It’s not often that I get out of the cold confines of the Dev Room where I work. Last time I was out was to Cotabato, teaching the staff of an NGO how to use their high tech computer gear. That was in 2006.

This time it’s not going to be as far as Mindanao, but never the less adventurous. I’m heading off to Masbate for the introductory meetings leading to the two-week teaching stint that will start on the last week of November and will run into the first week of December.

I am going as Project Manager and Trainer for the Corporate Social Responsibility program of one of our clients at work. The startup project involves 13 computer systems to be spread out to four schools in the city of Masbate, and Municipalities of Baleno, Milagros and Balud. The packages each include a Lenovo K300 desktop system, an HP 5610 printer, an APC BackUPS E500 and a SmartBro USB Internet kit, complete with computer table and chair.

The package also includes Ate Vikki to teach the teachers how to use the system, and how to milk the internet for all its worth.

My first trip will consist of a plane ride from Manila to Legaspi, hired car from Legaspi to Pilar, a ferry ride from Pilar to Aroroy in Masbate, drive down to Baleno and then Masbate City to meet the two nearby schools representatives, determine who the training participants will be, and to help decide on the best places to position the computer sets. On the second day we will be heading off to the Municipalities of Milagros and Baleno to meet the representatives there, and then back to base in Aroroy, for the trip back home the next day.

On the 25th of November I will be back there with one of our tech guys to put in all 12 computers in the respective schools, and start the round of 2-day training sessions on the use of Windows Vista and basic MS Office.

Not an advanced holloween party this, but mid-way through an InDesign tip during the Adobe INDESIGN WORLD 2006 Roadshow, one of the best seminars I’ve attended this year.

Tim Cole, Senior InDesign Evangelist, Adobe Systems, Inc. and Marianne Young, Solutions Engineer, Adobe Systems, South East Asia, were the Mission Mentors. I bet those who attended were every bit as wowed as I was, and will in the next 24-48 hours probably head off to the nearest pirata tiangge for bootlegs, except a kid from the UP college of IT who won a boxed InDesign software package (inggit kaming lahat!), and the Adobe group gave away shirts and idea notebooks (I got one of those).

One of the new things I learned is about Adobe Bridge … something that if I had known how to use would have eliminated the need for Picasa or Aseedcsee or whatever software that was. Fire up your Adobe Bridge (if you’ve never done so before) and you’ll see what a powerful image manager it is.

Useful URLS :

http://www.indesignsecrets.com/ - for tips tricks podcasts and everything else about Indesign
http://www.adobe.com/studio/print/ptd.html - the Adobe Print Technical Documentation
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/ - The Adobe Design Center
http://www.roguesheep.com - RogueSheep Incorporated, for some really useful plugins for InDesign