Claudia McCue

I presented a seminar on InDesign and Photoshop CS4 in Birmingham, AL last week, for the delightful folks at EBSCO Media. It’s always fun doing events with them because they’re technologically wise, and have a great collective sense of humor. They drum up large and lively crowds for the events, which makes for a lot of positive energy.

During one of the breaks, one of the attendees came up to me and said “Rufus says hello.”

Wait… I only know one guy named Rufus: Rufus Deuchler, the charming and absurdly talented Adobe evangelist based in Italy — and I’m pretty sure he isn’t in Birmingham.

I ask, “You know Rufus? How is he?” The attendee says “No, I don’t know him; I was tweeting about being here at this seminar, and he picked up on it on Twitter, and tweeted back ‘tell Claudia hello for me.’” It was like a tap on the shoulder from across the world.

I’m so unhip — I confess I’m behind the curve on social networking; I should have started blogging long ago. I was dragged unwillingly onto Facebook (and it’s proving to be more of a time-vampire than a truly useful professional tool). And I think I’m too verbose to be a Twitterer. Tweeter? Twit? (I don’t know what Twitter participants are called…) But I’ll confess it was kind of cool to be on the receiving end. Maybe I’ll give it a shot: is there a “Twitter for Dummies”?

Just looked on Amazon: sure ’nuff, the “Dummies” book is due in July

Oh, and hi, Rufus, wherever you are.

Adobe is presenting a preview of an announcement of a look at Creative Suite 4 features on September 23, 2008.

You can sign up here.

This is not, however, a shipping announcement, just a glimpse of upcoming wonderfulness. The announcement of that announcement will come later.