ImageSpan's LicenseStream Business Edition Empowers the Missouri History Museum and "Visions of America" Photographer Joseph Sohm to Open Their Premie

Image via CrunchBase

LicenseStream Business Edition's Quick-Start, All-inclusive Service Lets Content Owners Showcase, License, Track and Fully Monetize Their Content Through Their Own Branded Online Stores

NEW YORK, NY – October 22, 2009 — ImageSpan Inc., the creator of LicenseStream, the market-leading licensing and royalty payment automation platform for all media, today announced that several owners of premier collections and libraries of images, including the Missouri History Museum and "Visions of America: Photographing Democracy" author and photographer Joseph Sohm are opening their content for business using ImageSpan's new LicenseStream Business Edition. The announcement was made at the PDN PhotoPlus Expo, the large photography industry trade show at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York.

Sohm, whose "Visions of America" book and companion multi-media "Photo Symphony" narrated by Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood offers a sweeping portrait of life in the American democracy via an epic photographic journey across 50 states, said he chose LicenseStream because it allows him to make his entire catalog– not just the hits – available online for licensing. His work can now be found and licensed at http://voa.licensestream.com. Previously, Sohm has been able to offer only a subset of his images through stock agencies, which he says operate on the premise that a core set of images typically attract customers repeatedly.

Built on the LicenseStream platform, LicenseStream Business Edition gives owners of premier collections and libraries of images, video and audio a quick-start, all-inclusive, Web-based service that allows content owners to showcase, license, track and monetize the full value of their content through their own branded online stores.

"With LicenseStream Business Edition, content owners can publish their content directly to their own online store or anywhere else on the Web and to global search engines, enabling anyone in the world to find their search-optimized content and pay for it with a mouse click," said Iain Scholnick, chief executive officer, ImageSpan. "This essentially makes the content itself the storefront. It dramatically speeds the pace of transactions and drives incremental revenues. Until now, media companies, libraries and owners of premier collections had a tough time justifying the cost of putting the head as well as the long tail of their content on the Web because the revenues they realized could not cover the costs associated out-dated manual licensing transactions. Now content owners of all sizes can make their entire catalog of media – not just the hits – available online to maximize their assets' value."

Missouri History Museum already has made available online via LicenseStream Business Edition more than 3,000 images, including a wide range of Civil War-era images, a wide range of early daguerreotypes and other photos and images related to American Indian people and culture, and images of oil paintings and artifacts related to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who headed up the first overland expedition by the United States to the Pacific Coast and back.

"We often receive requests from visitors asking us about the art and artifacts we display and how they can get copies," said Dr. Robert R. Archibald, president, the Missouri History Museum. "With LicenseStream Business Edition, we can now publish images of our collections directly to the Web so that anyone in the world can find our search-optimized images and pay for them with a mouse click. LicenseStream also has dramatically cut the time spent by our staff on searching for and processing such image requests so we can respond to requests in a day versus months, accelerating both of transactions and revenues while cutting costs." (Please see related release: Missouri History Museum Selects ImageSpan's LicenseStream to Maximize the Value of Its Photos, Prints)

American history teacher turned Producer-Photographer-Writer Joseph Sohm is now using LicenseStream Business Edition to license the more than 1,300 photographs included in his "Visions of America: Photographing Democracy," ($60; November 2009; Visions of America LLC/Midpoint Trade Books Dist.) a book that offers a sweeping portrait of life in the American democracy via an epic photographic journey across the United States. For more than 25 years, Sohm traveled and photographed all 50-states. Images from his "Visions of America" collection have been published 50,000 times in his lifetime.

"LicenseStream Business Edition enables me to publish my work directly to my own branded storefront as well as to the Web and major search engines in a way that also lets potential buyers license it on the spot," said Sohm, whose "Visions of America" recently won the Gold medal for "Best Coffee Table Book" at the 13th annual Independent Publishing awards in New York City. While requiring minimal investment, LicenseStream also allows content owners to retain a larger share of royalties for each transaction – multiple times the 20 percent royalty fee offered by most major agencies. "That key difference makes it affordable for me to shoot, metatag, process and offer my customers a much greater selection of photographs online."

LicenseStream Business Edition pricing starts at $5,500 annually with a 25% transaction fee. The annual fee can be billed one-time, monthly or quarterly to suit a client's needs.

Link to LicenseStream website: http://www.licensestream.com/licensestream2/Portal/company/press.aspx?pid=52

Are We There Yet?

This was something I heard a lot this past summer as I steered the minivan along the interstate toward a destination that seemed to be moving further away the closer I seemed to get. I think this can be akin to the process of setting out on the road to a successful DAM implementation. As you make progress the goal may seem to be moving further away.

A DAM is a continuously evolving process, to quote an earlier post..."a DAM is an Eco-system." All parts of this ecosystem are connected and need to work in unison. A successful DAM evolves to a natural balance. So, if it's evolving how will you know when you are done and for that matter...what is the definition of DONE?

"Done-ness" is a state that depends somewhat on the size of the endeavor and the enterprise. Implementing a digital asset management project for a small media archive may have a completion that is defined as when all the existing content that was not previously in a digital environment is now digitized, searchable, accessible in its digital form and available for use within a business unit or enterprise as needed. In a larger environment, it may be defined in phases or stages with milestones tied to timelines, budgets, strategic business initiatives, etc. and may span over the course of many years and budget cycles. In some ways this may be more analogous to highway maintenance...by the time you finish filling potholes, it may be time to start resurfacing the road again.

So does this mean we are on a treadmill that never ends? Do we ever catch up?...or do we continue to repeat the past?

Yes...No... Maybe.

The point is that there are different stages of done and recognizing this, learning from them and reaping the knowledge benefits can make the next phases more effective and easier to accomplish..and so on. You will build on the momentum you generate and want to be able to tap into that energy. It should be easier to evolve than to invent anew. Harness the power of the lessons learned to better at the next steps and beyond.

I believe inherent to a media asset and technology project is the reality that we can reach a balance between objectives and the state of the art. As technologies continue to improve we need to refine, reconfigure, migrate, upgrade, recreate and reprocess, etc. All toward the continuing evolution of the ecosystem we've created. We become the masters of the Darwinism of the process. Dinosaurs evolved then came birds, fish, reptiles and mammals. Could you still be an efficient and competitive player in your industry if you were still using index cards, binders, mimeograph machines, 8086 computers, phone modems and pre-windows software? Maybe...but not likely. We've all evolved as opportunities became available for advancement within the ecosystem.

