Re: FrameMaker 2005 Chautauqua -- November 7-9, Raleigh NC USA

["Thomas Michanek" <framers@xxxxxxxxx>]

First of all, I'm convinced the Chautauqua conference will be a great
opportunity for FM users to meet, mingle and learn. Also, I'm grateful
for Kay Ethier and her team for organizing this event.

But for me, the contents of Adobe's presentations at the conference are
the most interesting parts of the agenda. Like Rick Quatro, I'd like to
see more details about these presentations or some form of product
announcement before committing to the conference.

> Adobe is going to come and talk about FrameMaker and will obviously say
> what they are able to say. There are going to be at least 2 folks from
> the Frame product team there, and one of the biggest assets of this
> event is that they will be there to talk to users and answer questions.
> They will be there to quell the rumors as well.

The key here is that they will "say what they are able to say". I have had
confirmation from Dov Isaacs that you will not be getting any "secrets".
This means that Adobe's policies of not revealing any details of upcoming
releases are still in place. I'm quite sure Adobe will say that a new
version is coming, and the overall key areas being addressed, for this or
any possible future releases (like "improved XML support"). UNLESS a new
version has been announced before the conference, I'm just as convinced
you won't be told when the new version will be released, the version no.,
or any details regarding features or bugs being added or corrected.
If you expect to get straight answers to questions like "will FM support
Unicode natively in the next release" or "will multiple undo be implemented",
my educated guess is that you will become disappointed.

I'm convinced the presentations will be interesting to listen to per se,
and you'll be able to communicate face-to-face with the top FM executives,
which is very nice. But I think it would be fair to not put too high
expectations on the possibilities to learn some "inside" information.

Let me tell you a story: 
========================
In April, the FrameMaker User Group Sweden (FUGS), had it's annual meeting
and conference in Gothenburg. For several years, FUGS have tried to get
someone from Adobe in Sweden to participate and talk about FrameMaker.
Adobe have not been able (or interested) in coming, until this year. So, 
believe it or not, one Adobe representative was there and had 50 minutes 
at his disposal. Right now, I cannot remember his exact position, but 
Adobe Sweden has noone special assigned for dealing with FM.

He started out by regretting that he couldn't reveal any details about FM's
future whatsoever, apart from the fact that a new version is in the works.
He then spent a good 45 minutes talking about and showing new features in
Acrobat 7 and PDF, Web-DAV and GoLive integration, and so on. When 5 minutes
was left, some of us felt it was time to ask some questions about FM, like
when FM will be better integrated with other Adobe software, etc. Of course,
he had nothing to say, but he thought it was "nice to come and meet us all".

I think most of us wondered why he bothered to come at all. Like he said, it
was nice of him to show up, but he knew close to nothing about FrameMaker,
which I guess explained why he was so keen on presenting all other Adobe
products which could be (or not) integrated with FM.

I truly hope Adobe's presence at the Chautauqua conference will be much
better than this, something more than just "nice to meet you all".

Do I sound disillusioned? Well, I'm learning from experience.

___________________________________________
Thomas Michanek, FrameMaker/UNIX/MIF expert
Technical Communicator, Linkoping, Sweden
mailto:Thomas.Michanek@xxxxxxxxx
___________________________________________



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