PHILIP SPIEGEL - DAM Ideas

It's Gonna be a New York DAM JAM!

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.

 

DAM Right(s)!

This week the DAM (Digital Asset Management) community is converging on the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard for this years DAM LA conference.  The show, produced by Henry Stewart Events, hopes to shed light on DAM issues from where to start a DAM to the latest developments in technology, workflow and process.  I’ve attended and participated in this event in LA and other versions of this in Chicago and New York in previous years and it is an excellent way to get connected to the latest info and guidance on DAM initiatives….it’s a very informative couple of days.  

In a previous post, I opined about the state of Rights metadata management in the DAM world.  So, in reviewing the program I was pleased to see that there is a session titled, “Latest Developments in Rights Management,” being moderated by Dan McGraw from Seven Dials Media (and the host of the DAM SHOW podcast) with Linda Burman from LA Burman Associates as one of the panelists along with Skiff Wager from SEW Consulting and Cheryl Besenjak of cbRights Consulting.

 

Following the NY DAM Show I felt that this topic didn’t get the respect and attention it deserved.  Is it getting it now?   Considering the session is again taking place in late afternoon timeslot on the second day…I have to wonder.   Of course, it could just be a matter of the scheduling challenges and the way the organizers plot out the arc of the sessions but I still think it would get more traction if it took place on the first day.    That aside, I asked Linda last week what her thoughts were on the state of rights and she said,

 

“I don’t think that the problem is that rights get no respect.  I think rights metadata is an extremely complex topic and companies are just beginning to grasp that they have to make some rights metadata available to users rather than having every piece of information locked up in the contract that is only available to royalty and permissions managers (and lawyers).”

 

I would agree with her point. I think content users, whether internal or external, need to have a succinct, consistent, distilled set of metadata that easily communicates the rights snapshot and helps them make the right decisions about content use without needing to interpret contracts on demand or wait on assistance for clearance.   Things move too fast and business / content decisions need to be made by those who own the responsibility for its re-use.  By doing this leg work in advance you add another layer of value and dexterity to the assets contained with your DAM.   

 

You Have The Right To….

Wait.  I’ll check with the legal department to find out whether or not you can use that asset and get back to you. 

 

We are all excited about digitizing our assets, repurposing, monetizing and all the other benefits of a good DAM system.   However, the one thing that can go missing is the lack of focus on Rights Information Management (RIM).  Rights get no respect, and frankly why should it?  For content managers, producers, researchers, artists, designers, etc.  Rights are a big buzz kill.  

 

But how do you extrapolate and communicate the accurate rights for a particular asset (i.e. A photo or video image) in a timely manner that doesn’t rely on each user having a legal degree or a legal team to dissect?  Rights info management is a three-dimensional puzzle.  In some instances it may be enough to have the ownership information covered but for many it’s about that along with the rights pertaining to the materials with the asset or within the context of the creation of that asset.  You can’t always rely on, “we own that” and then relicense.

 

At last weeks DAM conference in NY there was only one session that focused on rights metadata management and it was slotted for the last hour of the last day of the conference (proving that it’s the Rodney Dangerfield of DAM metadata).   I expect that many DAMsters will be having the AHA! moment in the near future as they start making their assets readily available and then start getting questions like “hey …can I use that image in a …”  How will they answer? Will they even know the answer? 

 

The DAM NY session outlined some of the efforts to create a rights standard within PRISM and also gave some great examples of the non-technical challenge the Rights issue presents.  It seems to me that there are a couple of realities to confront.  Content is most likely be produced faster than rights can be vetted and finalized so there need to be ways to assure that the Rights info is captured as close to the creation as possible. Also, content from existing archives will require documentation review to assess for current markets and distribution channels that didn’t exist during the original production.  All of this review needs to be distilled into a small and manageable set of metadata that communicates the state of rights with out leading to misinterpretation or liability, and some but maybe not all of this info needs to travel with the asset throughout out its lifecycle and beyond.

 

Lastly, Rights information needs to be taken into account when planning on a DAM workflow…why do all the work of digitizing, etc if turns out you can’t use it again.  Rights need to get some respect and move further up the food chain before all we have are faster ways of finding the great assets in our collections that we can’t use.