The program for the 16th Creative Developers Summit is taking shape.

The Creative Developers Summit is embedded into, yet independent of, the CreativeProWeek conference. To understand why you need to attend the Creative Developers Summit, go here:

https://thoughtbridg.es/why-you-need-to-attend-creative-developers-summit/

If you already have a day pass for CreativeProWeek, and you want to attend (part of) the Summit, email me (kris at rorohiko.com) so I know you’re coming.

To register for CreativeProWeek day passes for the Summit, you need to have a special discount code. Email me (kris (at) rorohiko.com) for the discount code. Armed with that code, you then go register for a one- or two-day pass to CreativeProWeek.

https://creativeproweek.com/phoenix-2025/register/

Breakfast, coffee breaks and lunch are included in your day passes. Breakfast is served 08:00am-09:00am in the Komatke Ballroom.

Please take note that the Developer Summit kicks off each day at 8:30am, so make sure to go grab breakfast early!

Agenda:

Wednesday, June 4

Sessions

08:30am	08:45am	James Lockman & Adobe Team	Welcome and introductions
08:45am	09:45am	James Lockman & Adobe Team	Deep dive into Adobe Firefly APIs.
10:00am	11:00am	James Lockman & Adobe Team	(cont.)
11:15am	12:15pm	Kris Coppieters	Unlock Adobe Automation Magic
01:30pm	02:30pm		(cont.)
02:45pm	03:45pm		(cont.)
04:00pm	05:00pm		(cont.)

Session Info

Deep dive into Adobe Firefly APIs

08:45am-11:00am
Instructor: James Lockman & Adobe Team

(will be streamed: please contact kris at rorohiko.com to get the details)

Workshop: Unlock Adobe Automation Magic

11:15am – 05:00pm
Instructor: Kris Coppieters

(in-person attendance only; won’t be streamed or recorded)

Is Adobe automation giving you headaches?
Stuck with messy legacy scripts in InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop?
Tired of AI-generated code that falls short or breaks in real-world use?

Join our hands-on workshop to:

• Learn how Adobe automation really works
• Fix bugs faster
• Build software and scripts that last
• Master proven debugging techniques

Stop wasting weeks on trial and error. Leave with skills you can use right away.

More info here: Workshop: Become An Adobe Automation Ninja

Thursday, June 5

Sessions

By Developers For Developers

(will be streamed, except for the “Canva to Express’ and ‘Roundtable’ sessions: please contact kris at rorohiko.com to get the details)

08:30am	08:45am	Kris Coppieters	Welcome and introductions
08:45am	09:15am	Kris Coppieters	Creative Developer Tools For ES and UXP, Part Of The Tightener Project: An Overview And A Status Update
09:15am	09:45am	Keith Gilbert	The Future Of InDesign/Illustrator Scripting In An AI world
10:00am	10:30am	Arie Stavchansky	Talk to the Layer: ExtendScript Meets AI in After Effects with Claude or ChatGPT
10:30am	11:00am	James Lockman	Firefly Services Roadmap
11:15am	11:45am	Caleb Clauset	Caleb’s Corner
11:45am	12:15pm	Marcus Radich	Connecting PageProof – how we enable partners and build integrations
01:30pm	2:00pm	Adobe InDesign Team	A Peek Under The Hood
02:00pm	2:30pm	Max Dunn	Canva, InDesign, and Express (NDA session, won’t be recorded nor streamed).
02:45pm	03:45pm	tutti	Roundtable
04:00pm	05:00pm	tutti	Roundtable

Session Info

Talk to the Layer: ExtendScript Meets AI in After Effects with Claude or ChatGPT.

Explore a new approach to enhancing After Effects templates by using effect-based text inputs and ExtendScript to fetch AI-generated placeholder content from Claude or ChatGPT.

It’s a lightweight, flexible method for integrating realistic, dynamic data directly into your creative workflow — one text layer at a time.

Roundtable

(in-person attendance only; won’t be streamed or recorded).

This 2-hour roundtable is a confidential, off-the-record session focused on the challenges faced by small developer teams and solo operators.

