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How many vendors have owned your DAM system?


Does your vendors’ ‘roadmap‘ consist of a single dot?

Or are the only lines on that ‘roadmap’ coming from that dot consist of the words “acquired by…”?

Is change, innovation, update and upgrade not part of the vendor’s vocabulary? And is it part of yours?

Has your DAM had more vendors owning it over a handful of years that:

  1. You lost count how many owners it had? (This may take two hands)
  2. The vendor can barely assist you on their ‘new’ system let alone navigate around the system themselves?
  3. An update from the vendor simply consists of a delayed email notification of new ownership and/or new management, after you read about it a month ago through another online channel?
  4. The vendor only ‘innovates by acquisition,’ but updates/upgrades not a single system?
  5. The present vendor has no clear record of what product(s) and/or service(s) you use? (How do you spell CRM?)
  6. You as a client feel forgotten by today’s vendor? (Helpful service trumps a branded pen any day)
  7. Personalized service from a person who speaks your language would really be helpful as long as they can actually deliver what you need as far as assistance is concerned?
  8. SLA might no longer stand for Service Level Agreement? (Support might seem like a foreign concept as well, but still paying for it)
  9. The most technical documentation available is their sales brochures regurgitated with [pick one] vendor logo/name?
  10. When you call/email/send smoke signals to someone who might still work for the vendor(s) requesting some technical support, but the only reply you get back is “Oh, we need to hire someone again to answer your question”? And then you wait. Ask again. And wait some more. And then social security finally becomes available to you… and then you are seeing the writing on the wall. Retirement is looking real good. So, the only question remains… who goes first? You or the vendor?
  11. Migration to a more stable DAM vendor and system is looking better, more efficient and/or more effective every day?

How many vendors have owned your DAM system?


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Why does a DAM need an API?

Most reputable Digital Asset Management (DAM) vendors offer a solution with a GUI and API. Not all DAM clients use the API though. At least not yet.

With the growing need to converge DAM, WCM, CMS, wikis and other ECM solutions, the API is one way to tie all these solutions together on the back end so each solution can talk to each other instead of us jumping from one solution to another repeatedly and also playing the endless copy/paste game. Since many organizations are only accumulating more digital assets by exponential numbers each year, this convergence will be needed faster than most people realize. Or people could continue living as if it was still the 20th century because they wish to continue getting buried further underneath poorly managed digital assets on a daily basis. Some people may have not awakened to the possibilities of how the solutions listed above can assist their daily work rather than needlessly burning time at the office, shuffling paper in order to act busy even though they can’t find that file created a year ago, a month ago or even a week ago. Do you know anyone who meets this description?

People need to make the conscious decision to work smarter with digital assets. This involves:

  • Finding the right tools for the organization’s business needs regarding digital assets
  • Finding out how digital assets should be managed within an organization (that is managed and organized, not one or the other)
  • Having up to date documentation explaining the process and systems involved today
  • Having training and ongoing support for users of these systems and processes
  • Following through with a standard workflow or process (how do you spell consistency)
    • What do I do with a digital asset once I have created or acquired it?
    • What do I do if I need to use a digital asset again?
  • Having scaleable systems that can grow with your organization (rather than be limited to what seemed adequate or cool or shiny at one time)
  • Holding people accountable (If you don’t know, ASK lots of questions and push for decisions instead of making lots of mistakes. If you do know, document it so others will know as well.)
  • Having someone who can program systems to communicate with each other via the API
  • Having an API on the systems which will ‘speak and listen’ to the same (programming) language(s) both to and from each system

Does your organization’s DAM have an API? Does your organization use the API?


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Why are you interested in attending the DAM New York Conference?

Henry Stewart Conferences will have their DAM Conference in New York City on June 8th and 9th, 2011 at the New York Hilton.

How many reasons do you need to attend DAM NY 2011?

  • Readers of this blog may use the discount code when registering for this DAM Conference
  • Attendees who wish to stay at the New York Hilton can get a discount on a hotel room while they are available
  • Pre-conference tutorials are available on Tuesday, June 7, 2011
  • A meetup scheduled with the NYC Digital Asset Manager meetup group during the evening of June 7, 2011.
  • Great lineup of speakers and panels, including the keynote with Richard Buchanan, Vice President & General Manager, Content Services, Comcast Media Center (CMC). Richard Buchanan will present about Managing Digital Video Assets Across Multiple Media Formats and Platforms
  • A lot of networking with analysts, DAM experts, potential DAM users, active DAM users and vendors.
  • You are not alone when it comes to DAM, so join the conference and the conversations during the largest DAM-specific event of the year
  • I am to present about DAM Reporting, Measurement and Auditing
  • If several people from your organization want to attend, there are discounts as well
  • Find out the latest information about Digital Asset Management
  • Here is what some people have said about this conference

Why are you interested in attending the DAM New York Conference?


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Why do I need a unique identifier for each DAM asset?


When an asset is uploaded to a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, there is often a unique identifier assigned by the DAM. This is sometimes called

The unique identifier often comprises of a series of numbers and/or letters. This is unique within the DAM system.

So, why is this important? Because a unique identifier is unique regardless of what the file name happens to be. File names are often created by people, not computers, therefore rarely unique.

Often, it is a sequential number assigned by the system upon upload of the asset. There are some unique IDs which are created with an algorithm to make sure the asset is unique within the DAM system. This can help reduce exact duplicate assets in the DAM system.