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Tag Archives: 2010


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What do I do with extinct formats?


We all have them. Extinct technology. It comes and goes. We often take it for granted. At first, we treat it like a shiny new thing and then it becomes disposable. Soon, it collects dust somewhere.

Some of this technology stores data which was acquired or created by you. Some of that data may be digital files of value or digital assets, possibly even with some metadata.  Those files may be extinct (or soon to be expired and unsupported) file formats. Some of these file format may be proprietary which may require no longer used proprietary software to run it or a much older version of software to work with it because it is simply no longer supported today.

Sometimes, this data is on extinct physical media such as:

  • Smart phones (average life span: 1-2 years)
  • Prior personal computers (we all have them…every 2-5 years)
  • Smaller external hard drives (do you copy the old data as these hard drives get bigger, cheaper and faster? Or even use cloud storage?)
  • Film (Print or Slide) bye-bye Kodachrome. Film is simply a waste of time and money today. It makes no business sense to use it. If you have film, scan it (hi-res) as needed and archive the rest. Move on.
  • Compact Disc (tic toc…how many devices have optical drives today? Less. The writing is on wall.)
  • Video tapes (pick any of 30+ flavors. Convert to digital as needed and archive the rest.)
  • Zip drives and other proprietary forms of media
  • Cassette tapes
  • Floppy discs (all)
  • 8-tracks (really old school)
  • LP (33, 45 or wax)

Most of these have two things in common: They store information in some form and they fade into history, often with this information. Technology is disposable (Our culture makes sure of it). Before the end of this decade we will be adding DVDs to the list above (and have a lot of scratched coasters) as we download or stream data.

These may still need to be migrated to a current digital form while they still can. This is not about nostalgia. It’s about retaining a historical record. Or have it forgotten and lost permanently. Everything has a life span. Even when it is digital. Not all “stuff” may need to be kept that is why it takes an evaluation or review to determine the value, the feasibility and options available.

The simple answer to the question “What do I do with extinct formats?” is evaluate and migrate what is needed/wanted at least every 5 years.

Don’t believe me? Listen to this podcast.

What do you do with extinct formats?


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DAM predictions for 2011

The following are predictions about Digital Asset Management for 2011:

  1. Significant increase in the use of DAM on mobile devices (tablets/smart phones).
  2. More DAM education will be offered across North America and elsewhere.
  3. More DAM professionals will become available to fill the growing need across industries. Professionals with experience will dominate the job market while others will still be volunteered from within.
  4. Most information about DAM will be available online. More ebooks and podcasts will be available as well. Use of blogs will increase, especially in DAM education. Yes, even this blog.
  5. Beginning of a standards body for DAM via the DAM Foundation. This group meets for the first time in March 2011.
  6. The DAM community will continue to grow by leaving old guard model of exclusivity behind to become more open and sharing of  information about DAM to those who are interested.
  7. Open Source will continue to slowly grow in popularity among the technically savvy users who clarify its documentation as well as its place in the market.
  8. Usability will remain a need for every DAM user and DAM vendors who fulfil this need will continue to grow. DAM vendors will still need to prove functionality during thorough customer demos using the customer’s own test assets in real-time.
  9. DAM which works seamlessly with other customer tool sets via API will continue to gain popularity.
  10. Organizations will need to change (evolve and scale) in order to manage and deliver increasing more data and digital assets than ever before. Some such as book stores, internet companies and mobile phone companies will likely merge with others.
  11. Clarification and knowledge about metadata (what it is and how to use it) will continue to spread as people and organization realize they need it more than ever (even though they have been using it for years elsewhere). Still, few will want to create it themselves.

I wrote these as a DAM user and admin who is active in the DAM Community. Let us see what happens by the end of 2011 and how many of these predictions become reality. Happy New Year.


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Is the journal dead?


Over the last few months of 2010,  several sources have mentioned and even confirmed that a particular periodical about Digital Asset Management (DAM) has ceased publication. Some deny this in disbelief. Some believe it will be reincarnated like a phoenix out of the ashes. or not.

Many DAM Professionals have generously contributed (for free) written content on their knowledge about DAM which this periodical published over the past several years. The same periodical was made available at over US$700 (the undiscounted US price) for 6 issues per annual subscription. Sounds like a deal for someone aside from the readers and the writers.

While charging over US$1 per page, I can not imagine why this journal would cease its publication in today’s digital market. After all, readers…oh wait. Never mind.

Anyhow, DAM Professionals have been able to share their own knowledge at their own great expense and then have prior articles available online at a fee per article. Hopefully, these articles will continue to be available online but the stone tablet… I mean paper edition may cease to exist.

Some say the journal will take the form (like a phoenix) of an e-zine in 2011 and likely be called something else. And…is it still the same thing then? This e-zine may be offered for a faction of what the journal cost. Imagine that. They may have found the last nails for that coffin to bury that idea.

How else will we read or even write about Digital Asset Management aside from books?

Let us think for a nanosecond. What are you reading right now? A blog.

Blogs don’t matter. No one reads blogs anymore. Blogs are dead. Explain why this blog has more unique readers than any periodical about Digital Asset Management ever had as well as many of the other dedicated blogs about DAM. Shall we continue ignoring the impact of the monthly or sometimes even daily information shared by this medium (blogging) on the field of the Digital Asset Management? What other medium does this today?