This private roundtable will offer a unique opportunity to discuss the business challenges we all face, the ones you won’t find in any technical
manual.

Everyone is welcome, even if you work for a larger company. The session is focused on the indy perspective, but as long as you’re here in good faith and willing to share or learn, you’re encouraged to join. Just like the rest of the Summit, this is a developer-friendly space, not a corporate pitch floor.

We will run this under the Chatham House Rule and this session won’t be streamed nor recorded. To attend you must be physically present.

Chatham House Rule: “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed“

https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/chatham-house-rule

Points for discussion:

• Client Management: Strategies for handling large clients that pay on 30, 60, or 90-day terms — often late.
• Marketing Your Skills: Best practices for promoting yourself or your products through word of mouth, websites, LinkedIn, and beyond.
• Setting Your Rates: Hourly rates vs. retainers. What works, what doesn’t?
• Streamlining Paperwork: How to manage contracts, invoices, and administrative tasks efficiently.
• Invoicing And Other Admin: How to handle invoicing and getting paid.
• Handling Tech Support: Tips on scaling support while staying focused on development.
• Productizing Your Knowledge: Turning your expertise into marketable products.
• Selling Scripts and Plugins: Navigating Adobe Exchange and exploring alternative sales channels.

March 28, 2025
Phoenix, AZ

Maybe you write scripts for the Adobe Creative Cloud
Maybe you build web sites
Maybe you provide I.T. support to graphics designers
Maybe you automate catalog building
Maybe you’re just beginning and don’t know where to start
…

Creative Developers Summit 2025

You need to attend this year’s Creative Developers Summit in Phoenix, AZ, and below is why.

If you work with someone who fits the above profile: help them out and let them know to attend!

How to Register

Contact me for a special discount code. The use of this code will give you a 50% discount on the normal CreativeProWeek rates, and will enrol you for the Creative Developers Summit. You can reach me at email ‘kris at rorohiko.com’. Introduce yourself and tell me you need the discount code.

Then head to

https://creativeproweek.com/phoenix-2025/register/

and enrol for a one- or two-day in-person pass, using the discount code (important!).

The Creative Developers Summit is organized by an informal collective of developers who volunteer their time and resources. Our collective is independent from CreativeProWeek.

Our group operates without financial backing, and the Summit is not run for profit. The registration fees collected by CreativeProWeek are solely to cover essential expenses such as venue hire, catering, and audio-visual equipment.

Our primary goal is to foster a collaborative environment where developers can share knowledge and ideas. We appreciate your understanding and support in helping us maintain this community-driven initiative

Why You Need to Attend

So, here’s why you need to attend the Creative Developers Summit:

• In order to get Adobe to take notice of us third party developers, we need to band together, independently from Adobe itself. We need the numbers!
  
  Since 2017, Adobe has started to take us seriously, and Adobe is now actively supporting and sponsoring the Creative Developers Summit.
• Nothing beats face-to-face. The attendees of the Creative Developers Summits are the ‘sharing type’. We help each other out. There is a lot of trust and friendship.
• You get to meet end-users. Oftentimes, I.T. and and software development remain removed from the end-users. Here is your chance to meet end-users face to face in a friendly, relaxed environment.
• The conference is top-notch! As a loose bunch of developers, we don’t have the time nor the skills to organize an event like this.
  
  We’re all busy building stuff, running our companies, consulting, making ends meet,…
  
  The logistics of setting up a Creative Developers Summit are quite daunting.
  
  Being able to ‘tag along’ with CreativeProWeek allows us to not have to worry about any of the logistics.
  
  Over the years, David has brought together an amazing team to manage CreativeProWeek, and the conferences they organize are top-notch.

Many good ideas for new third-party tools came after rubbing shoulders with end-users.

As a solver of technical problems, you should always listen out for people uttering the phrase ‘wouldn’t it be great if you could…’. That happens a lot at CreativeProWeek.

Note: the summit is also open to all attendees of CreativeProWeek.

There are quite a few closet scripters in there, and the more the merrier!

