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Are you putting off your most important creative work day after day, as you fend off a constant stream of emails, interruptions, and urgent requests? Is your adrenaline and anxiety regularly running high, while your sense of meaningful accomplishment is running low?

It’s time for a reality check about the way we’re working. Our current model is frantic, stressful, and just plain unproductive when it comes to the things that matter most. Beyond that, it just doesn’t serve our creativity.

To help us all recalibrate our workflow for sanity, sustainability, and meaningful productivity, Behance’s 99U decided to create a smart, succinct book about how to manage your daily workflow that’s specifically tailored to creative minds.

We’re thrilled to introduce Manage Your Day-to-Day, the first book in a new 99U series which assembles insights around four key skill sets that we believe are essential to success: building a rock-solid daily routine, taming your tools (before they tame you), finding focus in a distracted world, and sharpening your creative mind.

Dedicating a chapter to each of these focus areas, 99U invited 20 incredible creative minds to share their expertise, including:

Seth Godin
Stefan Sagmeister
Tony Schwartz
Gretchen Rubin
Dan Ariely
Steven Pressfield
Scott Belsky
James Victore
& many more

The result is a tightly-edited collection of best practices that will help you shift your mindset, recalibrate your workflow, and push more incredible ideas to completion. It’s not just a book, it’s a wake-up call for your creativity.

You can order the book exclusively on Amazon. To learn more, check out the book trailer below:

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Day two was chock full of inspiration. Our day two keynote was all about highlighting stories from creative pros with inspirational stories —  many about them breaking the creativity mold. Everything from breaking the brief with Paula Scher to embracing limitations from Paul Hansen to the making-of-details from innovative creatives – Erik Johansson and Rob Legato. Watch the keynote below.

Before we closed out the day, we also hosted our Sneak Peek session, where we showcased early looks at some technologies (e.g., features/products) we’re exploring, with special guests Rainn Wilson, actor and co-creator of SoulPancake, and actress/comedian Mary Lynn Rajskub, co-hosting the evening with Ben Forta. Get the full scope of Day Two happenings from Creative Layer.

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Day 1 of Adobe MAX wrapped up yesterday with a lot of buzz and news. We kicked things off in the morning with our keynote session, “A Creative Evolution.” We announced a slew of news as well, including all-new updates to our Creative Cloud apps – Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Edge Tools & Services, and more! If you missed the keynote, watch the playback available here or catch the community-curated version captured in Storify by MAX attendee, @GayaneAdourian.

Even more exciting, we shared an early look at a number of new explorations:

• Project Mighty – A Creative Cloud pen
• Project Napolean – Complementary to Mighty, Napolean is a digital ruler designed to bring back some of the feeling of drawing with analog tools like the t-square and triangle
• Project Context – Reimagines the editorial room for publishers

For more on MAX, join the #AdobeMAX conversation.

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It was fun being on stage at MAX with David Wadhwani to share a few of the projects that we have been working on in XD. The team has been exploring how new form factor displays, new interactions (like touch and gesture), cloud connections and even new hardware might change how you all create and in turn how it might impact what software we need to build. And we have been having a serious amount of fun.

Although there are many explorations going on, we chose three to highlight. The first, Mighty, is our connected pen:

The Adobe “Project Mighty” Connected Pen

We actually started project Mighty, our “cloud pen” to help us focus on the future of drawing. I’ve always been a little obsessed with drawing. An early mentor of mine said: “If you can’t draw, you can’t think. I guess I took that to heart. The good news is that absolutely anyone can train himself or herself to draw. With the right tools to support you it’s a little bit like learning to ride a bike – you just have to keep doing it until you tease out your own style of drawing.

Mighty is pressure sensitive, which helps it draw a natural and expressive line. It is also connected to the Creative Cloud through the software and a local Bluetooth LE connection. We have used this connection to pull up Kuler themes and enable a “cloud clipboard” which gives you access to assets you have saved to the cloud for reuse.

Mighty was created with the help of Ammunition, the industrial design firm founded by Robert Brunner. They landed on a three-sided, twisted form that is inspired by the ergonomics of holding a pen. When a child struggles with writing, he or she is given a triangular grip that fits over the pencil. Our design takes that one step further by twisting the pen’s triangular form so that it also rests gently on the hand. It also yields a sculptural object that is both beautiful and distinct. There’s a lot of hardware technology involved in bringing a high tech pen like this to life, so we’ve been working with San Francisco-based MindTribe on the electrical and mechanical engineering.

