Feature Interview - On Taxonomy and Rocket Science
In preparation for her upcoming session at the DAM Conference in NYC, we asked Sarah Berndt, NASA Johnson Space Center Taxonomist & DB Consulting Group, Inc., to share more about the role of taxonomy.

How did you get into the taxonomy space?
My training and education are in the academic library so knowledge management, and the semantic system of taxonomy, ontology, and metadata come as a second nature to me. It is really fun to be part of the taxonomy project at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) and experience the difference it is making for our users.

Why is taxonomy so critical (to Digital Asset Management)?
Taxonomy is fundamental to each stage of Digital Asset Management as it provides a centralized organizational foundation multiple schemas can map to. Ultimately, this allows content owners the ability to identify information in a way that is meaningful to them, but findable by others.

What do see as the biggest challenge(s) with taxonomy in a large organization?
It can be daunting to consider the variety of domains, and the level of depth the taxonomy needs to meet user expectations. Advanced planning and integral implementation are both beneficial in ensuring the success of the project.

As a thought leader and contributor to the community, what trends are you seeing that will have positive impacts on taxonomies as they relate to DAM Systems and related technologies?

Read Full Interview

DAMMY Corner
Look who entered submissions for the Second Annual DAMMY Awards. All of the submissions are excellent, and our judges are hard at work narrowing down the winners.

• 5th Kind
• ADAM Software
• Andrews
• Canto Software
• Citrusbyte
• ContentBridge
• Extreme Reach
• FilmFlip ApS
• Hallmark Cards
• Harris
• Herbalife International
• K12 Inc.
• MediaRecall by Deluxe
• Motorola Mobility
• Procter & Gamble
• Showtime
• Tag Worldwide Ltd.
• Tedial
• UPS
• US Navy Visual News Service
• Vitras
• Widen Enterprises

Attend the Digital Asset Management Conference to see the winners announced at the DAMMY Award Luncheon on September 23, 2011 in New York.

Techie Talk

Top Tips for Selecting the Right DAM Product
We have all heard horror stories of companies spending huge sums of money on technology, only to see the investment fail or fall short of expectations. Avoiding such scenarios is the subject of "An Insider’s Guide to Selecting DAM Technologies", a 4-hour Seminar by Alan Pelz-Sharpe at Createasphere's Digital Asset Management Conference next month. Alan was one of the highest rated speakers at our last Conference in March, with many attendees requesting more of his knowledgeable and vendor-neutral advice.

Find out more about Alan's upcoming webinar and conference session.

IDEAlliance Publishes Recipe for Managing Recipe Content
To assist publishers in unifying recipe content sources and provide for centralized management of recipes, IDEAlliance has announced the publication of a draft specification addressing three use cases for recipe XML and metadata tag sets.

The PRISM Recipe Specification
This download supports a publisher’s need to unify recipe content sources and provide for centralized management of recipes, resulting in maximizing revenue and lowering the cost of production.

PRISM Recipe Specification public draft and comment phase closes August 31. Draft specifications and a webinar walk-through can be found at www.prismstandard.org. Comments should be sent to Dianne Kennedy.

Dianne will also be joining us in NYC! She will be leading a Seminar: eMedia Publishing 101: Publishing across Channels - Print, Smart Phones, Tablets, and Beyond.

DAM Poll
Are you looking into the cloud…

Attend “Leveraging the Cloud for Asset Management”

In our June survey, we asked: "How do you back up your data?"

The results are:
External hard drive - 47%
Network storage device - 33%
Online backup service - 7%
Other - 13%