So are we there yet? We'll we're here now and the view is pretty good...but I bet if we keep driving in the right direction the view will be even better.

___

By Philip Spiegel
PHILIP SPIEGEL - DAM Ideas
October 13, 2009
Link to original post: http://spiegelams.typepad.com/spiegel_ams/2009/10/are-we-there-yet.html

Digital Archiving Tool: Amnesty International’s ADAM

Image via Wikipedia

Link to original post: http://crlgrn.wordpress.com/
October 15, 2009

Amnesty International’s International Secretariat recently released an in-house digital archiving program called ADAM–Amnesty Digital Asset Management. The program, designed in conjunction with Bright Interactive, allows Amnesty field workers to upload digitally created photos, videos, and audio recordings into a central repository that all Amnesty members can access from within the organization. ADAM is a customized application of Bright Interactive’s “Asset Bank” tool which:

is a digital asset management system, enabling your organisation to create a fully searchable, categorised library of digital images, videos and other documents. It is a high-performance, cost-effective server application to enable you to manage digital assets – all that is needed to access it is a web browser (from Asset Bank).

The description for the product goes on to specify that the Asset Bank program that ADAM is built from is customizable, scalable, and multi-lingual.

Because the program is accessible through a web browser, field workers can submit their field materials from anywhere in the world, as long as they have an internet link (sometimes a challenge in the further reaches of the world). As users upload their digital materials, they fill in required fields for metadata and context information. Use and access restrictions are also recorded in the record for each uploaded item. At this point, uploading material into ADAM is voluntary, but according to AI’s digital archivist, response has been enthusiastic. The hope is that uploading material into ADAM will become standard practice for all field workers, thus streamlining archiving processes and making material readily available for AI reports and campaigns. This material could also potentially be available for scholarly and legal work by outside parties–always dependent, of course, on the access agreements that AI holds with the creators of the material and the individuals represented in images, videos, or audio recordings.

Currently, ADAM holds approximately 36,000 records, 159 of which are available for public viewing at the ADAM Web site. Though Web site visitors from outside of AI can’t access the full holdings, the public holdings allow you to see the types of information that ADAM users submit when they upload their digital documentation items. Information ADAM currently collects is as follows:

Descriptive

• Title of the video, image, or audio file
• Description of the content
• Keywords, or terms for searching and cataloging
• Campaigns that the item contributes to or was created for
• Tags
• Copyright type
• Copyright credit

Agreement Type:

• Agreement specifies the level of use that the creator of the piece and individuals represented within the piece permit within Amnesty International. Some items are publicly available and others are highly restricted.
• Agreement Notes specify additional use restrictions not covered in the standard agreements preset in ADAM
• Shotlist/Transcript information for video and/or audio material
• Date Created
• Creation Date Accuracy is a space for stating level of confidence for when the item was created.
• Place Created

Technical

• Size of the digital image, video or audio recording in terms of image density and/or memory space required for the file
• Orientation of images (landscape or portrait)

Admin

• ID, a catalog number assigned to the item by ADAM
• Date Last Modified
• Embedded Data
• Collections
• Categories

Related articles by Zemanta

• DAM software has enabled businesses to store and access all their digital intelligence within a single point of management (digitalassetmanagement.org.uk)
• Asset Management for Business in the Digital World (digitalassetmanagement.org.uk)

Getty founder knows how to develop ideas

By Dan Sabbagh
The Times, October 16, 2009

Jonathan Klein may only take pictures with an ordinary digital camera but, with the help of Mark Getty, a friend who he met when they were both bankers at Hambros in London in the early 1990s, he knows how to build a company.

Getty Images, which they started in 1995, gobbled up more than a hundred small photo agencies and libraries until it became the dominant image library in the world. Then, a decade later, the picture went out of focus.

The South African chief executive for all of that time acknowledges that, after a decade of growth, “profits peaked in the two years before we went private” in July 2008. Getty was suddenly hit, not so much by the internet, making available hundreds of cheap photographs through websites such as Flickr, but by the problems facing advertisers and traditional media.

“Print began to suffer. It is the best market for us, we get the highest price per picture, and so revenues began to decline,” Mr Klein admits.

Getty’s share price began to tumble, rendering it vulnerable. Hellman & Friedman, the private equity firm, bought the company, which began life on a scrappy thoroughfare near Camden, in North London, for $2.1 billion in a deal that made Mr Klein $53 million and Mr Getty $38 million. In addition, Mr Getty’s family vehicle netted $281.3 million. Some of that money was, however, reinvested by the duo for a 25 per cent stake.

Mr Klein stayed on, while Mr Getty, the grandson of the oilman who was once the richest man in the world, has become non-executive chairman.

Mr Klein says: “We talk about strategy but operational stuff doesn’t bother him. He’s chairman of the National Gallery now, raising money to buy Titians. We go for cheaper pictures here”.

He reckons that it is a good time for Getty to be in private hands, not least because the prevailing environment is so difficult. When the company was last public — the figures are for 2007 — turnover was $857 million and net profits were $125 million. This year, he says, sales will certainly be down — “find me a media company where sales are up” — as demand for images from advertising agencies has slumped, although cost-cutting means that “profits will be in line with last year”. However, with $1 billion of debt taken on since the acquisition — only three times” underlying earnings, Klein says — net profits will be down.

With declining demand for photos used in advertising, which start at $200 per photo, the largest part of the Getty business is tumbling.

But that is not to say that there isn’t any growth in imaging. The company sells digital images, including those taken by amateurs, via its iStockphoto website, and demand is taking off. Mr Klein says: “In December 2005, before we bought the company behind it, the site did $600,000 of business. Yesterday it did $850,000 in one day.”

Its growth is not surprising, considering that pictures start at $1.35. But it is not the kind of price that will pay a professional photographer’s mortgage, even though they earn royalties of between 20 and 40 per cent per photo, or offset the decline in the traditional print photography business.

Mr Klein also wants to experiment. Getty is involved in a joint venture with Time Warner, reviving its defunct pictoral Life magazine as Life.com and sharing advertising revenues. It is the sort of diversification, Mr Klein admits, that public company shareholders would not tolerate. He hopes that, if Getty were to buy “new images of Hitler or Marilyn Monroe”, they would also be exposed on other Time Warner media, such as CNN or People.com.