Although we spend many hours a day behind the keyboard and mouse, we still often start the creative process as we did thousands of years ago with pen and paper. But with tablets and new input methods like Mighty, this is going to change – I am confident. Over the last year, my tablet has replaced my sketchbook. I never thought I would give up drawing in a moleskin sketchbook.

Our second exploration, code named Napoleon is complementary to Mighty. This digital ruler is designed to bring back some of the feeling of drawing with analog tools like the t-square and triangle. Adobe has been talking about building a physical drawing aid like this ever since we built our first digital drafting table, almost two years ago.

Adobe “Project Mighty” Connected Pen & Project Napoleon” Digital Ruler Working on iPad

I was originally trained as an architect, and still find great comfort and confidence drawing with these tools. There is something about the confidence of drawing a line aided by a physical device – the tactile feedback you get as you move the straightedge around – as well as the fluidity and accuracy of drawing that comes from interacting with physical objects. Our little ruler (Napoleon, get it?) creates a digitally projected edge that you can use to accurately draw shapes and lines. It just feels right.

The Adobe “Project Napoleon” Digital Ruler

We are looking at a lot of potential features for Napoleon, but a favorite of mine is snapping to vanishing points. Imagine how easy it will be to sketch in perspective, when you can use the ruler to quickly create and then snap to perspective vanishing points that are well off screen.

Finally, Project Context is the most ambitious of the three explorations. I like to think of it as our answer to “big content.” You know, just like big data, but with images and text and video and the like. Most of us have experience with printing hundreds of images and trying to pin them all on the wall or spreading them on the floor just to try to figure out the big picture. This is another good example of how something was lost when we went from physical to digital. Somehow file folders full of assets, or tiled displays of images don’t quite cut it. We think that large screens with touch and gesture interaction paired with the appropriate software design are a way to not only get back what was lost, but to take the organizing and producing experience to a whole new level.

When combined with InDesign and the Digital Publishing Suite, Context creates an ideal editorial and publishing environment for Wired and other publishers. Context offers a powerful and intuitive way to grab assets from just about anywhere, and to collaboratively organize and eventually even edit and publish them. These exploratory projects stand a much better chance of becoming real shipping products when we work with a customer to build them. We have the good fortune to be working with WIRED to build out the first version of Context as a system to support the editorial and layout process for their magazine.

Digitally enabled, cloud connected physical devices leverage the best from both the digital and the analog worlds. They could enable whole new levels of creative productivity and artistic confidence – and one of the many innovation milestones that makes an Adobe incredible place to work.

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Adobe MAX, The Creativity Conference, opened today in Los Angeles and we announced some big news: a major update to Adobe Creative Cloud, including fully integrated cross-device collaboration, community and publishing capabilities; and the next generation of Adobe’s pro creative desktop applications.

Here are some of the details:

Adobe Unveils Major Update to Creative Cloud

A milestone update to Adobe Creative Cloud simplifies the entire creative process with new versions of desktop tools; services that take publishing content to the next level; and capabilities that make it easier than ever to collaborate and share work on a worldwide basis. Behance, the world’s leading online creative community with over 1.4 million creatives in the network, is now central to the Creative Cloud experience.

Adobe’s desktop tools, previously known as Creative Suite (CS) are now branded CC to reflect that they are an integral part of Creative Cloud and have been reinvented to support a more intuitive, connected way of creating.  All of Adobe’s fan-favorite desktop apps have been updated: InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC, Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC, Muse CC and more.  Indeed our most iconic application, a powerful new version of Photoshop – Adobe Photoshop CC – will anchor this update to Creative Cloud.  In all, Creative Cloud will now consist of more than 30 tools and services that enable professional grade content creation and delivery across print, web, mobile apps, video and photography.

This major update is expected to be available, around the globe, in June.

 

Adobe Accelerates Shift to the Cloud

Moving forward, the company also announced that it will focus creative software development efforts on Creative Cloud.  While Adobe Creative Suite 6 products will continue to be supported and available for purchase, there are no plans for future releases of Creative Suite or other CS products. By focusing development on Creative Cloud, Adobe can accelerate the rate of innovation that it can deliver to creatives worldwide.

We thought long and hard before doing this, and we understand that this transition may be hard for some people.  As our teams work to deliver a constant stream of innovation for Creative Cloud members, we are actively engaging with customers to answer their questions — in forums like Creative Cloud community. And attractive pricing plans and promotions for individuals, teams and enterprise customers are being offered to make the transition to Creative Cloud really easy.  More information can be found at on our Creative Cloud plans page.

More detailed information about today’s major Creative Cloud update can be found in the full press release here.

