You may have read my call for a DAM Glossary from February 2013. Recently, Ralph Windsor started http://damglossary.org using a previously existing DAM Glossary. This publicly available website has no sponsors, is freely available, is as vendor neutral as we can hope for and allows users to append to this DAM Glossary (after registering). But the DAM Glossary is not yet complete. There are plenty of words, terms and definitions still missing. In order for the DAM community to benefit from this DAM glossary, we need to append these to the DAM Glossary.

Append those missing words, terms and definitions

Now the DAM community needs your help to append this DAM glossary with all the missing DAM words and their respective definitions. Look at it and see which words/terms are missing. Earlier, I found a few terms missing off the top of my head, such as:

• Rendition (not the CIA’s version)
• SAAS
• Transformation (not related to that movie with similar title)

You may find other missing words/terms and other respective definitions in a vendor neutral sense. All you need to do is register on http://damglossary.org/register and apply the missing acronyms, definitions and words

Why should we append the DAM Glossary?

Several vendors (you know who you are) use special words regularly in their marketing, instruction, consulting and user interface. When you ask for a glossary of terms with definitions, it rarely includes all those super special words they use. If you were to ask three people who work for the same vendor for the definition of a particular word, you may get more than three different definitions. Some vendors themselves have not yet defined these special words in writing internally, but use them externally. Not only is this unacceptable, but this confusion propagates fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) in the DAM community and market itself.

Enough. If we are going to listen to or use special DAM words/terms/acronyms to explain functionality and tools in the DAM space, these better be defined either in the common dictionary or in damglossary.org. If it isn’t, point it out and ask for a written definition to be shared. Then have it shared with everyone on damglossary.org. That way we will not have to guess nor ask constantly what does that [frustrated] word mean and why does everyone we ask have a [completely] different definition for it.

Start appending the DAM Glossary for the sake of clarity, consistency, transparency and knowledge sharing throughout the global DAM Community.