Feature Interview
In preparation for the Second Annual DAMMY Awards, we interviewed 2010 DAMMY Award winner for Best Strategy or Solution for Digital & Media Asset Management during the Acquisition of Content; Michael Cioni, Founder, CEO, Light Iron Digital:

How did you get into the digital asset management space?
My motivation for getting involved in the DAM space comes from a rapidly changing media ecosystem that is clearly affecting every corner of the market. Sort of like a significant climate change or volcanic eruption, everything that falls within a certain distance from the epicenter is affected in a cascade-like effect that starts small and gets bigger and bigger and bigger. This type of trend is great for our business because we know that investments, research and attention to DAM content are ascending businesses, whereas alternative and more traditional tools are on the decline.

What do you see as the biggest challenge(s) in digital asset management?
Education. Plain and simple. The more I research and evaluate past trends of all types of tools and technologies, the more I find that people forget to look to the past in order to help predict trends in the future. The transition to exclusive dependence on file-based acquisition and digital asset management is not unlike the transition from flatbeds to AVID, or vinyl to CD, or type-setters to word processing. Evolutionary steps towards file-based manipulation are nothing new to the world, but they are new to major motion pictures. Educating a group of industry professionals and master of the craft is where we focus a huge percentage of our time. In fact, an average of 6 hours per week is spent teaching producers, directors and editorial members about digital asset management at Light Iron. Our transparency and training are critical in building a better future for DAM.

How do you see DAM looking 10 years from now?
Ten years from now will be a very different place for data asset management. 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: David Riecks, who will also be presenting at one of our upcoming Seminars in Chicago on July 20th.

David will be showing us how to Connect the Dots on Metadata and Search with Controlled Vocabulary.
Without good metadata you might as well be chucking your digital objects into a black hole! Metadata is a critical mechanism in digital collections. Metadata describes the attributes of a resource This seminar examines the role of metadata in the digital environment. The main focuses will be given to 1) the applications of metadata standards and 2) the creation of application profiles according to needs. Issues in metadata interoperability, vocabulary control, quality control and evaluation, and the practices in Linked Data-enabled metadata encoding will also be discussed.

Learn more about the Digital Asset Management Seminars in Chicago.

Techie Talk

Free Metadata Handbook
European picture agency organization CEPIC has joined forces with standards body IPTC to produce the CEPIC/IPTC Metadata Handbook, which was launched on 20 May 2011 at the CEPIC Congress in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Handbook, commissioned by CEPIC, is a PDF package of documents which includes Image Metadata Planning - a guide for business users, papers on the legal framework for metadata use, quick reference charts on the use of IPTC Core and Extension fields, and an interactive metadata workflow planning tool for selecting IPTC fields for use in various stages of a business workflow.

Read More and Access the Metadata Handbook

Creative Storage Conference and White Paper
At the 2011 Creative Storage Conference, on June 28, 2011 in Culver City, CA, Tom Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates, will present material from his white paper "2011 Digital Storage in Media and Entertainment Report". The white paper includes a summary of a survey conducted of Society of Motion Pictures Engineers (SMPTE) who were involved in professional media and entertainment about their use of digital storage. A brochure on the report can be downloaded here.

The Creative Storage Conference features keynote talks by Larry Jordan of Digital Production Buzz and Saker Klippsten, Head of Engineering at Zoic Studios. Five sessions during the day will explore digital storage for content creation, post production, content distribution and archiving as well as provide an insight on profession media end user perspectives on digital storage. There is a discount if you register by June 20th.

DAM Poll
How do you back up your data?

In our last survey, we asked: “How does your organization approach metadata?”

Forty-eight percent of you answered that you have dedicated staff managing and editing metadata.

Twenty-six percent of you responded that you distribute the responsibility among existing roles.

And twenty-six percent of you said it’s some of both approaches.