And if you have specific questions, chances are you’ll find an answer in our comprehensive FAQ.

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Today we’re excited to kick off audience voting for the Adobe Youth Voices (AYV) Aspire Awards, our annual competition inviting youth around the world to creatively express their vision for driving change in local communities.

Over the past 12 weeks, we’ve received more than 1,100 submissions from 51 countries – a record high! We’ve narrowed the field to 20 finalists in each of our content categories, including animation, documentary, music video, narrative, poetry, photography, collage, and collaboration.

Beginning today through June 8, finalist entries will be showcased on our Aspire Awards website. We encourage you – our community members and supporters – to get involved by helping to select our Audience Award winners. You can cast your vote by viewing, commenting on, sharing, “liking,” tweeting, and retweeting your favorite entries.

During the audience voting period, an international panel of professionals working in art, film, and other
creative fields will additionally select first- and second-place winners in each content category and a special category for this year – the UNICEF Challenge – which invites entrants to develop a youth-led project utilizing innovative digital tools and/or digital engagement to bring positive change to their communities.

Winners in our standard content categories are eligible to win software, hardware, and a charitable donation to a cause of their choice. In addition, the UNICEF Challenge winners will receive grants valued at up to $40,000(USD), dedicated to implementing the winning project proposals. Winners’ entries from all categories will be featured at distinguished exhibitions, including international film festivals and other arts organization events.

We’ll announce winners in all categories in mid-June and celebrate the winners and their achievements at the 2013 AYV Summit in August.

To learn more about our commitment to igniting creative confidence in youth, visit our Adobe Youth Voices website. And be sure to watch this space to keep up with what’s happening with the AYV Aspire Awards!

 

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We’ve just released the results of our 2013 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey, after compiling data from over 1,800 respondents around the world. Based on the premise that engaging customers online and optimizing their digital experience across channels can mean millions in revenue, the survey was designed to find out if digital marketers are implementing programs to maximize investment or, in some cases, still just talking about it.

Some of the findings are eye-opening, like data showing a majority of the companies surveyed spend 5% or less of their marketing budget on optimization activities. Five percent or less, even though it’s also clear from the data that companies investing more get more in return. For example, companies allocating more than 25% of marketing budgets to optimization are twice as likely to see high conversion rates.

With data like that, it’s logical to ask, “what’s holding companies back”, and almost half of respondents indicated two primary challenges are budget and resources. While companies are starting to invest and advance in digital marketing optimization, there still is much to be done, as indicated by data showing more than half of respondents are unaware of the impact of site search techniques beyond the baseline functionality of keyword matching. Nearly half do not optimize their recommendation strategies and rely significantly on manual updates, with only 18% using an automated approach.  And, even though Adobe Analytics saw a doubling of traffic from mobile devices last year, 45% of marketers still do not have a mobile-optimized site.

The results of the Survey provide insight into areas where digital marketers need to excel – key areas like testing, optimized targeting, leveraging consumer data, social, site search, and automated recommendations.  It doesn’t matter if a company is just getting started with basic optimization practices or mapping out complex strategies to maximize conversion, it’s never been easier – or more necessary – for business to up their game.

To learn more and understand how you compare with your marketing peers around the world, check out our Kevin Lindsay’s post with further details and download the full survey here.

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Earlier today, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) Amendments Act of 2013 (S. 607) to the full Senate—an important milestone in advancing the privacy of communications stored “in the cloud.”

If law enforcement wants access to communications you have stored in a file cabinet in your home or in your office, the Fourth Amendment requires that they obtain a search warrant issued by a judge upon a showing of probable cause. But, under ECPA in its current form, some communications you store in a cloud service receive these same Fourth Amendment protections while others do not. If you leave communications stored online for more than 180 days, they become available to law enforcement with just a court order or a subpoena on the theory that you have “abandoned” them. Court orders and subpoenas are easier for law enforcement to obtain than a search warrant. This may have made sense in 1986, long before the wide-spread adoption of cloud-based email and storage solutions. It does not make sense today.

At Adobe, we believe our customers’ private communications should receive full constitutional protections, regardless of whether they are stored at home, at work or in our cloud. That’s why we have been pleased to support, along with the many other technology companies and organizations who are part of the Digital Due Process Coalition, the ECPA Amendments Act introduced by Senators Leahy and Lee. Section 3 of the Act would amend ECPA so that government access to any communications stored online is subject to a single, clear and constitutional legal standard: a search warrant issued upon probable cause. The Act also sets forth clear rules about when a cloud provider can (and cannot) tell its users about a government request for access to communications.