More bizarrely, Mr Klein is also interested in music, particularly in licensing music as sound tracks for advertising. There are obvious parallels between the image rights business and music publishing but, with the industry so concentrated between the four majors, it is hard to see how Getty can elbow its way in.

Mr Klein says that Getty considered buying Warner/Chappell, the music publishing arm of Warner Music, before Edgar Bronfman bought it. In addition, Getty represents a few unsigned artists. Unless a big acquisition is planned, however, it is unclear how the company can develop a presence.

Getty’s real success, though, has been in consolidating what was once a massively fragmented market, and, in some cases, cutting costs at agencies when acquired. Its dominance of imaging — it is four times the size of main competitor, Corbis, which is owned by Bill Gates — unsettles some photographers. “In 2000 we employed 25 photographers, now we employ 125, and I don’t know that newspapers will have increased their staffs during that time. We are photographer friends, but not photographer cuddly,” says Mr Klein, referring to the fact that profit margins sit at 35 per cent.

In sport, Getty saturates events such as the Olympic Games, but makes its money by acting as the official photographer for the event. “We cover all the medal ceremonies, and take all the pictures for the sponsors,” says Mr Klein, adding that that is where the profit is. But, with no big international events in 2009, the year is not looking good for Getty. The company, and its backers, will have to hang on.

“Hellman tell me that their average investment is for three-and-a-half years, but in a recession it could take longer,” says Mr Klein. “We’ll sell it or float it, and it depends on the strategies of various media companies, and whether they see imaging as an interesting business”. And, he says, when the company calculates how much revenue is left when the recession is over.

_______

Link to original article: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article6877227.ece

Karl Fakhreddine Q&A - Digital Asset Management At Orange Logic

Karl Fakhreddine
Company: Orange Logic
Position: CEO
Site: www.orangelogic.com

Describe Orange Logic in one sentence
We help picture libraries and photo agencies go one level higher than the canned licensing solutions.

When did you start Orange Logic?
In New York in 1998, then expanded the business in France in 2000.

What were you doing before that?
I loved to study so I spent a lot of time in school: I have two engineering degees and a medical degree. I also spent 4 years on Wall St.

Where are you based?
I am now back in New York.

How many staff do you employ worldwide?
12.

How many developers?
We have 2 project leaders and 4 developers.

Describe your Monday morning?
This morning, I was up at 4am to talk to the team in France and organize the daily workload. I actually spend a lot of time in product architecture because I love it.

Who was your first customer?
While in Med school in Rochester, my 'hobby' between two surgeries was to develop for Magnum Photos on a laptop in scrubs. One could argue that Orange Logic was born out of a cheap trick to impress the nurses.

Who are you running picture library systems for currently?
Photo agencies, news agencies, picture libraries and museums, including Reuters, Image Source, Art Resource, Artists Rights Society, Art and Commerce, George Eastman House, la Réunion des Musées Nationaux (60 French Museums) and others. We also work with well-known global non-profit organizations, it kills me that we can't name them because of their non-endorsement policy.

How are you dealing with customers wanting to add footage to their stills library? Some clients do incorporate videos into their library. Our products can handle various types of assets including HD videos, and audio tracks.

We are told the cost of digital storage is going up at the moment - why?
Hum, at least with us, it is going down.

What new photo library functions are you offering at the moment?
We realized in 2006 that our application had one of the widest functional covers in the industry and decided to focus on usability instead of functionality. The objective was for users to be able to use the application within 2 days of training. So we've rebuilt the application interface from scratch with intuitivity and improved productivity as main targets. This makes for a really enhanced user experience, both for those working with the application back-end and for those searching and licensing pictures on the front-end.

What one feature sets OL ahead of other DAM systems?
I would say the ability of our application to adapt itself to our clients' needs rather than the opposite. This gives our clients the confidence to quickly adapt their business model to the market as needed. We provide a service, not just a software, our clients don't have to buy anything from us and can stop using us any time (it has never happened yet).

If I am a UK based picture library who do I contact first?
You can get in touch with Chantal Muller (chantal.muller@orangelogic.com) or call her on +33 499 58 17 35.

What's the lead time to getting my picture library online?
It pretty much depends on what we're trying to build: a 2-story house or a 200-story skyscraper. The 2-story house requires a lead time of 2 weeks.

Can I design my own front end?
Sure, all our clients do. If you have a look at some of our customers' websites, you'll see they've got completely different front-ends (there is no comparison possible between www.pictures.reuters.com and www.imagesource.com for example). We've also integrated a CMS in the application so our customers have full control on their site's text, look and feel.

What do you do when you are not thinking about OL?
I cherish any moment I get to spend with my wife and 3 kids.

What magazines/newspapers do you subscribe to?
The Economist, Le Monde.

Which websites do you visit daily?
Flickr, Pandora and tech stuff.

Do you write a blog?
If only I had enough interesting things to say...

ENDS

About Orange Logic
Orange Logic story begins in New York in the 90s when the first version of Cortex was born and delivered to Magnum Photos, Art Resource, and the Artist Rights Society.

Our solutions now manage millions of images for photo agencies, picture libraries, media agencies, museums and galleries, NGOs, and other image-intensive organizations distributing and monetizing media assets on the internet.

Cortex3, our latest product, is the result of more than fifteen years of evolutionary solutions for managing photo archives.

By making use of latest technologies and constantly keeping ahead of new trends, we provide our customers with superior user experience, help them lower their operating costs, and increase utilization of their pictures.
www.orangelogic.com

Posted by Will Carleton
Photo Archive News
9/10/2009
http://www.photoarchivenews.com/archives/2009_10.html#003048

How do I explain what I do for a living with DAM?

Posted by Henrik de Gyor on October 6, 2009
Link to original post: http://anotherdamblog.wordpress.com/

People will ask you “What do you do for a living?” If you work with Digital Asset Management on a daily basis as I do, there are a few ways you can answer this question. You could:

• Explain what you do in some detail, sometimes boring and/or confusing the average person.
• Blab on and on, creating more hot air.
• Give your elevator pitch: a simple, concise introduction to what you do for a living.

