Createasphere DAM Conference, New York, 7th-8th October 2013
DAM conference organiser, Createasphere are holding their New York conference between 7th-8th October 2013. The speakers include: Fran Alexander, Steve Saunder and Rob Schuman among others. Not shown as a featured speaker, nor even listed as one at all is Henrik de Gyor, who is, however, apparently presenting what looks like the it could be one of the more worthwhile sessions of the whole event:
“When it comes to the people, process, technology and information aspects of Digital Asset Management, you will hear plenty about the last three. What about those who will actually use the system daily or weekly? What about your users? What about those who will maintain the DAM and know your organization’s workflow inside and out? Does this take additional head count? Can you simply assign/reassign existing staff to do this? Does this involve temporary or ongoing tasks? Do they really have the time to dedicate to DAM when it was not part of their original job description nor core competency? Do they have what it needed to get the job done? What are your options nowadays? Join us as we address the questions of WHO for your organization. We will address the people part of this equation among those new to DAM, the seasoned DAM practitioners attending for enrichment, DAM experts, HR professionals and technologists.” [Read More]
I would want to double check with Createasphere if Henrik really is appearing and (being one of the better known figures in the industry) perhaps they ought to give him more prominence in their marketing?
There is also a session at the end, “A Conversation with the Experts” which looks more open-ended (and therefore possibly of interest):
“DAM experts will engage each other and the audience in a lively discussion and share their valuable insights on the challenges and issues facing businesses across all industries. In this rapidly evolving space, it’s more essential than ever before that the DAM community support each other by exchanging information about the problems they face, innovative ideas around advances and solutions they’ve discovered to solve these problems, and also offer perspectives on where the industry is heading in light of today’s DAM trends.” [Read More]
Following my co-contributor’s critique of DAM vendor marketing yesterday, I think the people running the marketing communications for this event have some work of their own to do . For example, the strap line reads “The premier event for everyone working in asset management”. To avoid getting unwanted attention from people like real estate agents, factory operations managers and staff of financial services providers, it should say “Digital Asset Management” in my view. Given that Createasphere seem to be hedging their bets across various sectors adjacent to DAM, like Transmedia and video production, I would want to be more assured that they are not simply ‘warehousing’ their events and relying on the speakers exclusively to make this relevant to DAM.
The other significant aspect of the New York event is the DAMMY awards. Looking at the previous winners of the ‘DAMMY of the Year’ award, they are all representatives of DAM software vendors. That seems to be a peculiar state of affairs. Although I can acknowledge that vendors have done a lot to drive forward technology innovations, in my view they cannot often be said to be acting as champions for the whole DAM industry. There seems to be some risk of this award losing any real meaning or value and it turning into a self-validation exercise where the DAM software market complacently reassures itself that everything is fine – while end user needs continue to fail to be adequately answered.
Genuinely, I cannot believe that any of the judges are pressurised into choosing winners they do not believe are the best available out of the options on offer – and that appears to be at the heart of the problem. People like David Riecks (who was a judge in the past and also this year) as well as the other judges appear to me to to be completely beyond reproach and if not on the award panel, would probably be in receipt of DAMMYs themselves as their knowledge and expertise of DAM is evidently vastly superior. So, perhaps it is about time the panel was composed entirely of representatives of vendors and they were obliged to choose someone who was not from among their number? Requiring some of these captains of the DAM industry to work together for a change might make for an informative and entertaining exercise (although more for observers than the participants, I would concede).
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