This legislation is critical to consumer and business confidence in adopting cloud services, and we will continue to work to help ensure it is signed into law. More information, along with ways to show support for amending ECPA, is available via the Center for Democracy and Technology website.

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Adobe Summit EMEA, The Digital Marketing Conference, opened in London today at 9:00 a.m. local time with a keynote address by Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager of the Adobe Digital Marketing business.  Over the course of the two day event, Summit participants have the opportunity to learn from the industry experts and network with savvy professionals who continue to push the boundaries of digital marketing and advertising, ultimately making their businesses more successful.  Keynote speakers from high-profile brands like UniCredit Group, Nike Global, AKQA, Nissan Europe, Deloitte digital, BBC, SAP and SapientNitro DACH highlight the agenda, and record-setting Austrian skydiver and BASE jumper, Felix Baumgartner, will open the general session on Thursday.

We released several news announcements at Summit today including:

1. News about a powerful new capability in Adobe Social that predicts social content performance on Facebook to maximize engagement and ROI.
2. Details of an expanded global partnership that integrates Adobe Marketing Cloud with SapientNitro’s EngagedNow platform.
3. An efficient means to conquer the webinar process from within Adobe Experience Manager.
4. Results of the Adobe Digital Index State of Mobile Benchmark Report 2013, including detail on 1) how Samsung smartphones are gaining popularity with Europeans and 2) how iOS has re-emerged as a leader in US smartphone browsing and dominates on tablets.

Adobe Marketing Cloud has fast become the solution that helps marketers get from data to insights to action, faster and smarter than ever. Here are some expanded highlights:

Adobe Social Unveils Predictive Publishing for Facebook

This powerful new predictive publishing capability for Adobe Social, which predicts social engagement on individual pieces of content and automatically suggests ideal timing to improve how that content will perform, will offer Facebook integration with the initial version.  Additional social platforms will be added later in the year.

Adobe and SapientNitro Expand Global Partnership

Adobe and SapientNitro’s expanded global partnership includes integration of the Sapient EngagedNowSM platform with Adobe Marketing Cloud.  This integrated offering provides a solution for creating, delivering and optimizing consumer experiences across Web, social, mobile, and digital displays. NASCAR, E.ON and VISIT FLORIDA are among the organizations already seeing significant results using EngagedNow with Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Additional benefits for customers include:

• Complete hosted and managed services for Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions from SapientNitro with EngagedNow
• Ready-to-use integrations built specifically for key verticals, including travel, sports and entertainment, retail, and financial services, that help make development and deployment more efficient
• Built-in operational efficiencies from the integration of EngagedNow and Adobe Marketing Cloud that streamline creative, delivery, and measurement workflows for better performance and cost savings

Conquering the Webinar Process – from within Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager webinars, powered by Adobe Connect, helps marketers 1) easily create targeted webinar landing pages that drive registration; 2) deliver immersive online events that engage audiences, build brand and drive demand; and 3) deliver post-event analytics via capabilities from Adobe Analytics.

Adobe Digital Index State of Mobile Benchmark Report

The report analyzes 150 billion visits to 1,500+ websites to provide an overview of how consumers are using mobile devices worldwide.  In addition to trends in social media, video content consumption and ecommerce from the past 12 months, the study features key findings on which mobile operating systems and device manufacturers are helping drive the most web traffic globally.

Samsung smartphones gain popularity with Europeans

In the 19 European countries analyzed, nearly 30% of all smartphone browsing now occurs via a Samsung device – up 9% from last year.

iOS has re-emerged as leader in US smartphone browsing and is dominant amongst tablets

The iPhone has been gaining ground since being offered on the Verizon network (February 2011), and again became the primary driver of smartphone browsing in the US during Q4 2012, after trailing Android phones for two years. In addition, iPads accounted for nearly early 80% of all tablet browsing in the US in February 2013, up 10 percent from last year.

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Every year, I look forward to Earth Day. It’s an opportunity to assess how well we’re performing as responsible stewards of the environment, and reflect upon what more we can do. At Adobe, we pride ourselves on being recognized as a leader in sustainability and prioritize reducing our environmental footprint through our everyday operations.