Before I had a simple explanation meant for the average person, I also confused lots of people (which is unfortunately really easy to do nowadays). It took me a while to come up with this simple analogy. Here is how my DAM elevator pitch often goes whether I am speaking with an executive or someone I just met:

1. An inquiring individual asks the question, “What do you do?”
2. I reply, “I am a Digital Asset Manager. I work on Digital Asset Management.”
3. The inquiring individual often says “What is that?”
4. I say “Are you familiar with the iPod?”
5. They often say “Yes,” unless they admit living in a cave since 2001.
6. Whether that is the case or not, I quickly show them an iPod, scroll through its contents as I explain that “while this is meant for individual consumption of media (such as music, video, photos), I manage similar kinds of media (generally called assets). The big difference is we can share assets across an entire organization legally using a set of more sophisticated tools with a series of workflows, commonly referred to as DAM. This helps the organization save money by being able to search, find, use, reuse or repurpose what we already have in the DAM legally.” I show the how assets can be found using various information called metadata. With the case of music on the iPod by:

• Album
• Artist
• Genre
• Title

I answer any further questions they have, but that is my elevator pitch as to what I do for a living with DAM.

How do you explain what you do for a living with DAM as a user or administrator?

Equilibrium Releases MediaRich for MOS for Associated Press ENPS V.7.0 and Other MOS Compliant Newsroom Systems

MediaRich For MOS Is The Only Video Transcoding and Visualization System 
That Is MOS Compatible

Enables Creation of Web Ready Media While Integrating With MOS Protocol Devices

RAI AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, IBC Booth 7.D31, and SAUSALITO, CA - September, 11, 2009 - Equilibrium®, a software and hosted services company that specializes in helping enterprise clients of all sizes to manage, monetize and mobilize content, today announced the release of MediaRich for MOS which is compatible with Associated Press ENPS V.7.0. Together, EQ and ENPS help streamline newsroom production of online content through tight integration of Equilibrium's MediaRich for MOS Server. Existing ENPS customers may download a thirty-day trial version of MediaRich for MOS by contacting either Equilibrium or the Associated Press.

Equilibrium's MediaRich works with ENPS and other MOS compliant newsroom servers to automatically transcode production quality video for web use. This tight integration enables production and distribution of text and media content to the web using the same, seamless drag and drop workflow available in the past only to broadcasters. In addition, for each video or one of hundreds of recognized filetypes MediaRich for MOS automatically creates thumbnails, animated GIFs, as well as proxy images and videos.


With Equilibrium's optional connector to MOS, the MediaRich Server can integrate with virtually any MOS compliant systems including Associate Press ENPS to create faster, more versatile, and more interactive video-to-the-web workflows. MOS is a open, reliable, and widely-adopted network protocol for linking news production systems such as ENPS with broadcast equipment; enabling journalists to see, use, and control a variety of devices including audio / video servers and editors, still stores, character generators, prompters, automation systems, content distribution systems and services, and special effects devices. 


Equilibrium's MediaRich for MOS connector prepares content automatically for web deployment. After news organizations have posted their footage to the web, the videos can be deployed to any device, anywhere using Equilibrium's EQ Network Ad-Per-View™ Software as a Service.

"Equilibrium is very pleased to connect our patented scalable media processing server technology to ENPS MOS to drive on-the-fly news video out to the web to meet growing consumer demand for anywhere, anytime access to news and information," commented Sean Barger, CEO of Equilibrium. "By helping news operations and stations everywhere to automate processing and delivery of web video while simultaneously providing visualization of all assets in the pipeline, station news operations can save on labor costs and increase advertising revenue at the same time."


IBC attendees are invited to see a demonstration of Equilibrium's MediaRich for MOS for Associated Press ENPS in the Associated Press Booth 7.D31.

About MediaRich for MOS
MediaRich for MOS is an indispensable tool for the digital media world that features a scalable, high-volume media distribution and repurposing engine. It enables newsrooms to automatically create, process and auto-assemble graphics, audio and video files dynamically from original source files and then deliver them to websites, wireless and portable devices.

MediaRich offers dynamic, on-demand, massively scalable asset processing and templating on a wide array of documents, images, CMYK files and video frames up to HD in size. These can be processed and deployed without pre-processing and without the need to create a proprietary format. It provides the ability to view over 300 image and video formats on demand.

Running Order Control
ENPS dynamically builds and controls a Running Order playlist within MediaRich for MOS. Changes to the Running Order in ENPS result in immediate changes to the sequence of media objects queued for playout by MediaRich for MOS.

Item Status

MediaRich for MOS. sends real-time status information during playback and other functions that are displayed through ENPS writers and producers in real-time. This includes the use of a minimum set of standard status messages which enable color coding and the automated movement of the ENPS timing bar.

Media Thumbnails and Preview Video

MediaRich for MOS provides thumbnail images and proxy video which are closely integrated within the ENPS Story display and editing windows.

Story Send

MediaRich for MOS uses the full body of text within ENPS documents, including all media pointers and custom metadata. It also dynamically tracks the sequence of Stories and Assignments within active ENPS Running Orders and Assignment grids.

Media Awareness

MediaRich for MOS sends ENPS a description of the media it stores. The description contains structured metadata and a pointer to the media object. This information is used by ENPS to return media in search results. Pointers are used to link media to ENPS documents, including Stories, Running Orders and Assignments using simple drag and drop workflow.

About Equilibrium
Equilibrium, the world leader in media processing since 1992 when it released DeBabelizer®, the first automated graphics processing software. EQ spearheads the monetization of the next-generation Internet and mobile video revolutions. The patented, high-powered MediaRich® engine enables real-time personalization and delivery of music, images and video to website, wireless and portable devices. Equilibrium offers breakthrough cross-platform technology solutions featuring interoperability and integration for the workgroup, enterprise and web-server, delivering the same MediaRich CORE technology for cross-platform interoperability and integration virtually anywhere. The EQ Network can automate personalized video delivery and monetization via advertising from any web video. Equilibrium is a Microsoft Gold Partner. To learn more about Equilibrium and its products, please visit Equilibrium, EQ Network or the EQ blog.

Extensis Offers Digital Asset Management Scholarships

Extensis along with the Museum Computer Network are offering the Digital Asset Management Scholarship. This is a competitive scholarship awarded to a limited number of applicants. The scholarship will provide 50% off MCN conference registration and automatic registration in the digital asset management workshop offered at the conference.

