AcrobatUsers.com celebrates first anniversary

by Kurt Foss, Editor, AcrobatUsers.com

One year ago — February 14, 2006, to be exact — we publicly launched the AcrobatUsers.com website as an informational resource for the global community. As I noted in a site introduction at the time, "the paint is still wet, and there's a lot of open space."

A year later, the paint is dry, the interior has been stocked (and redesigned) and many visitors—currently more than 10,000 registered members, representing 36 different industries in 80-plus countries—have been welcomed during the past year.

"Our customers are our most important asset at Adobe, and we’re dedicated to supporting a strong user community around the Acrobat family," said Tom Hale, senior vice president of Knowledge Workers Solutions at Adobe Systems. "AcrobatUsers.com has grown to over 10,000 members in its first year, and it’s been particularly exciting and gratifying to see customers helping other customers solve real-world business issues. The community is an important voice back to Adobe, and we look forward to continued growth in the coming year—including the addition of a segment dedicated to Acrobat Connect users."

Key accomplishments

Acrobat 8 enables online meeting rooms

Since the site's launch, Adobe released a new version of Acrobat and an expanded family of products. In turn, that helped us further our goal of community enrichment and involvement. For example, Acrobat 8 includes Acrobat Connect, an updated and integrated version of a Macromedia Web conferencing product. All user-group chapters now have the capability of hosting online meeting rooms, removing the geographic barriers and allowing users in any location to attend and participate in any chapter meeting.

Still growing, new features planned

Among the near-term expansion plans for AcrobatUsers.com are:

Your feedback remains very important

And, as we said a year ago, the continuing evolution of the site also will be based on what you tell us--what are the Acrobat-oriented issues, challenges and additional skills you need or want help understanding and learning? What kinds of information and resources will keep you coming back for more? After all, that remains our goal: to create a functional, useful environment where you feel comfortable and to which you'll want to return often.

Please take a few minutes to let us know!