DAM Los Angeles 2024
We are busy developing an exciting agenda for DAM Los Angeles 2024 so keep your eyes peeled for details. Register for the event to be the first to hear about new sessions and speakers!
In the meantime, check out the first 19 confirmed sessions:
Taking Flight with Virgin Galactic – How We Built the DAM from Bottom Upwards for Greater Searchability and Usability
Make no mistake … this wasn’t an easy journey! The story: how a solo DAMster set up a new DAM system with all the challenges of space terminology, including getting familiar with assets from ‘release’, ‘release and boom’ to ‘feather’.
This session will focus on:
- Finding 10,000 essential assets in a 20-year-old archive of 700TB.
- Setting up and maintaining new workflows – new taxonomy, naming conventions, distribution, and permissions.
- Examining and quantifying what’s next for the role of the DAM and what AI might do.
Ester Brym, Digital Asset Manager, Virgin Galactic
Driving Innovation and Enhancing Operational Efficiency Through Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Unlocking the True Value of DAM Through Evolving Technology
The transformative influence of ML and AI in revolutionizing digital asset management is widely recognized, not least for their capacity to drive innovation, enhance operational efficiency, and elevate DAM user experiences.
Integration of ML/AI can enhance the user experience by delivering personalized content recommendations and refined search results. However, realizing the complete spectrum of ML/AI potential necessitates strategically aligning ML advancements with end-user applications.
Some of the challenges faced in integration include:
- Algorithmic Complexity and Lack of Transparency.
- Diverse Machine Learning Algorithms.
- Linking Digital Assets to ML-Generated Content Insights.
- Uncertain Timelines for ML/AI Integration.
This session will explore these challenges, providing key insights for meeting them.
The digital landscape evolves rapidly, requiring organizations to synchronize ML adoption timelines with users' ever-changing needs and expectations. Because user-facing applications have become first-order requirements to unlock unparalleled value and maintain a leading position in technological innovation, organizations must navigate the dynamic terrain of digital assets by recognizing synergies among ML/AI advancements.
Meenakshi Jindal, Technical Lead, Content Infrastructure and Solutions, Netflix Inc.
Keeping DAM Visible to Your Leadership – in Mind, in Conversation (and in the Budget!)
Beyond the business case and the deployment project, there is an ongoing journey for DAM. You know that, but do your leaders?
How do you continue the conversation with leadership that DAM is an integral part of the business as their business evolves and expands?
Join this ‘fireside chat’ with Charles Leatherberry, Boeing Communications, CMS – Analytics, Insights & Tools, Boeing who has built that trust with his executives many times over, as the benefits of shaping those relationships for the business and the DAM are discussed.
Graham Allan, Managing Director, Deloitte Consulting
Charles Leatherberry, Boeing Communications, CMS – Analytics, Insights & Tools, Boeing
From Chaos to Clarity: Mastering Your Content with a DAM System Reset
What Lucid Motors is doing to be ready for the next level of growth
As the organization leverages the DAM, the DAM must be ready. Digital assets must be realigned with the organization’s objectives. A well-executed DAM reset is imperative.
The DAM must take stock of content and personalization to unleash its potential as the business evolves.
What’s important is a proactive approach to ensure that the DAM remains a dynamic and indispensable tool in the ever-changing landscape of digital transformation.
Cory Davis, Digital Asset Manager, Lucid Motors
From Silos to Synthesis: A Year in the Life of The Huntington's DAMS
This session will focus on the first year of the DAM to include the strategies, challenges, and lessons around:
- Standing up a pan-institutional repository.
- Managing multiple metadata schemas and data sources.
- Establishing best practices for governance.
- Driving adoption across the organization.
- Engaging in mission-driven digital stewardship.
Leslie Parry, DAMS Specialist, The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Practical Applications of AI for DAM
Hear how the Philadelphia Eagles have implemented AI technology which has revolutionized workflows, speed of assets and content to players in almost real time. But what’s next in how AI can help with efficiency and how you can work with, not against, AI? This session will examine:
- Understanding the role of AI.
- What you need to do to succeed in working with AI.
- The pitfalls to avoid.
- How AI will change the way your enterprise creates and manages assets.
Jennifer White, Senior Manager, Digital Assets, Philadelphia Eagles
Wesley Lauria, Digital Asset Coordinator, Philadelphia Eagles
Metamorphosis – The Many Hats of DAM Professionals
As most DAM professionals know, the multi-faceted nature of a DAM ecosystem often requires shifting personas – or a metamorphosis – from one day or task to the next. Depending on our users’ needs, we either are an expert, a strategist, a coach, or a doer … or multiple things at once and more!
Join this talk as we’ll segment and discuss aspects of the job, explaining the necessary user needs to which they correspond. Key takeaways will include the many ways to maintain important services to DAM users without either losing our nerve or causing the DAM user experience to suffer.
Billy Hinshaw, Associate Digital Asset Specialist, BISSELL Homecare Inc.
Digital Asset Manager as Gatekeeper: Orchestrating Consistency and Unity in the Design World
This session will show what the DAM manager’s role can do to measure success through improved workflow efficiencies, reduce redundancies, and to bolster brand consistency achieved across all offices, examining:
- Addressing Global Challenges:
- The role of a Digital Asset Manager in managing diverse digital assets.