To be eligible, applications must be submitted by October 9, 2009.

DETAILS

Museum Information, Museum Efficiency: Doing More with Less
37th Annual MCN Conference
November 11-14, 2009
Portland, Oregon

ELIGIBILITY
Anyone who is interested in digital image management! The scholarship is open to MCN members and non-members alike.

APPLICATION
Submit the easy to complete scholarship application found at the Museum Computer Network site.

QUESTIONS
Please contact Jana Hill, 2009 Scholarship Committee chair.

DAM takes on many roles

By Judith Lamont, Ph.D., KM World, 29 September 2009
Judith Lamont is a research analyst and a KMWorld Senior Writer

The market for digital asset management (DAM) solutions remains robust, driven by increasing demand for rich media on Web sites, for marketing materials and in technical documentation. Ideally, assets for those purposes are managed centrally and published as needed to different destinations.

"DAM solutions are extending both upstream and downstream," says Melissa Webster, program VP for content and digital media technologies at IDC. "It’s less and less about the repository and more about the workflow."

The annual market stands at about $600 million, and historically has posted double-digit growth. GSD&M Idea City is a full-service advertising agency with such high-profile clients such as AARP, American Red Cross, BMW, John Deere and L.L. Bean. Based in Austin, Texas, the company’s staff of 450 includes a large creative and studio art department.

The company used a cumbersome, paper-based photography tracking system listing the photographer, customer and other information about the asset. Employees had to leave their desks to retrieve the CD or other medium on which the archived working file was stored. If a piece of artwork could not be found, it might have to be recreated, adding more agency costs and time to the project.

After deciding to move to a digital asset management system, GSD&M Idea City formed a search team consisting of heads of several departments, including creative services departments and IT. "This was not an IT initiative," says Lisa McIntyre, digital asset management librarian at GSD&M Idea City. "We wanted buy-in from other potential users of the system." The company then narrowed down the choices to three vendors that included both pure-play DAM products and enterprise content management (ECM) systems.

Site visits

Each of the finalists made on-site visits as the last stage of the search process. "We worked through several scenarios to make sure the software could do what we wanted," McIntyre says. "We did not want to change our work processes, just the means through which we accomplished the work." At the completion of the evaluation, GSD&M Idea City chose EMC Documentum Digital Asset Management solution from EMC.

Attractive features

An important capability was EMC’s extensibility. "We were able to put DAM into play right away, but we can also broaden into content management and records management if we want," McIntyre explains.

Integration with other products was also a major consideration. "The software has tools that allow users to work in their native environment, which for our studio artists is generally Adobe Creative Suite," McIntyre explains. "The DAM system shows as a file share on the desktop, and users can continue working as they always have." Business users can search for assets from a browser interface.

Now that the system is in place, users can find their assets much more quickly, and search criteria can

be used to locate files instantly. "Archiving used to take two days and now has been reduced to just one afternoon," McIntyre adds.

GSD&M Idea City is also working on an integration with SharePoint to allow a job jacket to be created in the DAM system when a JobSite collaborative workspace is created. "Eventually we hope for a seamless environment that draws from multiple repositories through a single interface," McIntyre adds.

For companies that anticipate needing an ECM system along with their DAM repository, a platform such as EMC’s offers a good path. "We can provide a unified system from day one," says David Mennie, senior product marketing manager at EMC. "Customers can have one system for the rich media, Web content management and enterprise content management, rather than silos."

In addition, EMC’s platform has some unique capabilities, adds Mennie. For example, a 3-D image solution provided by an EMC partner and incorporated into the platform can unlock computer-aided design (CAD) files in 80 different formats. That ability is helpful for creating marketing collateral, technical publications and maintenance manuals that need to include 3-D interactive models, animations or views of consumer products, as well as more complex structures such as airplane landing gear.

Rich media assets

UNICEF was founded by the United Nations in 1946 to help save, protect and improve the lives of children through immunization, education, healthcare, nutrition, clean water and sanitation. It delivers those services and material resources on a regular basis, and responds to emergencies throughout the world.

The UNICEF Web site is the primary means of conveying information about activities in which the organization is involved. With nearly 200 offices operating in 156 countries, and fundraising partner organizations in 36 industrialized countries, UNICEF has deployed a Web content management (WCM) system that allows distributed editing and publishing of content, and localization of field office Web sites.

As rich media, particularly video, became more prevalent, UNICEF also saw a need for a DAM system that could help staff members deal more effectively with the increasing number of digital assets.

"We drop professional UNICEF journalists and photographers into all sorts of places where children are affected by crisis, as well as serious ongoing challenges," says Alexander Struminger, executive project manager in UNICEF’s Internet, broadcast and image section. "Video is a good format for quickly telling complex stories and effectively feeding into news cycles, but we needed to be able to store, retrieve and distribute the files more easily."

SaaS delivery model

UNICEF had tried several approaches to DAM, including developing its own software, but usage of the systems had been limited. "One of the lessons we learned in our early attempts was that the way in which we rolled out the system was critical," says Struminger. "We knew we needed a good software product, but better software alone is never the answer. We also needed to facilitate adoption by involving stakeholders." After researching the available options and requesting proposals from best-in-class vendors, UNICEF selected the DAM platform from Widen Enterprises.

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model of Widen’s DAM platform removed the burden of installing and maintaining the software. UNICEF also took note of the company’s long history of high-quality service. "Widen helped us start out with a pilot project so we could introduce the product to a small group of beta testers," Struminger explains. "We made sure we had a group of motivated UNICEF stakeholders involved. This ensured early adoption and a sense of ownership by key stakeholders."

The system was introduced by UNICEF’s Geneva office at a gathering of UNICEF fundraising organizations, and several of the individuals involved in the pilot spoke enthusiastically about its merits. "This event changed the conversation," Struminger says, "and we realized it was the kind of advocacy we needed in order to get that vital adoption."

Other parts of the organization began to request the DAM system, and a global rollout is now in progress. Feedback has been very positive, and users are beginning to suggest new applications, like asset sharing between divisions, countries and partner organizations. Widen’s application for video Web streaming is also under consideration.

