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Blog about Digital Asset Management

Tag Archives: Information technology


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What is the DAM Foundation?

The founders of  http://digitalassetmanagement.org.uk started an organic group on Linkedin called the DAM Foundation. The idea behind the DAM Foundation is “bringing standards and best practice to digital asset management.”

The DAM Foundation will be an organic process. The members will help create the standards and best practice and vote in the appropriate professionals to organize the strategy and leadership.

They will tackle questions like:

  • “What is DAM?” At the time of this post, I dare you to ask 20 people (even DAM professionals) and see if you get the same definition from all of them (not likely)
  • What elements make DAM what it is?
  • How do you identify a DAM versus an imposter calling something a DAM when it is not?

Joining the DAM Foundation is easy:

  1. Sign up on Linkedin (you can join for free)
  2. Search Groups for DAM Foundation
  3. Request to join the DAM Foundation Group on Linkedin (free)
  4. Join the discussions

There will probably be an election to vote in whom you want to represent DAM and help set some industry standards in this growing field. The first president of the DAM Foundation is David Lipsey. Two DAM conferences have hosted the DAM Foundation to help progress in person.

I have volunteered to help and I would ask anyone who is involved in DAM to sign up and join. Membership is free.

What is in it for you if you join the DAM Foundation?

There will be scheduled meetings, some in person and many online. Regardless of geographic location, you will be invited as a member to join a live online group meeting to discuss pre-selected topics as well as your questions. This will help get real-time answers to pressing questions and bring these topics to light, as well as continue them offline in the blogosphere. Join and find out the details by invitation.

Why should you join the discussions on the DAM Foundation? We all have valid DAM questions to ask which deserve an unbiased answer. Whether you can provide that answer or just the question does not matter.

Even a beginner in DAM has questions worth answering which are often commonly asked questions among many DAM beginners. So why try to reinvent the wheel or guess? Gain from the knowledge base which is being built here and start asking what is on your mind about Digital Asset Management. Chances are someone has gone down that road before and found out where it leads. Learn from them.

For more information, go to their website.

UPDATE: DAM Foundation is no longer active as of January 5, 2017.

 


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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?