The Henry Stewart DAM NY 2010 conference will be taking place this Thursday and Friday, May 20th and 21st at the Hilton New York. As a native New Yorker trapped inside the Capitol Beltway nothing would make me happier then to head north on I-95 and spend a few days at the conference, see old friends and enjoy a REAL slice of pizza but unfortunately I won't be attending this year. Instead, I'm going to be traveling west at the end of the week to San Franscisco to attend the Ed Tech Industry Summit, May 23rd to 25th.
As I look over the DAM NY 2010 conference program again I can see that I'm going to miss what promises to be a really good event. If you are new to this show and to DAM then I would recommend all the sessions on the morning of Day 1 (May 20th). As someone working in media I am especially interested in the Town Hall meeting covering Broadcast, Media and Entertainment with panelists from Turner, Versus, A&E and Discovery, I met Paul Koopmann of Versus at last years event and he has a refreshing, direct and practical approach to meeting his operational and business needs.
After the lunch break there are two conference tracks. One track; for those new to DAM; focuses on technology options, common mistakes and pitfalls to avoid, and on intro to metadata, taxonomy and search. The last session for this track is on lessons learned in procurement, implementation and migration processes.
The other track is geared more toward experienced DAMsta's. First is a session from OpenText on the latest developments in media management followed by a session by Corus Entertainment from Canada on content distribution & management in a digital environment. I would be interested in this session and learning how DAM has progressed at Corus. I participated in an informational discussion with some people from Corus a few years ago about DAM in a media environment when they were planning and system shopping.
This session is followed by a must-see session by Linda Tadic of AudioVisual Archive Network titled, "Archiving is more than back-up preserving while managing digital assets." This along with Rights sessions should be a requirement for every attendee (maybe the conference organizers can arrange to move the coffee and pastries tables to this room?). As I have no doubt ranted on in previous posts a DAM can enable digital archives to create access and transparency to the enterprises assets but there still needs to be a archive, migration and preservation plan for tending to and supporting the life-cycle and beyond for these assets. Linda should have a lot of great information and insights into this and I'm glad to see this more overt "convergence" between the media archive and DAM communities.
The second day, May 21st, starts with a publishing round-table and then sessions split out into three tracks, Metadata, DAM for Marketing, and DAM Case Studies. If you are a new DAMsta then I would recommend time spent in the metadata sessions. Metadata is a huge part of a DAM and if you are just starting out you are going to need to understand how to have a successful metadata plan. I would especially recommend the session on controlled vocabularies at 11:45am and the panel discussion right after on metadata and content re-use, process and technology challenges. I would also recommend attending, "It Works but Is It Usable? Usability and DAM," being presented by Leala Abbott from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I also suggest the session after this, "All Things to All People: Supporting Multiple Business Solutions in a Global DAM Ecosystem," by representatives from Discovery.
The highlight of the two days and another must-see is the Vendor Shootout at 2:30pm. This is usually a really lively exchange with a good information and good humor flying fast and furious. After this session can be a good time to spend quality time at the respective vendors booths (if you haven't already) and see for yourself what their pros and cons can be.
The afternoon and the conference ends with a session focused on Rights Management. I have posted before about the importance of rights in a DAM and the lack of respect and attention this topic gets and again it gets last billing at the end of two long and info-laden days. Hang in there and soldier on...it will be worth it. Rights is important to DAM and there should be lots of great info to gather in this last hour. All four presentations together are covering the basics (problems and solutions) and then getting into more specifics of tracking rights usage, then technology and process and then the need for a single rights standard and how this is being approached at Pearson.
Wear comfortable shoes and bring a notepad. I hope you find this event to be as informative and interesting as I have in the past few years. Let me know what you think.
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