This year, Adobe is celebrating “Be Green” month throughout April. In our offices worldwide, local Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Action Teams have hosted events and activities ranging from food waste reduction campaigns and paper waste reduction competitions to river and park cleanups, bicycle workshops and more. Below is just a snapshot of what our employees are doing around the globe:

• Bangalore – Employees are restoring Puttenhalli lake by painting each of the 23 rectangular dust bins that surround the lake and planting shrubs and flowers at the entrance.
• Boston – Employees started a “donate a mug from home” drive, reducing the use of paper coffee cups.
• London – The team organized a bake-off to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)’s Sky Rainforest Rescue Project.
• New York – Employees volunteered for “NY Cares Day” at the Fresh Creek Nature Preserve in Brooklyn, an area hard hit by Hurricane Sandy.
• San Jose, Calif. – San Jose employees will remove trash from the local San Jose Guadalupe River, which supports local fish and birds.
• Seattle – Adobe Seattle’s on-site bicycling community is hosting a bicycling expo event and encouraging employees to sign up for a “Bike to Work Challenge” during the month of May.

It’s inspiring to see Adobe employees’ passion and dedication to contributing to a healthy, sustainable environment in their local communities. For more information about Adobe’s CSR initiatives, visit our CSR page.

Photoshop Lightroom 5 beta  provides photographers with an elegant and efficient way to work with their growing digital image collections, bring out the best in their images, and make an impact from raw capture to creative output, all while maintaining the highest possible quality each step of the way. New features include: advanced healing brush, upright, radial gradient, offline editing with Smart Previews, video slideshow sharing, and improved photo book creation.

• Learn more about Lightroom 5
• Download Lightroom 5
• Discuss Lightroom 5

 

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Today we shared more insights on the transformation of MAX, The Creativity Conference (May 4-8, 2013, Los Angeles Convention Center & Nokia Theatre) and announced a packed lineup of keynotes, luminary sessions, training workshops and sneaks presented by the best in the industry: graphic designer and illustrator Paula Scher, multimedia artist Phil Hansen, designer and writer Rob Legato, photographer Erik Johanssonand EA chief creative officer Richard Hilleman.

MAX will convene more than 5,000 industry leaders to exchange ideas, get inspired and explore how creativity is changing the world. The conference will feature highly anticipated MAX keynotes hosted by senior vice president and general manager of Digital Media, David Wadhwani that will explore the dramatically changing creative process and major advancements in technology. Adobe is expected to unveil a milestone update to Adobe® Creative Cloud™ at the event.

Luminary sessions will expose attendees to new ways of thinking about creative projects and some of most innovative, boundary-pushing, experimental work out there. Highlighted luminary sessions include:  Jessica Walsh (design): The Importance of Play in Innovation; Greg Gorman (photography): Celebrity Portraiture: Behind the Scenes with Greg Gorman; Jeffrey Zeldman (Web): Ten Commandments of Modern Web Design; karlssonwilker (design): Creativity, Technology, and karlssonwilker; Jacob Rosenberg (video): Dust to Lightning: The Unique Storytelling of Bandito Brothers; Scott Belsky (Web): Behance: Connecting the Creative World  and more!

In reimagining every aspect of Adobe MAX, the company challenged designers to rethink the MAX brand and design a new logo that embodied the new creative spirit of MAX. Top design firms and studios, including Sagmeister and Walsh, karlssonwilker, and Vasava applied their unique vision to the challenge. Design enthusiasts were invited to watch the creative process in action as Jessica Walsh of Sagmeister and Walsh hosted a live 24-hour redesign session featuring a single design material. The redesigned logos can be viewed here.

For more details on what we have in store for Adobe MAX this year, check out today’s press release, here.

Follow us on the MAX blog and @AdobeMAX leading up to and during the conference and join the conversation with #AdobeMAX.

See you there!

Courtney

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Today, we’re excited to announce that Adobe Primetime (formerly “Project Primetime”) is now available, offering the industry’s most advanced TV publishing and monetization platform for programmers and pay-TV service providers. Comcast Cable and NBC Sports Group have signed on as first Adobe Primetime customers and we’re collaborating with dozens of industry leaders to pave the way for TV content across every connected screen. Ecosystem partners include Akamai, Amazon Web Services, Cisco Systems, Elemental Technologies, Envivio, Harmonic, iStreamPlanet, RGB Networks, thePlatform and others.

Adobe Primetime integrates Adobe’s video publishing, player, DRM, advertising and analytics solutions to help eliminate the complexity of reaching audiences across screens and to create great digital video experiences while also offering new monetization opportunities for programmers and pay TV service providers. The seamless tie-in with ecosystem partners offers an unprecedented, highly scalable and reliable solution that can be implemented consistently across devices and platforms.

The Adobe Primetime Player is available for Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS, and will support connected TVs as well as gaming platforms such as Roku and Xbox in 2013. To learn more about Adobe Primetime and how we’re helping content owners and distributors more efficiently bring more content to more devices, see our press release and blog post.

