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Blog about Digital Asset Management

Monthly Archives: October 2009


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Digital Asset Management Los Angeles 2009 Conference

On November 9 and 10, 2009, I will be a guest presenter at DAM LA 2009. This is a two-day DAM conference held  in Los Angeles where I am scheduled to present on the following topics:

  • Dealing with Costs, Budgets and ROI
    • How do we budget for costs of implementing a DAM solution as well as the ongoing costs of operating a DAM? How can we measure return on investment in a consistent manner and justify the expenditure? We’ll explore real world cases and the pitfalls to avoid.
  • DAM and Change Management
    • As soon as we begin implementing a new DAM within an organization,we will need to deal with people, process and technology changes.
    • What about management issues? How do we evaluate employee competencies and their results?
    • What do employees need to do differently now than in the past? To whom do they report, when and how?
    • What skills are needed now more than ever?
  • DAM Career Planning, Qualifications and Hiring
    • Can people plan a DAM career? What does it take to be a DAM professional or Digital Asset Manager? We will explore resources available today to enrich our DAM knowledge and skills as well as explore the DAM job market.

If you plan to attend DAM LA 2009 conference:

Henry Stewart Events has offered $150 off using discount code for conference attendees and a discount for hotel guests.

I will tweet during the DAM Los Angeles Conference using #DAMLA09 as the hash tag, which you can search for, use and follow.

I look forward to meeting you if you attend the DAM LA 2009 Conference. If you can’t make it to the conference, feel free to send comments anytime.


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How do I explain what I do for a living with DAM?


People will ask you “What do you do for a living?” If you work with Digital Asset Management on a daily basis as I do, there are a few ways you can answer this question. You could:

  • Explain what you do in some detail, sometimes boring and/or confusing the average person.
  • Blab on and on, creating more hot air.
  • Give your elevator pitch: a simple, concise introduction to what you do for a living.

Before I had a simple explanation meant for the average person, I also confused lots of people (which is unfortunately really easy to do nowadays).  It took me a while to come up with this simple analogy. Here is how my DAM elevator pitch often goes whether I am speaking with an executive or someone I just met:

  1. An inquiring individual asks the question, “What do you do?”
  2. I reply, “I am a Digital Asset Manager. I work on Digital Asset Management.”
  3. The inquiring individual often says “What is that?”
  4. I say “Are you familiar with the iPod?”
  5. They often say “Yes,” unless they admit living in a cave since 2001.
  6. Whether that is the case or not, I quickly show them an iPod, scroll through its contents as I explain that “while this is meant for individual consumption of media (such as music, video, photos), I manage similar kinds of media (generally called assets). The big difference is we can share assets across an entire organization legally using a set of more sophisticated tools with a series of workflows, commonly referred to as DAM. This helps the organization save money by being able to search, find, use, reuse or repurpose what we already have in the DAM legally.” I show the how assets can be found using various information called metadata. With the case of music on the iPod by:
  • Album
  • Artist
  • Genre
  • Title

I answer any further questions they have, but that is my elevator pitch as to what I do for a living with DAM.

How do you explain what you do for a living with DAM as a user or administrator?