Users can quickly find video clips they need, along with scripts and shot lists. They can send those files directly to a journalist or news organization for review. UNICEF offices and partners can have access to up-to-date branding assets, as well as print publications files for localization, printing or electronic distribution.

"The robust search engine is really one of the keys to this system," explains Struminger, "and its ability to leverage metadata." Although the metadata and taxonomy needed to be sorted out as the system expanded, the Widen DAM system is now becoming the preferred distribution platform for digital assets.

Widen Enterprises draws its expertise from its own experience in pre-press workflow, so in addition to offering a software product it also has substantial subject matter expertise.

"Our emphasis is on service and being with customers throughout their process," says Matthew Gonnering, CEO of Widen. "For example, we staffed our own video production studio to make sure we understood the workflow. Our product handles every major video format as well." That ability provides support to social marketing efforts, allowing the distribution of video to many channels. "We don’t just get our customers set up with the software and then part company," Gonnering emphasizes. "We are available throughout the entire time of our relationship."

SaaS is growing faster in the DAM market than in other content management markets, according to IDC’s Webster. "In part, this is because the SaaS model lends itself to sharing information, which is often an important requirement for a DAM system," she says. Webster also points to the growing importance of video. "Video is definitely booming on Web sites right now," she continues. "But it needs a lot more management than WCM can offer—for example, on-demand transcoding might be needed to deliver the video in the right format for the user."

Broad KM vision

Zimmer Holdings manufactures medical products such as orthopedic implants, dental implants and artificial tissue. As a large organization with revenues of over $4 billion and 8,000 employees, Zimmer has extensive requirements for managing information of all kinds, but management of its technical information poses special challenges. All of Zimmer’s products are subject to regulation and are covered by 21 CFR Part 20, which defines how records about the products must be maintained. Changes in information relating to the medical devices need to be documented, for example, and carried into any related materials. Employees and customers also require training associated with the medical devices.

The company has developed a broad vision for a knowledge management system. Its long-term goals include migrating from a file share system for managing documents, establishing a hierarchy for regulated documents that includes inheritance of metadata for the different levels, automating the updating of rich media into regulated documents and developing an enterprise answer management system.

Goal: an answer management system

The rich media files play a role in many corporate activities, including compliance, training and marketing. "We recognized right away that we needed to have a DAM solution as part of our quality management system," says Daniel Duncan, senior instructional designer at Zimmer. The rich media might be images, technical drawings, video clips and e-learning objects. Zimmer selected TeleScope from North Plains as the best match for its requirements. "We viewed TeleScope as the best of breed," Duncan explains, "and found that its flexibility and search capability would meet or exceed what we needed."

Zimmer is now in the process of configuring the TeleScope DAM system. "We began by writing protocols to validate the software’s effectiveness in meeting the regulations," says Duncan. By the end of the year, Zimmer hopes to have corporate information available and cataloged in the system, as well as supporting information. Training materials such as tutorials will be stored as objects in the DAM system, which will interface with a learning management system (LMS) that delivers and tracks the training.

The ultimate goal is to develop an enterprise "answer management system" that allows a user to type in a question and obtain a specific answer. "This is what our users need and want," Duncan says. "Distributors might want to know about inventory management, salespeople need to know about new products, and medical practitioners might want to see a simulation of a surgical technique. We want a unified system with a strong set of metadata around the content, so we can bring all the relevant information together."

TeleScope will contain all the rich media assets and will also serve as a catalog for documents in other repositories. "Our plan is for TeleScope to serve as a bridge," explains Duncan, "by providing a consistent user interface as we migrate away from traditional document authoring and implement XML-based knowledge and content management."

Using the metadata management capability of TeleScope, Zimmer will be able to update its documents dynamically. As a digital asset that is a component in product specification is modified, for example, it will replace an older version shown in the document.

"We have a lot of documentation within our organization related to policies and procedures, training and marketing," Duncan says. "One of the most challenging tasks we have is change control and managing reusable content, the millions of complex pieces we have for all those documents." Convinced that Zimmer is on the right track in shifting to a KM paradigm, despite the long road ahead, Duncan concludes, "You have to start somewhere."

No matter where the customers start, DAM systems now allow them to go farther than ever. "We have an end-to-end capability now, says Steve Sauder, CTO of North Plains. "We can manage XML, produce printed books and distribute e-books based on a single source of content." With North Plains’ new Web 2.0 tools, publishers can support viral marketing with reviews and ratings. That scenario is a big step ahead of the static repository that characterized earlier generation DAM systems.

Link to original article: http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/Editorial/Feature/DAM-takes-on-many-roles-56214.aspx

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Why do I need permissions and roles in DAM?

By Henrik de Gryor on Another DAM blog (about Digital Asset Management)
Link to original post : http://anotherdamblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/why-do-i-need-permissions-and-roles-in-dam/
September 28th, 2009

Any Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution worth implementing across an organization should have the following:

• The ability to assign permissions or access to various tasks in the DAM. This includes permission to:
  • access assets and/or collections in the DAM
  • preview assets in the DAM
  • add/append/edit metadata to the assets in the DAM
  • upload assets to the DAM
  • download assets with transformations from the DAM
  • order assets (such as licensed assets in the DAM)
  • delete assets in the DAM
  • version assets in the DAM
  • report on assets in the DAM
  • do specific tasks with these assets from the DAM

• The ability to assign roles or groups of people who share the same permissions to do things in the DAM. At the very least, there should be at least a few roles available to assign any user of the DAM:
  • Administrator role often has full control of the DAM and is empowered with full permissions to do anything necessary including configurations.
  • Regular user role usually has limited permissions to do specific things such as preview assets and maybe download assets directly from the DAM.
  • If you wanted to expand to a third role, there is often a power user role. Typically, power users can do more than the average user, but less than the administrator. Often, a power user can upload assets to the DAM.

Depending on who in your organization is supposed to access what collections of assets and be able to do specific tasks with these assets, you may want to create a role which meets each criteria. Why use roles/groups rather than grant each individual user specific permissions one at a time? Well, how many DAM users do you have? Roles are a simple way to bunch groups of users together who need the same permissions. This way, permissions are granted in a uniform manner to users who fall in a specific user role. This can speed up the process of adding a new user or editing their permissions, instead of visiting each collection and permission for each individual user throughout the DAM.

