Feature Interview
John Underkoffler, Oblong Industries, Opens the World with the Wave of a Hand

Written by Christine Purse
When John Underkoffler presented last month’s Keynote Address at Createasphere’s Digital Asset Management Conference in Universal City, he was met with the conference equivalent of “Bravo! Encore!” from an enthusiastic audience. Underkoffler had taken attendees into the world of gestural interfaces, his viewpoint of the evolution of the personal computer, and offered insights about the profound meaning of data.

Underkoffler is the Founder and Chief Scientist for Oblong Industries, a company aiming to transform the way we work, create and collaborate. Their g-speak spatial operating environment (SOE) is a radically new platform that made its public debut in the tech-forward movie Minority Report. G-speak SOE implements a quantum leap in human-machine interface and introduces Oblong's technological vision - driven by hand gestures.

John’s foundational work at the MIT Media Laboratory included innovations in real-time computer graphics systems, large-scale visualization techniques, and the I/O Bulb and Luminous Room systems. He has been science advisor to films including Minority Report, The Hulk (A.Lee), Aeon Flux, and Iron Man. John is also active on several boards and serves as adjunct professor in the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Createasphere: Do you see a fundamental change in the nature of collaboration?

John: There has been a radical change in the business world regarding the value of collaboration. Have the processes changed, or is there greater awareness? Read Full Interview

DAMMY Corner
Our second annual DAMMY Awards will be judged by three recognized leaders in digital asset management. This month, we spotlight one of our esteemed judges: Mark Davey, Partner, Cliffe Associates Ltd, CTO of Print Media Centr, human aggregator of the digitalassetmanagement.org.uk blog, and creator of the DAM Foundation.

How did you get into the digital asset management space? The marketing agency I worked for over ten years ago had a contact with an engineering buying group to service the group and the member companies. They were looking to produce a large 600-page catalogue for their 120 members with over 200 suppliers, and simultaneously utilize the content on members’ websites.

Why is Digital Asset Management so critical? The short answer is the exponential growth of digital assets at every level of business. Read More

Techie Talk
The Digital Archive's New Leading Role in Media Workflows

Written by Janet Lafleur, Atempo
No longer a dusty storehouse of videotape or film, the digital archive has taken a new role as critical, active element in the workflow. By following some simple strategies, you can protect digital assets from ingest to long-term archive, optimize storage through automatic archive, and streamline workflows for monetizing content.

To get the most out of your archive solution investment, we recommend you follow these six archive strategies:

Strategy 1: Archive Early: Preserve raw footage in the archive If your cameras have reusable capture media, you’re losing the natural backup tape that videotape or film provided.

Strategy 2: Archive Often: Use automatic archiving to reduce clutter Like an office refrigerator that everyone uses, but no one owns, shared storage can get out of control. Automatically migrate stale data to a low-cost archival media.

Strategy 3: Archive Direct: Empower everyone to archive and retrieve directly An easy-to-use interface lets editors and producers search and retrieve... Read the rest of the strategies here.

DAM Poll
How does your organization approach Metadata? Do you:

In our last survey, we asked: "What does your organization keep in their archive?"

Thirty percent of you responded that you "Keep everything".
Twenty percent of you responded that you "Keep only the final versions".
And fifty percent of you said "It depends on the project".