Interview with Jeff Lawrence

The latest DAM professional to feature in our interview series is Jeff Lawrence, a name who many with long-term experience in the Digital Asset Management trade will be familiar with.  Jeff’s interview is extensive and is packed with insights.  His answer to the question What is the most important thing for someone new to DAM to understand about DAM stood out for me:

“If you are setting up a new DAM, take the time to curate your assets. Make sure that everything that will be ingested has complete and consistent metadata.  Use common tools like Adobe Bridge to standardize the metadata and apply the metadata consistently. Avoid creating custom fields whenever possible and stick to the standard fields, such as IPTC. This will ensure that when you migrate to a new system, everything will easily transfer. The less customization, the better.  If you are migrating to a new DAM, take the time to perform a content audit. Some basic queries using SQL can quickly locate bad data, such as typos, that can be easily fixed before moving the data into a new system.  Take the time to understand every aspect of the workflow. Challenge everything to ensure you build an efficient, intuitive workflow. Start with the “must-haves,” but leave yourself options to easily add additional features at a later time.” [Read More]

I’ve worked with Jeff on DAM-related articles in the past, most notably our series on What’s Holding DAM Back in 2015 (and although it was published seven years ago, it’s still more or less the same situation now).  What is clear is Jeff has extensive proven expertise acquired working on implementing numerous DAM-related projects.

I come across many in the DAM market who clearly don’t have much (or indeed any) real commercial implementation experience, they just wing it using second-hand information they have taken from elsewhere or clichés that priortise agreement and consensus rather than insight and hard truths.  This is assuredly not the case with Jeff; he is the real deal and has the Curriculum Vitae (and associated knowledge) to back it up.

As well as this interview with Jeff Lawrence, you can also access our index of previous interviews with well over 100 other DAM experts.

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