- The DAM manager’s role in overseeing merged integrations across 24 offices worldwide.
- Gatekeeping for Consistency, Collaboration and Efficiency:
- The impact of the gatekeeper’s role for all incoming files, ensuring their seamless integration into the DAM system.
- Maintaining the DAM system as the singular source of truth for over 1,000 global users.
- How the gatekeeper serves as a facilitator for effective collaboration among dispersed teams
- How leveraging the DAM empowers users with a unified resource hub.
- Strategic Evolution and Ownership:
- What it means to take ownership of the DAM system.
- Why and how to continually introduce enhancements.
- Why the DAM must evolve to meet the dynamic needs of the design industry.
Caroline Donadio, Digital Asset Manager, Perkins Eastman
To Every DAM – Term, Term Term
Metadata fields and taxonomies are the foundations on which DAMs are built. Data entered in the fields are used to identify, search, discover, and group assets. A DAM manager must know how to select, build, and govern metadata fields and their taxonomies so that they will work well for the organization’s DAMs.
This session covers best practices for the implementation and maintenance of metadata fields, taxonomies and DAM. Topics covered include practical tips and tricks for the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How of Metadata and Taxonomy Development and Maintenance focusing on:
- Foundations and framework for Metadata and Taxonomy Development.
- Maintenance of DAM terminology for DAMs: new and updated.
- Governance best practices: Who, What, Where, When, and Why.
Putting it all in context: a case study on how Simplot took a taxonomy created during early DAM implementation and updated it to fit better in a complex agribusiness and food production operation.
AND MORE…
Laying the Foundations
Taxonomy may be the heart of DAM, but what is at the heart of Taxonomy? The challenge: What do we need to talk about when we talk about Metadata and Taxonomy? Tip: Make sure you keep your structures, values and rules in line with the organization’s needs.
Getting Started and then what?
Taxonomy makes your DAM sing! Once your taxonomy goals have been identified, it’s time to begin taxonomy development. But what taxonomy notes do you need to hit? Selecting the right types and configurations of taxonomic terms is key for creating successful and harmonic taxonomies. The challenge: To use common terminology when developing taxonomies. Tip: Be practical and don’t overreach.
Doing Your Research
Traditional user research techniques like interviews, card sorts and data analysis can be used to come up with fields and values for a DAM taxonomy. The challenge: How do I balance subjectivity and concrete data? Tip: Research can generate and validate potential topics for your taxonomy.
Governance and Alignment
A taxonomy needs to be maintained and updated. Furthermore, a taxonomy is not confined to a single DAM, but must relate to other taxonomies across the enterprise. The challenge: Success requires taxonomy governance and alignment - and linking that both promotes consistency and facilitates the search for assets and information across different systems. Tip: Shared understanding amongst participants is the mother of agreement.
Yonah Levenson, Co-Founder, Co-Director & Instructor, Rutgers University’s Digital Asset Management Certificate Program
Joe Hess, DAM Digital Librarian, J. R. Simplot Company
Future Forward DAM: Dealing with Mis-Disinformation in the Generative AI Era
The rise of AI has launched new forms of misinformation and disinformation in the images, videos, and text we see and read every day in all our media channels. The search for the ‘truth’ is both real, and difficult, and affects us all as we consume all forms of information – both at work and at home.
As more and more content will be created by our brands, it will become harder and harder to manage that content – content that is the media assets, in our DAM systems and beyond.
This panel will tackle the issues of misinformation and disinformation through the standpoints of transparency, metadata, governance, information integrity, and AI and examine potential solutions – for application in the present and in the future.
John Horodyski, Executive Director, Insights and Analytics, Salt Flats
Jennifer White, Senior Manager, Digital Assets, Philadelphia Eagles
Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Selecting a DAM Vendor
If you've ever been involved in a DAM technology replacement or new implementation project, you know there are many ways things can go wrong.
But there's nothing worse than seeing a project doomed to fail before the implementation even begins.
Every year, Real Story Group helps scores of enterprise teams select new technology. Regardless of the industry or sector, we've seen many common mistakes that cause DAM projects to go off the rails before they even start.
In this session we’ll go through the top ten mistakes during the procurement phase – and what to do to avoid making them.
Jarrod Gingras, Managing Director & Analyst, Real Story Group
Lights, Camera, Asset Action: Jumpstarting Your DAM Journey into Video Wonderland!
Join this panel for an engaging session on "Lights, Camera, Asset Action." We'll kick things off with expert insights and practical starting points to guide you into seamlessly integrating video management into your Digital Asset Management system. From decoding file formats to best practices in metadata tagging, we've got your video assets covered.
Much of this session will be an interactive Q&A, allowing you to steer the conversation and share your burning questions about video workflows, storage solutions, or optimizing searchability. Our panel of seasoned DAM enthusiasts is ready to share their experiences and provide solutions.
Don't miss this dynamic opportunity to demystify video management in DAM. It's your chance to turn lights, camera, and action into streamlined DAM success!
