DAM News Round-Up – 16th December 2019


A collection of recent DAM-related articles from around the web, sourced from DAM Federation member, Planet DAM.

Why People Really Are More Important Than Technology In Digital Asset Management

My co-contributor Ralph Windsor has recently posted an in-depth article exploring the themes and trends within the DAM industry in the past year, with a number of predictions for the coming year and beyond.  This detailed piece includes topics such as the growing importance of Digital Asset Supply Chains, how resellers and third party integrations have come to the fore, the lack of growth and consolidation in the DAM sector, and how Artificial Intelligence based image recognition has come to be regarded as somewhat gimmicky.  The key takeaway is how humans (i.e. those with DAM skills) are now more important than ever in realising a successful DAM initiative.

Guru Talk: Ian Matzen – Tame Your Assets

Digital Asset Management community site DAM Guru Program has recently published a short Q&A with Ian Matzen, DAM professional, librarian and creator of Tame Your Assets.  Covering his career path, skills and experience, Ian provides a number of useful insights into the challenges faced by both new and experienced DAM users, along with his vision for the DAM sector in the next five years.

Guru Talk: Fred Robertson

Continuing with DAM Guru Program member interviews, Digital Asset Management professional Fred Robertson responds to a series of questions.  Taking us through his numerous roles at well-known organisations including Bose and Liberty Mutual, Fred’s detailed breakdown of his extensive experience ranging from licensing stock imagery through to handling photo-shoots, building metadata schemas and implementing system-wide changes to workflows provides an interesting and insightful look behind the curtain of real-world DAM implementations.

Embedded Metadata with David Riecks

Content management podcast site, I Never Metadata, operated by taxonomy consultant, Mindy Carner, has recently published an in-depth interview with David Riecks, founder of ControlledVocabulary.com founder and Project Leader at PhotoMetadata.  Focusing on many aspects of metadata, David’s wealth of experience and impressive track record includes involvement with numerous working groups and standards such as IPTC, Metadata Working Group, Adobe’s Bridge, and the Video Metadata Hub.  Rounding up with a series of recommended literature, the article provides some useful references for those looking to dig a little deeper into both the history and future of metadata within digital images, audio and video.

Why Organizations Need to Clean Their Dirty Data

Journalist and Information Management expert David Roe has published an article exploring the theme of ‘dirty data’, what it means to businesses, and how it can affect the integrity of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning systems that have been trained using it.  Starting with the adage “garbage in, garbage out”, this well-written and comprehensive piece is a must-read for anyone involved in data collection, organisation and governance as part of an AI or ML strategy.

Running a Content Migration Project? Don’t Forget Your Business Leads

Enterprise Content and Information Management specialist Andrea Malick has written an insightful article covering the challenges of content migration, and how the most important players – the content owners and managers – are often omitted from consultation until after the project has gone ahead.  Andrea explains how business leads know their data best, and impresses the fact that they need to be at the table during development and review phases in order to make qualified decisions about migration prior to the event, including options concerned with purging unused data and which files can be considered obsolete or candidates for archival.

Getting Started with Digital Asset Management: User Adoption

Digital Asset Management software vendor ImageRelay addresses the numerous challenges of User Adoption in this recent blog post, along with a checklist of actions you can take in order to notify, involve and train users both before, during and after the roll-out of a new or upgraded DAM system.  One idea that strikes me as particularly good sense is sending new users on a ‘scavenger hunt’ – a list of tasks for them to complete such as creating an account, searching, downloading and sharing assets, and applying metadata or usage rights to a particular asset.  As we’ve previously covered, successfully building a case for a DAM and any subsequent adoption strategies must be user-centric, and the more open, sensitive and responsive you are to user requirements and feedback, the more likely your investment into a DAM system will pay off.

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