Slack

We need help organizing the summit! If you have ideas for sessions you’d like to see, or for some initiative, please come forward and let us know!

Since the 2017 CreativeProWeek we have started an invite-only Slack group.

It is pretty much the ‘who is who’ of the Creative Developers in our technical area.

The group is open and helpful and has some correlation to the attendee list of the Creative Developers Summit.

If you are a developer, scripter, IT support person,… and you are working with graphics designers or in automating printing and publishing workflows, you need to become a member.

Send  me an email (krisⓐrorohiko.com), introducing yourself, and I can send you an invite.

Full Circle – How it All Started

Once upon a time, around 2010, Adobe Inc. had a thriving support program for third party developers. SDK documentation was plentiful.

Over the course of the next few years, this gradually disappeared, and for a while, things looked fairly bleak for third party developers.

Luckily, since about 2017, things came full circle. In the recent years, there is a renewed impetus from Adobe to support third party developers.

Between 2010 and 2017, a slightly unruly bunch of third party developers and conference organizers took the baton and helped keep the third party developer community alive.

Up to about 2010, Adobe had a dedicated ‘developer evangelist’, Mark Niemann-Ross (also known as MNR).

In those early days, MNR ran a yearly Adobe CSBU Developer Summit in Seattle. Third-party developers flocked there and were able to interact with colleagues and with the Adobe developer teams.

You got to rub shoulders with Ole Kvern, Douglas Waterfall, Michael Daumling, Jonathan Brown, Bernd Paradies… the list went on and on.

The very last Adobe CSBU Developer Summit happened in 2010, in the week before the very first PePcon conference (now called CreativeProWeek), both at the same Adobe premises in Seattle.

After the CSBU Summit, many third party developers stuck around for another few days, and stayed for PePcon 2010, where they mingled with graphic designers, ebook creators…

And that’s where it all started.

Note: CreativeProWeek remains unrelated to the original Adobe CSBU Developer Summit where it all started.

The premises used, and the network of people involved were the only common factor between that first PePcon conference and the Adobe CSBU Developer Summit.

It’s all about people and networks!

Taking The Baton

After that final Adobe CSBU Developer Summit, Adobe support for third-party developers started to wane, and third-party developers became gradually more and more insulated.

However, some embers were still glowing. Many developers had developed close friendships during those early Adobe CSBU days, and the friendships kept going.

We kept in touch. Helped each other out. Passed on business opportunities. Provided unofficial developer support.

An unofficial collective of third party developers from all over the globe took the baton from Adobe after the CSBU Developer Summit vanished.

Many of us run software companies large and small.

We continued to visit the PePcon/CreativeProWeek conferences, where we could meet up with our colleagues.

Some of us would sponsor the conference, and sit at tables to demo our ‘wares to the attendees of the conference.

As a result, PePcon/CreativeProWeek became something of an unofficial yearly pilgrimage for creative developers, to hang out and meet up.

A key figure in this story is David Blatner, who organizes PePcon/CreativeProWeek together with Anne-Marie Concepción. He has a large network of people and many connections. David has often managed to get members of the Adobe technical and developer teams to agree to take time out and come to PePcon/CreativeProWeek.

Over time, a symbiotic relationship emerged: because the conference was happening anyway, a group of technical geeks started brainstorming with David, and we started a cooperative relationship on a handshake.

It’s Not A Charity

On the one hand there is a commercial venture called CreativeProWeek. On the other hand, there is a loose swarm of software/I.T. geeks looking for a time and place to meet.

As technical geeks, we simply ‘tag along’ with CreativeProWeek, and manage to convene in a large room equipped with the necessary facilities. There we can run some a day-long session to discuss whatever we want.

As a group, we don’t remunerate David for helping us organize the developer summit.

But there are real costs involved: there is food, premises, audio-visuals,…

Hence, there is a fee for anyone who wants to attend the Creative Developers Summit.

One underpinning principle is that David at should at the very least break even in hosting the Creative Developers Summit; he’s not running CreativeProWeek as a charity event.

So, go and register! What are you waiting for?