Additionally, given the rise in digital video consumption, we also published The U.S. Digital Video Benchmark report. The Adobe Digital Index team looked at 19.6 billion video starts on media websites from 2012 to confirm the growth of broadcast video consumption across connected devices. A few key findings include:

• TV Everywhere adoption increased 12-fold
• Mobile video viewing grew by 300%
• Facebook users are seeing twice the level of engagement with video over non-video content

Check out our animated infographic below and see the full report on the latest video trends for device use, ad placement, social media, and more.

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Earlier today, Forrester Research, Inc. published “The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management For Digital Customer Experience, Q2 2013” report. Adobe was among the select companies Forrester invited to participate in the independent report, which evaluated 10 Web content management (WCM) products across 100 comprehensive criteria such as vendors’ current offering, strategy and market presence.

Adobe CQ, part of Adobe Experience Manager within Adobe Marketing Cloud, was recognized as the Leader in the report. We’ve posted to our Experience Delivers blog to provide more detail and perspective and have also distributed a press release on the same.

Finally, we encourage you to check out a complimentary copy of the full Forrester report, which we’ve made available here.

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Next week kicks off the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show, the largest broadcast tradeshow in the US.  Adobe is heading to the show with a lot to talk about.  Today, we announced a sneak peak at the next generation of Adobe’s flagship video tools including Adobe® Premiere® Pro, Adobe After Effects® SpeedGrade™, Adobe Audition®, Adobe Prelude™, Adobe Media Encoder and Adobe Story before their official release.

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Adobe After Effects CS6

Adobe Audition CS6

Adobe Prelude CS6

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6

The next version of Adobe video tools has been developed with features created in direct response to the needs of filmmakers, broadcasters and video professionals. In fact, the multiple Academy Award winning Coen brothers have been working directly with the Adobe Premiere Pro product team and are switching to Adobe Premiere Pro for their next feature film slated for late 2013. More on that here.

In addition to our tools, we announced Adobe Anywhere for video – a modern, collaborative workflow platform that empowers teams using Adobe professional video tools, to work together accessing and managing centralized media and assets across virtually any network. Adobe Anywhere was revealed as a technology preview in 2012, and will be showcased at NAB this year, and is expected to be available in May 2013.

At NAB, we are discussing the fusion of new media and filmmaking. On Sunday, April 7, at 10:30 a.m. in room N250, Adobe will lead the Post|Production World keynote titled, “From Concept to Delivery: The Fusion of New Media and Storytelling.” The panel will feature Adam Pertofsky, editor and partner at Rock Paper Scissors, Bayan Joonam of Soul Pancake, Rainn Wilson’s production and media company, and Patrick F. X. Murphy, Visual Effects  Supervisor and Animation Director for “Annoying Orange” on Cartoon Network, who will join moderator Mark Randall, chief strategist for Adobe, to discuss how creativity and technology work together. Watch the panel next week here.

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Printers, overnight mail, scanners, and fax machines are killing business productivity. More and more organizations are moving away from paper-based approaches to their critical business processes to reduce costs, improve security, and limit environmental impact.  According to a recent Adobe study, “Paper: An Endangered Species?” the majority of managers surveyed had overwhelmingly negative attitudes toward paper-based processes and cited productivity, security, attracting talent and going green as the benefits of a completely digital workflow. The research is based on interviews with 1,051 U.S. managers in small, medium and large businesses that are responsible for creating or working with contracts.

Going Digital: Improving Business Processes

Adobe’s research shows that more than half of managers surveyed believe that digital approaches simplify work. Further, companies slow to adopt fully digital practices are at a disadvantage when it comes to growing their businesses and ultimately attracting new customers. For example:

• 51% of respondents said that a digital workflow makes filing and managing documents easier
• 61% of managers said working digitally saves on costs
• 32% said a digital workflow is more efficient, giving them an edge with client work and ultimately helps win new business

Paper-Based Contracts: a negative impact on trust

Our study also showed that paper impacts the trust that businesses have with partners, vendors and customers.  Unfortunately, this is particularly acute when it comes to the sanctity of contracts, the heart of business agreements:

• More than two-thirds believe that paper-based contracts are prone to defacing
• 60% of managers believe that password-protected electronic documents are more secure than paper documents locked in a safe
• 56% cited the fear of losing a paper document as the top “con” of using paper

Attracting talent and going green

Our study also pointed out a growing attitude among people that it’s more prestigious to work for a company that is mostly digital:

