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Blog about Digital Asset Management

Category Archives: Digital Asset Management

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What is MADAM?

King’s College of London has started its first Masters (MA) degree program in Digital Asset Management (DAM) this year. MADAM is the first Master’s Degree program of its kind. Best wishes in all their endeavors.

As written in an earlier post, this is not the only school of higher education to offer courses in DAM by name. There are other courses and programs that may call it something else in the fields of Archiving (specific to digital) and Library Science (again specific to digital). The main issue I see ad keep hearing about is that too many schools are still resisting (not changing) to teach their students about the real digital world and how things get done today. More adjunct professors who still function in the real business world, not just full time academia helps minimize this. I would also encourage any student to get a real job or  internship to see how things are done…not in theory, but reality.

You are more than welcome to try and:

  • Apply theory in practice when applicable
  • Learn to think on your feet
  • Think it through and act for long term, not just short term results
  • Walk through the possible consequences (pros/cons) of one action over another
  • Reference/respect other people’s point of view and take them all with a grain of salt
  • Do not ask anyone to do something you would not do yourself
  • Do it yourself before asking others to repeat the same tasks
  • Eat your own dog food (practice what you preach)
  • Learn to spend wisely, not based on impulse
  • Diversify
  • If failure happens, fail quickly and learn why this happened so those reasons do not keep recurring again. Then, don’t repeat that failure.


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Southern California Digital Asset Managers launched

It was only a matter of time…

Roger Howard and Lilly started Southern California Digital Asset Managers Meetup Group.

Their first Meetup event is the Henry Stewart LA Meetup on Sunday, November 14, 2010 at 6:00 pm.  This will be held the night before DAM LA 2010.

This Socal DAM Meetup event will be held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel …pool side. Yes, this is California.
Stay tuned to the upcoming Meetup page for more details.

RSVP and see you there.


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Another DAM eBook

Yes, I could not resist. Following the theme of Another DAM blog and Another DAM podcast, I have created Another DAM eBook.

You can now order Another DAM eBook directly from me.

I just released Version 1.0 containing over 52 blog posts from the year 2009 complete with links to all the sites I reference throughout my blog posts.

In 2011, Another DAM eBook version 2.0 will be released. And yes, you guessed it…that will contain 52 blog posts from 2010.

And that  means I am still writing blog posts.

Based on the feedback I get back from you about version 1.0, that will help improve Another DAM eBook version 2.0.

I have tested this eBook on several eBook readers successfully. Hopefully, more functionality will come to these devices by next year.

Want the link to the eBook? Send me an email requesting it and I will forward you a link to download it.


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What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?

Depending who you ask, you will get a different answer to the question, “What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?”

There are plenty of unrelated answers found, about water reservoirs and feats of aquatic engineering. There is even an entry for “dam (dekameter)”. Umm, not really what we are talking about here, but thank you Wolfram|Alpha

In all seriousness, here is a list of answers to the question in their own words (click on each link):

So how do we get consensus on one definition? Can’t we just all get one definition for DAM? Does DAM vary that much? Do we need a broad enough definition that covers what DAM was before, what it is today and what it is becoming? Should there be a simple broad definition to understand the concepts and then more complex definitions to understand the various parts of the solution?

This discussion starts with unity among the DAM professional community. In September 2010, there were two DAM conferences back to back in different cities. Most of the top active minds in the ‘DAM-osphere’ were present. The issue is you could ask every DAM professional the same question and you would likely get a different definition from each person. Or they would ask you to reference xyz.

Sigh.

So how do we fix this? One solution is to set standards going forward. Someone told me ‘the interesting thing about standards is everyone has their own.’ Where is the standards body which creates these standards and hashes out what it really is? Sure, there are well accepted standards bodies. Just to list a few, there are:

The issue is these standards bodies move slowly when establishing standards. It can take 5 to 15 years to set a standard. Does anything change within that period of time?

There is one group which DAM professionals may have heard of already.

Enter the DAM Foundation. Yes, that’s right. There is one. And their major purpose for existence?

DAM Foundation. Creating the standards in Digital Asset Management

It has hundreds of members from DAM professional community already. You will hear more about it in the coming months. I have spoken to plenty of DAM professionals who would love to hash this out together… not individually. A standard accepted by the whole can trump the standard mentioned from one.

Meanwhile, we can continue the discussion…

What is your definition of Digital Asset Management?

Input interpretation:

dam (dekameter)