Day 2 of the 2018 Nth American AEL Summit began with a number of participants successfully completing ACA (Adobe Certified Associate) exam qualifications that were offered by Certiport.

Then, after a welcome from Clara Galan, Tricia Lawrence (Adobe’s Senior Community Manager, Customer Care) shared information about the ACP (Adobe Community Professionals) Program and the Tech Wednesday sessions that she manages.

More info about what Trish manages can be found via https://forums.adobe.com/welcome

We then heard from PR firm Edelman as well as the team from Adobe Social Media. Edelman help manage Adobe’s annual creativity research projects. The Social Media team encouraged us to keep sharing the value of Adobe to our wider social networks.

Ben Slutter shared the strategy around the Adobe Creative Jams program and how it is being implemented in a number of universities.

We then had the opportunity for a sneak peak into some new initiatives that may end up as Adobe apps in the future. Some we can’t communicate yet but one that we can is Project Lincoln which featured at Adobe Max 2017. It is a cool way of making info-graphics and visualising data.

The wonderful Kelly Komode from Michigan finished off the Creative Catalyst Talks with her presentation titled Less Can Be More: Student-Driven Creative Problem Solving.

TeachMeet – Creative Catalyst Ignite Talks

A series of short Creative Catalyst Ignite Talks was a clear highlight of this year’s summit. These were led in a TeachMeet style event by Clara Galan and Greg Hodgson.

Chana Messer from the University Of Southern California was first up with a great presentation titled Telling Your Story with Adobe Spark.

Phil Badham presented some very interesting insights from the UK with the topic Building Creative Problem Solving in an Educational Age of Assessment and Anxiety.

Rebecca Hare, Art/Design teacher from Missouri is a new AEL this year and she presented a very engaging Creative Catalyst Ignite Talk titled Re-Thinking Student Work: Creation and Presentation.

Meredith Blanche, Multimedia & Technology teacher from Seattle, Washington presented the topic Letting Students Learn from Exploration.

Dan Armstrong, teacher at Ridgevue High School, Nampa, Idaho presented the topic Shaping CTE Pathway with Creative Cloud.

The amazing Joseph Labrecque from the University Of Denver presented the topic Rethinking Creative Collaborations

Andrew McAllister from Ocad University in Toronto, Canada presented the topic Revelations Big and Small: Astro and Macro Photography.

The rest of the day involved a range of focus group, allowing AELs to chat in more depth with Adobe about a range of topics. Then we all split into groups to visit the following neighbouring companies …

• Pinterest
• Uber
• Pereira O’Dell
• SocioFabrica
• Google San Francisco
• Airbnb
• Remind
• Clever, &
• XYZ

The Goldern Gate Tap Room near downtown San Francisco was the venue for our closing dinner.

Special thank you to Clara Galan (right) and Tacy Trowbridge (left) for leading this amazing international education community and putting together a great AEL Summit.

I’m already looking forward to next year.