• 76% of respondents said they are impressed by companies that have a strong digital presence
• 71% said they wish their company was more digital
• 68% said that it is important for a company to operate mostly electronically versus on paper when they are deciding where to work

The last mile: moving to electronic contracts

While the vast majority of business processes – from small companies to large enterprises – have already gone digital, contracts represent the last mile for companies to go paperless. Our study showed that the tipping point for more businesses to transition to digital contracting may be on the horizon – respondents noted they would be highly interested in using an automated Web contracting tool that makes it easy to electronically sign, track and secure contracts:

• 98% of respondents noted they still use paper in their transactions involving contracts
• Only 18% having made the switch to purely digital methods when signing contracts
• 72% said a digital tool, such as an eSignature service, would fulfill a critical business need
• 73% of managers affirmed that life would be easier if all contracts exchanged at work were done digitally

Digital Contracts Streamline Business

Adobe believes that now is the time for all organizations to immediately evaluate how and if they can shift to digital approaches for contracting. eSignature technologies are easy, secure, and readily available. Organizations that use eSignatures are seeing a dramatic decrease in the time needed to close deals, reduced contract negotiation times, faster “quote-to-cash”, and a safer, more secure way to track and store some of their most critical business documents.   And all eSignatures are backed by the federal ESIGN Act, ensuring the legality of the contract, which should put the customer at ease.

For your “signees,” signing a contract is simple and easy.   They can sign from their mobile phone, their iPad, or any device connected to the Web – no more waiting by the fax machine or for that overnight envelope to arrive.

It’s easy to get more digital. Just check out Adobe EchoSign here for a free test drive.

Paper: An Endangered Species? (Study PDF)

Twitter: @jon_perera

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In anticipation of the marquee Adobe event for designers, MAX, The Creativity Conference, May 4-8 in Los Angeles, Adobe shared a few project updates today that have been in the works for the last several months.

Adobe released a second preview of the responsive web design tool, Edge Reflow, that is now available to Creative Cloud members. The new features add more styling and layout capabilities and are user-driven, based on initial feedback to the first preview. Edge Reflow Preview 2 is the most recent example of how Adobe is using an open development model to create the next generation of innovative web design tools to support today’s new workflows. Learn more in this blog post.

The Dreamweaver team revealed an exciting sneak peek into the new CSS Designer feature that provides a visual interface to let users quickly and intuitively work with CSS properties like gradients, box shadows, and media queries. It gives users the ability to visually apply and set different media queries for web content to be presented in different sized media. This feature will be available later this year and you can find out more information in this blog post.

Make sure you check out MAX to learn what’s coming next for Adobe’s creative tools.

 

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Note: This post is cross-posted from Mike Dillon’s personal blog. 

Silicon Valley. It’s a place emulated around the world as a continuous source of innovative thought spawning new products, companies and industries. More importantly, this innovation is a powerful economic and job-creation engine for the Digital Age.

Unfortunately, there are a group of individuals and entities that are constantly siphoning fuel from this engine. They go by a variety of names. Some people describe them with polite terms like “non-practicing entities” or “NPEs”; others refer to them with more subtly negative names like “patent trolls”. I prefer to be more blunt: they are leeches; leeches that divert capital investment and innovative energy away from job creation and, instead, to litigation.

Much has been written on this subject, but in general this is what is happening. An individual or small group of investors purchases a patent on the open market. Often it is a weak patent that shouldn’t have been issued by an overworked examiner at the U.S. Patent Office or it could be a strong patent that may have been interpreted incorrectly in the judicial process. The owners of these patents then file lawsuits against any company where they can even remotely make a claim of patent infringement. In years past, the focus of these suits was primarily technology companies, but that is no longer the case. Recently, on a single day, more than twenty retail companies, including J.C. Penny, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Men’s Wearhouse, Walgreens and Pier 1 Imports were all sued for patent infringement in this type of case.

Every company that I have worked for has been on the receiving end of these lawsuits.  Most of these cases begin with a demand letter in which the plaintiff doesn’t even bother to specify the allegedly infringing feature of the product, or the precise part of the patent that is claimed to infringed. The letters just list one of many patents, refer nebulously to a company’s products, and say “pay up.” And, when you don’t, your company finds itself receiving a visit from a process server, delivering a similarly vaguely worded complaint and lawsuit.

Recently, for example, one of these entities filed suit against comedian Adam Carolla, alleging infringement of a patent that appears to describe a way of disseminating episodes of content in a serialized fashion. First question: Really? You can patent that? Second question: Why are they suing Carolla, a comedian who is best known for his free podcast?