In full disclosure, I was interviewed by this particular periodical. It took one year to get published. Not 6 months as they said it would. They “forgot” to while I reminded them every few months. This might be considered fast…if the standards were set by cave men carving stone.

If you didn’t pay for it, remember it can’t be any good. One of their editors asked me if I could ‘wrap up’ some of my blog posts into an article for the periodical. I checked to make sure if I understood them correctly. They wanted me to take my blog posts (which I write and share free of charge), spend my time writing their article for their journal (uncompensated), they would publish it (I would remain still uncompensated) and they sell free content back to you as a subscriber of this journal. So they profit from the work and knowledge of others who provide this for free. Who in their right mind still does this in today’s digital age? Here is an idea: If it’s free, it stays free. If it costs, all should be compensated for creating the end result.

Blogs don’t have a good reputation. Reputation comes from the creator of content and/or the value of content itself. Reputation does not come from the channel (such as a blog) which simply a vehicle for the message (whether it is fact or opinion) nor what the channel (such as a journal) charges for its content. In case you need to be published for the sake of your work, explore more cost effective ways than custom publishing and trade journals. You can do it yourself for free nowadays and you can market it more widely and better (using social media) than those you have paid to deliver and market your content today. Who buys content based on who published it rather than the value of the content itself or the writer’s reputation? Content still rules.

After heavily filtering my response, I reminded the editors they were still sitting on the interview they did with me and I declined their offer to ‘wrap up’ any of my free blog posts for them to profit from or re-publish.

If you blog, you don’t have to wait for anyone to publish. You can leave the greedy, the pathetically slow and the technically un-inclined to fail without your content and knowledge.

I am not bitter.  Just continue paying lots of money to get free content that was regurgitated into another form. It is your money.

Both readers and writers deserve better.

Is the journal dead? I have more nails and a shovel if someone needs them.


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Why should I pay for the DAM when the entire organization uses it?


Someone asked me about this question and remembered I wrote about this briefly in an earlier blog post, but wanted me to ellaborate. So here is blog post to explain it.

Let us say one group or department is the original requester of a DAM solution within an organization. Likely this same department becomes the business owner, stakeholder and/or sponsor of the DAM solution. This same department or group pays to administer and maintain the DAM. They might pay for any monthly/quarterly/annual licensing fees and/or service level agreements (SLA) for the DAM solution as well. Now let us say other departments see the value in using the DAM to keep the organization’s branding, graphics, photographs, publications, presentations, reports, video or other intellectual property (IP). The DAM gets more user adoption by more departments. Now who pays for the DAM within this organization?

Often, what occurs is the original requester, sponsor or stakeholder continues paying for the DAM solution. Because of this, they might say “Wait, I am paying out of my department’s budget for other departments to benefit from this solution as well? What’s in for me? Why should I pay for the DAM when the entire organization uses it?”

Consider this idea “Why am I the only one paying for it? If we share the DAM, share the cost.”

Enter the idea of chargeback or simply charging the department who requests to acquire/create/use something with the actual expense in resources used by refunding it. This idea is likely a change for many companies in how they deal with budgets and how departments are accountable for the resources they use. This also keeps a department which may overtax another department’s resources in check. So, with this idea every department or group has their own budget as usual, but since every DAM user should have a unique login (right?) and possible different collections of assets they can access or share, why not split the total cost of these expenses based on actual usage of the DAM solution per department? Charge each department based on usage of the DAM solution.

If one department uses the DAM more than another department by a measurable amount or percentage, should they pay a larger share of the cost each month/quarter/year? Should each department be able to share this cost evenly or should each department pay for what they use based on a percentage? Or have one department pay for it all?

How do you measure usage of the DAM? With usage reports from the DAM which could list:

  • Who are the DAM users (by individual login) accessed the DAM? (keeping individual user accountability)
  • Who has the most active DAM users within a given period of time?
  • Who wants/needs/asks for the most time in administration, maintenance, support and/or training?
  • When did they access the DAM? (keeping time accountability)
  • How often did those users or group of users access the DAM? (time based usage)
  • How long did they access the DAM over a period of time? (number of minutes or hours)
  • How much was downloaded/exported from the DAM? (by the number of assets and/or file size if bandwidth is measured)
  • How much was uploaded/imported to the DAM? (by the number of assets and/or if bandwidth is measured)

I would recommend looking what you are paying for internally and externally to gauge what are the costs of doing business.

Some DAM vendors charge for bandwidth (how many GB is uploaded/downloaded to/from DAM within a given period). Some don’t.

Server space costs money regardless of whether it under your own IT department’s domain, a vendor’s domain or in the cloud. Who is using the storage space?

Is the data deduplicated? Do you want to dedupe the DAM data to minimize duplicate assets?

Some DAM vendors charge per DAM login or per concurrent user. Some DAM systems limit how many users you can have or the total users at one time. Can your organization add/remove DAM users without the vendor’s help?

How much does it cost to administer, support, maintain a DAM and train the DAM users? How much does it cost in errors and problems when you don’t?

Why should I pay for the DAM when the entire organization uses it?

Are these costs of doing business worth sharing as you share business tools such as a DAM solution?