Neal Bilow, Founder and Managing Partner, Chromata Solutions
Ashley Hufford, Manager, Digital Assets, Seattle Kraken
Getting to DAM 4.0: From Standalone DAM to Predictive Platform
No matter the industry, the size, or geographic region, every organization is at a different phase of their Digital Asset Management journey. Some are:
- Implementing DAM for the very first time.
- Working to incorporate DAM into a larger technology ecosystem.
- Using DAM to power their entire content supply chain, including deciding whether to go for an Omnichannel Content Platform or multiple Predictive Content Platforms.
This session will go into the detail and provide a roadmap framework for assessing where you are and the implications for action of knowing where you are.
Jarrod Gingras, Managing Director & Analyst at the Real Story Group, will recommend strategies for getting your enterprise to the next phase – wherever you currently are.
You’ve heard of PIM, but what about PLM? DAM for 3D Digital Product Creation
Apparel and footwear companies are increasingly moving from a complex, time-consuming and costly analog supply chain to a more efficient and sustainable 3D digital product creation model.
This transition brings numerous benefits but also introduces challenges, one of which is the management of a multitude of 3D product assets, along with their many versions, stages, and material components.
In this session, we will explore the developing world of 3D product asset production and management, the relationship of DAM to Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), and the advantages of integrating a 3D content library for on-demand product design and customization.
Kara Van Malssen, Managing Director, Consulting, AVP
Dynamic DAM—The Art of “Always Ready!”
In the past, and in the traditional sense of libraries and content collections, users accepted and adapted to DAM and met DAM on its terms. But now it’s an imperative for DAM to meet our users on their terms, in their context and in the ways that matter to them. That way, DAM itself realizes its potential and, even more importantly, the content it manages can realize its full value. The art of meeting our users in the ways that resonate most effectively with them is an ongoing role for those who operate or manage DAMs.
This panel brings together a group of seasoned DAM leaders to share their experiences and best practices in keeping your DAM “always ready.”
- Recognizing and staying ahead of how the business around you is evolving.
- Staying connected to your users as they and their worlds change.
- Anticipating, or even influencing technology change that can impact DAM.
- Governance (a dull word, but with exciting implications!
- Your role in leading and steering it all.
Graham Allan, Managing Director, Deloitte Consulting
Generative AI and DAM
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have had growing roles in and around DAM for some time. But the explosion of Generative AI over the past year has opened whole new avenues of opportunity and need in: DAM as a discipline, DAM tools, and our roles as DAM leaders.
An exploration of the latest thinking on how to approach bringing Gen-AI-created assets into collections and how to integrate technologies, processes, and mindsets in the wider DAM operation.
Covering:
- Gen AI assets in your DAM.
- Integrating Gen AI tools with DAM.
- How to evaluate the benefits of building Gen AI tools, while considering data security and the possible implications of bias.
- Going beyond a base Foundation Model and customizing your own model with your datasets.
- Protecting your data and not allowing it to train other models.
- Infrastructure and cost challenges for inference and training.
- LLM as the future of DAM.
- Rights and clearances.
Graham Allan, Managing Director, Deloitte Consulting
Brad Boim, Senior Director, Post-Production & Asset Management, NFL Media Group
Filling Up the DAM: How to Migrate Assets in Seven Steps
Learn how Showtime Networks migrated over 1-million DAM assets from multiple sources – including a retired digital asset management system, network servers, and physical media.
Migrated assets included: video, audio, images, documents, and records of physical media.
This session will provide a framework to migrate high volumes of assets to a DAM. It will discuss:
- What to consider when prioritizing which assets to migrate.
- Mapping metadata from one source to another.
- What skills, tools, and resources are needed.
- Executing an incremental migration plan.
John Locke, Sr. Manager, DAM System Operations, Showtime Networks, Inc.
Riding a Bicycle Built for Two
DAM and PIM in Tandem
There are plenty of well-known reasons to integrate your DAM and PIM. Both are essential for creating your product’s story, streamlining e-commerce efforts, and maintaining brand consistency.
But what decisions are needed to optimize a symbiotic DAM-PIM relationship from the very start? Integration between DAM and PIM is complex and requires continual re-evaluation of content capabilities to maintain a smooth path for this tandem bicycle ride.
Join this session to find out how one CPG organization is approaching DAM-PIM integration. Hear how they are learning to ride the bike as they build it, keeping the pedals moving in sync, and navigating the uphills and downhills as DAM and PIM start to work in tandem. Burning questions will be answered, including:
- Should you seek a customized solution with a 3rd party partner, work directly with your existing vendor(s), or rely on in-house IT?
- Which DAM assets do you really need in your PIM?
- Which PIM data do you really need in your DAM?
- How can you reconcile competing taxonomies and metadata standards?
Cristin Westbury, Digital Curator and Platform Owner, Kidde
Your DAM Career
Ever wondered what direction your career may take in the world of DAM and what it takes to be a future leader in the field? The role of the digital asset manager is constantly changing and is very often multifaceted and can lead to new DAM adventures.
This session will provide an opportunity to hear from DAM leaders, network with peers and to discover new opportunities in the world of DAM.