The answer is that it’s all about economics.  In the U.S. we have a judicial system in which each party pays its own legal costs and attorney fees.  The plaintiffs in this type of case uses this to their advantage. They know that when faced with even a specious patent infringement lawsuit, a company will be inclined to settle because if it wins the case, it loses from a financial standpoint. On average it cancost between $3 – $5 million to defend a patent infringement lawsuit. So, if a company wins at trial, it gets nothing other than a large legal bill and a verdict of non-infringement. Thus, it’s a financially rational decision to raise the white flag as long as the settlement amount is less than the anticipated legal cost of going to trial. Knowing this many companies elect to settle as soon as they face one of these lawsuits and incur significant costs in defending it.

Now, you may ask, why don’t companies use their own patents and sue these entities as a form of deterence? Good question. This intellectual property equivalent of “mutually assured destruction” is the reason that patent litigation between competitors across all industries is relatively rare. If you intend to sue a competitor over a patent, you had better be prepared that your company will face the downside risk of being sued for infringement in response. What’s different in these cases is that the entities that file them don’t actually make anything. They are instead, just litigation shell companies. Because of this, their tactics can’t be used against them – i.e. they have no products that a company can claim are infringing.

This all plays to the plaintiff’s benefit because if they file enough cases, some percentage of companies will settle. The proceeds from these settlements are then used to fund litigation against other companies and the purchase of additional patents to be used in future lawsuits. In order to obtain an ROI, plaintiffs only have to cast a broad net and manage their legal costs efficiently.

Often the plaintiffs defend their actions by saying that they are “standing up for the sole inventor.” Well, we like sole inventors. Adobe was founded by two guys in a garage. (The name of the company originated from a creek near where they lived.) But the plaintiffs in these cases are not standing up for quality patents, and getting meaningful value for these patents. They are, instead,  just holding companies up for the cost of litigation. It doesn’t even matter what the patent is about. The only people getting wealthy from this system are the lawyers (and that’s coming from one).

At Adobe the vast majority of the litigation against our company are patent infringement cases of this type. We fight all of them because, quite frankly, they’re bullshit.

But this doesn’t mean it’s an easy decision because we don’t measure our defense costs in dollars; we measure them in jobs. When we fight a case through trial it is the equivalent of 15 to 20 forgone engineering positions. Positions that could be creating additional innovation and job growth.

Now, what if in this area of litigation only, we changed the economics? What if instead of each side paying their own fees and costs, we changed to a “loser pays” system as it is in much of the rest of the world? This wouldn’t prevent anyone from bringing a patent infringement suit, they would just have to be very confident that they would prevail at trial.

Last year, Congressmen Peter Defazio and Jason Chaffetz introduced a piece of bipartisan legislation called the SHIELD Act (Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes Act). Although various business, legal and government constituencies are still negotiating the details, in concept it is as I have described above – a shifting of economic incentives so that in this type of patent litigation, the losing party would be required to pay the prevailing party’s fees and costs. Under this system, the true “garage” inventors would still be able to use the courts to enforce their patents,  but plaintiffs would face more risk when they bring a poorly founded lawsuit.

While not a perfect solution, the SHIELD Act would go a long way to helping companies spend more on creating jobs, rather than fighting litigation. It’s legislation that matters to employers, shareholders and consumers.  For more information and to show your support contact Congressman Defazio here.

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You probably heard back in December that Adobe acquired Behance, the leading online social media platform that enables creative professionals to showcase and share their work with millions. We wanted to share some great news for our Creative Cloud complete members.

Starting today, Behance ProSite (normally $100/year) will be available at no additional cost for all paid Creative Cloud complete members. ProSite transforms a public Behance portfolio into a fully customized personal portfolio site with your own URL. You can design an incredible portfolio site that stays in sync with your projects on Behance, increasing your efficiency and helping your work get more exposure from Behance’s 18+ million visitors every month. If you’re ready to get started building and customizing your Behance ProSite, just a few quick steps:

1. Login and go to the Apps page on creative.adobe.com
2. Find the ProSite icon under “Other Services” and click on the “Get Started” link
3. You’ll be brought to the ProSite welcome page on Behance, where you can either log in or sign up for Behance to build your portfolio and launch your ProSite when you’re ready.

Not a paid Creative Cloud complete member yet?  Free Creative Cloud members can link their accounts to Behance.net using the “Get Started” link under the Behance icon.  When you’re ready, move up to a Creative Cloud complete plan or team plan, and you’ll get ProSite too! Learn more about this exciting update from Scott Belsky, Co-Founder & Head of Behance, VP – Product-Community, here.

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