2019 IEN DAM Practitioners’ Summit Review

Jeffrey Marino has written a review of the recent IEN Digital Asset Practitioners’ 2019 Summit for DAM News.  He offers some detail about each of the sessions which may be useful for those who either could not attend or who were contemplating whether to visit next year:

“In summary, this year’s IEN Practitioners’ Summit was an intimate, intelligent conference of experts talking shop, speaking frankly about traditional concepts and taking chances on interesting topics in front of a reasonably sized audience of professionals (and DAM gurus). Kudos to Dan Piro for keeping everyone’s attention, doing triple duty as emcee, moderator and panelist. The shorter duration of the Summit meant that the audience’s attention didn’t get a chance to flag as it so often does on the last afternoon of the last day.” [Read More]

My view of IEN concurs with Jeffrey’s own.  I spoke to a number of people in DAM who did not view this conference as worth adding to their schedule because the attendance is generally lower than the Henry Stewart shows (especially the New York leg).  Having been to both, I would say that much depends on what your involvement in DAM is.  If you are predominantly on the sell-side and need to have a visible presence on the ‘DAM scene’ I can see why IEN may have limited appeal.  If your focus is on finding out about how to manage DAM initiatives successfully and learning from peers (who you regard as equals) then, in my opinion, IEN has a slight edge.

A number of voices who you would not normally get to hear are given a platform at the IEN DAM event and there is less emphasis on the brand value of their employer or their perceived kudos as a ‘thought leader’ (a description I absolutely loathe for numerous reasons).  If you are an existing or  prospective DAM user and want to attend an event to learn from people who are very hands-on (and have been for many years), there is a great opportunity to obtain some practical advice at IEN which could be very difficult to obtain from other alternative sources.  Much of the information and advice that was covered simply isn’t presented in books, white papers and articles etc.  The only way to find out about it is either at events like this, or sometimes at DAM Meetups (many of which are not usually held especially frequently).

I continue to recommend DAM users endeavour to attend both this conference and the Henry Stewart one (New York, in particular) as they both have value, but those who dismiss IEN based on the number of people present in the hall have undoubtedly missed a trick.

As well as Jeffrey’s excellent article, over on DAM Guru there is a compilation of feedback from attendees who were at IEN.

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