PHILIP SPIEGEL - DAM Ideas

DAM and Content Curation

I just finished reading a great blog post from Romney Whitehead titled, "Curation before Creation."     I found this very relevant to my world and something that reminded me of my experience in the stock footage industry in the 80's and 90's.

Back then, agencies were competing on the total volume of materials available,

"We've got over x million shots"

"X thousands of hours of footage," etc.  

At The Image Bank (in the pre-Getty days) we realized that the only thing worse than X million of anything was the thought of having even more.  The focus shifted to quality of content and NOT volume and curation holds true even more so today.  Just because we can save everything doesn't mean we should or at least should at the same level of service, access and completeness.  Yes, occasionally a real gem will get overlooked only later to emerge but fear of that shouldn't prevent us all from maximizing our environments, workflows and processes so the most valuable content gets the focus, attention and access that it warrants.   

Good content rules and good user experiences from quickly finding very relevant content keeps everyone happy.

Another Dam Blog Podcast Interview

I recently did an interview with Henrik de Gyor for his Another DAM Blog Podcast series.  Check it out at:

http://audioboo.fm/boos/374298-philip-spiegel

Heads up NY DAMsta's, tomorrow I will be attending the DAM NY 2011 Henry Stewart event at the NY Hilton...updates to follow but in the meantime, hope to see you there. 

Upcoming Webcast

I will be participating in a Createasphere webcast called "Mining and Monetizing your Digital Archives" on Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 2pm EDT (11am PDT) .  It should be an interesting discussion with lots of good info and it's free!   The link for more info and to register is:

http://createasphere.com/En/webcasts/item/91-digital-preservation-sound-the-alarm.html

 

Work

That's what everyone will be getting back to now that Labor Day; the unofficial end of summer; has come and gone.  This summer has whipped by without much of a break...it's been action-packed and the pace should continue well into the fall.

Work for me has a new meaning.  I've recently left my position at National Geographic and have begun a new project with the LAC Group at ABC News.  This has brought me back to New York and has set in motion a series of personal events including staging a house for sale, securing temporary housing, and getting very familiar with the I-95 corridor between NYC and DC.  FYI, the new rest area in Delaware is awesome and my new favorite pit-stop. It's almost exactly the halfway point of the trip and a good goal for a break in either direction.

Besides these personal changes and the challenges of the new position, I will also be participating in a couple of upcoming industry events.  The first is the NY installment of Createasphere at The New Yorker Hotel on Sept 23rd and 24th.  I will be on a panel on Monday, Sept. 23rd called, "Capture - Preserve - Access - Present: How Major Entertainment Companies Succeed with their Digital Workflows," with Roger Howard from Blizzard Entertainment, Chris Grakel of Turner Broadcasting and George Mulholland from TruTV.  The Createasphere team has graciously offered a 20% discount on the registration fee with the use of discount code DSPGL.  I also plan to make an appearance at the NY DAM Meet-up Pre-Createasphere mixer on Sept. 22nd at 7pm at Coopers Tavern at the New Yorker Hotel and look forward to meeting many I've known by name for some time.

In October, I will be participating in DCM 2010 (Digital Content Monetization 2010) at the Eventi Hotel in New York from October 4th thru the 7th.  I will be on a panel on October 5th called, Building and Maintaining and Effective DAM strategy to Enable Efficient Access to Active and Archived Content."  The other panelists include Ben Masek from Sony Pictures and Straker Coniglio from Avid.

I've got a lot happening and a backlog of post ideas.  I expect that I will be back to a more regular posting schedule as things settle and I get back into a normal groove.  I will also be posting from and / or about the two events mentioned and look forward to comments and feedback.

More to come but for now... back to work everyone.