• You could have user roles which can preview (read-only) specific collections of assets, but not other collections.
• You may have roles which can preview, edit, upload and download assets but not delete assets (such as your power user role).
• You may want a role which can preview and download from only one collection of assets relative to their job function because they often need to use or refer to just these assets.

I would not recommend allowing all users to have all permissions to do everything in the DAM (aka free for all) because that often leads to a lot of inconsistencies, accidents and chaos, particularly deletion.You probably had that before you had a DAM. So, why go back to those times? Do you miss the chaos and headaches for some reason? The idea here is to empower users within each user role to be able to access/do/see what they need in the DAM for their job function. Unless assets are restricted for specific uses or for specific eyes only, there is little reason to limit the access to previewing assets in the DAM, but it is up to the administrator and their management to decide what level of access should be granted to whom. If a user needs to access/do/see more (and is permitted to), permissions and roles can be changed by an administrator to allow more access and usability to users of the DAM.

How do you use permissions and roles within your organization’s DAM?

Canto Cumulus 8.0.2 released

By Chelsi Nakano | Sep 16, 2009
Link to original article: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/canto-cumulus-802-digital-asset-management-for-all-005543.php

Canto, a digital asset management solutions provider that operates out of both San Francisco and Berlin, released the second scheduled update to their Cumulus 8 product line as promised. Canto Cumulus is a cross-platform that enables users to organize and track their digital files. Arguably the coolest part of Canto 8.0.2, the newest version, is its compatibility with Mac OS X Snow Leopard and the forthcoming Microsoft Windows 7.

Canto! Canto!

Though you might not have heard of them, Canto has been in the digital assets game since 1990. Canto Cumulus, their main attraction, has been around since last May and enables companies to organize, find, share and track their digital files no matter the format. And, as with any good platform, Canto’s network offers a grab-bag of plugins and other enhancements for those of you that need more than the stock edition.

With a reported 100 fixes and improvements offered in the new version, including compatibility with two very popular operating systems, Cumulus 8.0.2 might be just what you’re looking for. Other cool new functionality includes:

• Scheduler/Catalog via email
• Automatic report generation
• Automized copy/move/delete
• Cumulus image editor
• Built-in watermarking and noise asset protections
• Enhanced file format support for HTML and RTF
• New field type "table" for metadata

Canto also offers a handy demo video here.

“Cumulus 8.0.2 was the perfect time for us to add support for Snow Leopard and Windows 7 in a single update,” says Canto CTO Thomas Schleu. “And now that Cumulus 8 has been tuned twice since its initial release, we can turn our main development focus to taking advantage of all the new capabilities the new architecture makes possible.”

Cloudy Days

Updates are free and available all customers on active service agreements. Otherwise, if you’re new the whole Canto game, you can fill out a simple form and try it for free before you hand over your precious cash.

Statistics that have DAM Meaning

By Matthew Gonnerin, Broadcast Newsroom, Sep 14, 2009
Link to original article: http://software.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=843071&afterinter=true

While each customer will use DAM and judge its overall effectiveness differently, threads exist which can be measured

We probably have baseball and The Sporting News to thank for the proliferation of statistics in all sports. Yet, Mark Twain once said there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Of course, he was speaking about to the persuasive power of numbers and about how people will either promote or ignore statistics based entirely on whether or not they support a position. This "truth" is the reason many baseball arguments have never been settled. L

et me tell you something. Statistics are not going away. An entire industry of sports fantasy leagues is now flourishing because somebody found a way to get people to "compete" using statistics. It is human nature. You compare your stats to everyone else's to find out where you stand. Marketers and creative folks are no different. They want to know how they compare to others, including their use of digital asset management (DAM). We are well down the path of being able to begin providing this kind of information and have it be meaningful.

As a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider, we are in the unique position of having access to an aggregation of all of our customer's data. We know we have more than 50,000 users from 120 different countries. We see the amount of downloads taking place for digital content. We see what content is being used and repurposed. We see how much data is being consumed. We are literally sitting on a goldmine of data. It should be no surprise that marketing or brand managers would be interested in knowing what that data says. It behooves us to be constantly looking at it and to create ways to show our clients what they and others are doing while maintaining customer privacy within our strict security.

The majority of organizations invest in digital asset management solutions to improve interaction with their branded materials to maximize the investments made in the creation of images, videos, audio, creative files and other marketing materials. While each customer will use DAM and judge its overall effectiveness differently, enough common threads exist which can be standardized and measured in ratios, similar to financial statements.

We picked the following four ratios that we feel are most important to digital asset management.

• Digital asset activity ratio
• Repurposing ratio
• User activity ratio
• Digital asset consumption ratio

Digital Asset Activity Ratio: A comparison between the quantity of files that have been ordered and the amount of files stored in the application. This ratio provides insight into the relationship between download activity and all the digital assets stored in the application. For example, a low number for this ratio could mean that a marketing department may need to look at assets with high activity, compared to low activity. For instance, lifestyle images may have higher activity than static product shots. If so, marketing can shift their spending on creating assets.

Repurposing Ratio: A comparison between the active digital assets and the quantity of files ordered. This provides insight into the amount of content repurposing that is taking place over a period of time. Repurposing continues to be a key component of digital asset management value. A high number indicates that the same digital assets are being ordered by various users over a specific time period. A low number may point to a small set of users rarely ordering the same files over a given time period. Either way, this ratio speaks to activity that may call for an adjustment on spending priorities. A change in the number over time also gives you instant feedback whether adjustments you make are working.

User Activity Ratio: A comparison between the total number of logins and the quantity of users that have logged in provides information about visitation frequency. This metric also provides insight into how frequently users visit to browse or check back on new branded materials. These ratios provide confirmation of whether DAM is working in the specific areas of relieving a resources drain by internal staff and increasing brand reach. If the number is low, action should be taken to promote the system's use internally. It may involve a decision to include more training, focus on other types of digital assets, or change the way a client's users are interacting with the system.

Digital Asset Consumption Ratio: Comparing the quantity of files ordered to the users that logged into the system provides information on the amount of data being consumed by each user over a specific time period.

This ratio speaks to the original reason for DAM implementation. As mentioned earlier, the reasons vary from company to company. If a company wants to use DAM as a mass distribution tool, they will want to watch this ratio to make sure it is being used properly. If the numbers are low, the DAM application is being treated more as an archive than a "heavy use" application and could be addressed with more internal promotion of DAM.

