #CreativeWeekUK with a packed studio for our very last live debate. Four great panellists – Glyn Dewis (@GlynDewis), Erin Moroney (@erin_moroney), Timothy Allen (@timothy_photo) and Richard Curtis (@richardcurtis) – spent the best part of an hour debating whether digital photography is ‘all tech and no talent’. All the talk around digital retouching certainly kept things interesting and the discussion continued long after the cameras stopped rolling – both in the studio and on Twitter. It was the perfect end to #CreativeWeekUK.

Throughout #CreativeWeekUK, thousands of you got involved on Twitter by tweeting your questions and opinions to the #CreativeWeekUK hashtag. In fact the latest figures show that in total #CreativeWeekUK was mentioned 5,443 times. And thanks to you all, we even trended on Twitter!

All the live shows were broadcast online from studios in the heart of London, and we were very lucky to have Tower Bridge as our backdrop for the week. But if you missed any of it, or want to watch some of the lively debates, show and tell sessions or product showcases again, then you can download it all on-demand at your leisure from here.