Additional interpretations of all of these DAM ratios will continue to be developed. But right now, the numbers can be compared (vs. the average & medians) against historical activity within the same system or against historical activity across the entire customer base of the SaaS provider or even against the use of DAM by the provider itself. A SaaS provider should easily be able to supply its natural expertise on how to read and what to do with these ratios. For example, a user may be interacting with the system five times a month and in that month, he or she downloaded approximately ten files and of those ten files, half are being repurposed a hundred times. There is significant value in knowing this and what it means.

Regularly sharing and discussing information like this, in and of itself, should be a SaaS best practice. The ability to do so is a wonderful example of the most important "S" in SaaS : the service "S". It is a major distinction between SaaS and installed DAM software. Installed providers don't have the same kind of control over as much data because systems are deployed at individual sites. An installed provider doesn't automatically set things up to retrieve all of this data from their deployment sites and pull it back in so it can be analyzed. Why? Because doing so can be a pretty significant and costly project. It is a lot of rigmarole that, in many cases gets skipped. Not so with SaaS.

Matthew Gonnering is CEO of Widen Enterprises, a Madison,WI-based SaaS provider of digital asset management technologies.

DAM vendors vs. marketing agencies -- understanding the difference

By Theresa Regli, Analyst, CMS Watch, 14-Sep-2009
Link to original article: http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1685-DAM-Vendors-Marketing-Agencies

I'm currently advising two Fortune Global 1000 companies on a vendor short list for their upcoming digital asset management procurement. Both of these companies are focused on centralizing their brand assets, streamlining the cost to create multi-lingual print advertising and catalogs, and addressing light needs around managing video and audio.

Both of these clients heard me speak about the DAM vendor marketplace at recent conferences in New York and London, and once I started working with them in an advisory capacity, the first question both asked was, "Some of the vendors on our list aren't in your research, or you didn't talk about them in your presentation. Why?"

The short lists these companies initially put together included both DAM vendors as well as digital marketing agencies. The former, as we point out in out Digital & Media Asset Management research, are primarily in the business of selling software. They make the majority of their revenues from software licenses and hone products over many years to accommodate common scenarios. Digital marketing agencies, on the other hand, are primarily in the business of providing marketing services. They sell services to create brands, build ad campaigns, manage brand relaunches, and many other marketing needs. Occasionally, they also build custom tools to help their clients manage brand assets. Sometimes they host a common platform for all their clients (often based on the technology of one of the vendors we evaluate), and customize for their various clients as needed.

Digital marketing agencies are often entrenched in organizations for years, and may have a loyal internal client advocate selling them into other parts of any large global company. With one of my current clients, this was the case - one person was vehemently upset that the team wouldn't keep his favorite digital marketing agency on the short list for a DAM procurement, even though they didn't even sell a DAM product.

Understanding a vendor's core competency should be your first step before considering them for any short list. Coupling this understanding with a clear picture of your own needs will allow you to have the right combination to pinpoint vendors. If your needs are very simple brand asset centralization, perhaps your favorite digital marketing agency might be appropriate to host a central repository for you. But for large global organizations -- with dozens of agencies in multiple locations, enterprise integration requirements, and generating varied, multi-lingual and multi-channel output -- you need a serious piece of enterprise software.

Your preferred marketing agency likely has experience with many vendor tools, or might specialize in a few. But you should be sure to pick the tool that fits your scenarios best, and not take shortcuts by simply going with the one your favorite art director has experience with (or the one his company sells). Digital marketing agencies are a very important piece of successful brand management, but be sure to put them into the part of the puzzle where they really and truly fit.

Canto Cumulus 8.0.2 Released

BERLIN, 10 SEP 2009 — Canto® today announced the release of Canto Cumulus 8.0.2, the second scheduled update to the Cumulus 8 product line, released last May.

Among almost 100 fixes and improvements offered by the update are compatibility with Microsoft Windows 7, due in October, and Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), released in August.

“Cumulus 8.0.2 was the perfect time for us to add support for Snow Leopard and Windows 7 in a single update,” says Canto CTO Thomas Schleu. “And now that Cumulus 8 has been tuned twice since its initial release, we can turn our main development focus to taking advantage of all the new capabilities the new architecture makes possible.”

Canto recommends the Cumulus 8.0.2 update to all customers.

Updates are available free of charge to all customers on active service agreements. Customers whose service agreements have expired should contact their Canto representative for upgrade information.

Find out more about Canto Cumulus 8.0.2: http://www.canto.com

Extensis Suitcase Fusion™2 Adds Apple® Snow Leopard Compatibility

PORTLAND, Oregon, September 9, 2009 – Extensis, a division of Celartem Inc., today released Suitcase Fusion™ 2 version 13.2, adding support for Mac OS X Snow Leopard to its single-user professional font management product.

This product update will also include:

• Adobe InDesign and Illustrator CS2 plug-ins powered by Font Sense™technology
• Support for TrueType Collection fonts, including the updated Snow Leopard system fonts

Current Suitcase Fusion 2 users on Mac OS X Leopard v 10.5 or higher will receive this maintenance update at no cost. All current users of Suitcase Fusion 1 are eligible for upgrade pricing. English, French, and German versions of Suitcase Fusion 2 version 13.2 are now available for download from the Extensis website at www.extensis.com/SuitcaseFusion2.

About Extensis

Extensis is a software developer that allows creative workgroups and professionals to streamline their workflow and securely manage their digital assets and fonts. Extensis’ award-winning client/server and desktop products include Universal Type Server forserver-based font management, Suitcase for single-user font management and the Portfolio suite for digital asset management. Extensis was founded in 1993 and is based in Portland, Oregon, and the United Kingdom. Extensis is a division of Celartem Inc., which is wholly owned by Celartem Technology Inc., (Hercules: 4330). For additional information, visit www.extensis.com or call 1-800-796-9798.

About Celartem

Celartem Technology Inc. develops and sells innovative technologies for storage, access and distribution of rich media content. Celartem is listed on the Osaka Securities Exchange, Hercules:4330. Established in 1996, Celartem is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and has a wholly owned subsidiary, Celartem Inc. with headquarters in Seattle.

Extensis, Suitcase Fusion, Universal Type Server and Portfolio are trademarks of Extensis, a division of Celartem, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.