3 Takeaways from the Henry Stewart DAM LA Conference

Last week our team had the great opportunity to travel to Los Angeles for Henry Stewart’s Digital Asset Management (DAM) conference. We love connecting with other people in the DAM community, learning how others achieve success, and exploring the latest advancements in asset management. Henry Stewart’s events allow our team to do all this and more and be part of an exciting network of DAM professionals who support each other on their DAM journeys. 

Every time we have the chance to engage with this network and seize the rare opportunity to connect in person with our partners, clients, and industry experts, we leave with many new ideas for better supporting those we work with. In this article, we’ll outline the key insights and most impactful takeaways from the Henry Stewart DAM Los Angeles conference. 

For more insights, take a look at the rest of our blog, our services, or contact us today!

1. How to Determine When It’s the Right Time to Implement AI in your DAM Program

These days, if you attend just about any industry conference you’ll hear the term “artificial intelligence.” Apart from being a buzzword and marketing tactic, AI is a powerful tool that's increasingly making a significant impact on organizations using a dedicated DAM platform. This was an important discussion point at many panels, dinners, and conversations at the Henry Stewart DAM LA conference. 

If you’d like to learn more about Stacks’ thoughts on how AI and DAM intersect at a high level, check out the blog below!

Beyond the features, efficiencies, and exciting developments of AI in the world of DAM, one question was asked during almost every AI discussion: “When is the right time to implement AI in your DAM program?”

AI = Fire

As the old saying goes, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. This maxim certainly applies to AI in DAM. After many discussions with experts, platform product owners, and DAM managers building and growing their own programs, the consensus seemed to be that AI is like fire: While it’s useful, don’t let anyone below a certain age or experience level play with it. 

For young DAM programs just finding their legs and moving through the complexities of onboarding and user adoption, AI features often represent more noise than signal, especially for groups with users who lack previous DAM experience. Many experts suggested that automation tools were a better option at the beginning of a DAM journey than AI tools. 

Automation vs. AI

One great example of a useful automation is the ability of your DAM platform to recognize your file naming conventions and automatically map information from the file name into specific metadata fields. This feature doesn’t leverage machine learning, but it’s certainly helpful and allows your team to create foundational metadata in a structured way without any manual tagging. 

For DAM programs in the early phases of development, automations like this often involve less planning and oversight than AI tools and still make a significant impact. Once your DAM program is up and running and you’ve established buy-in from your user base, AI tools become more feasible and less risky. 

To learn more about how AI and DAM intersect and how you may be able to implement automations without risking user experience, contact Stacks today. We’d love to help!

2. The Future of “DAM”

If you’re reading this, you may have some familiarity with digital asset management. In that case, you know a DAM program consists of people, processes, and platforms working together to ensure an organization’s valuable digital content is delivered to the right people at the right time in a secure way. To learn more about what digital asset management is at a high level, check out our Beginner’s Guide to Digital Asset Management below!

DAM isn’t the only industry focused on the management of digital assets, however. If you’re confused by that statement, you aren’t alone. With new types of digital content being created regularly along with new channels to distribute that content through, the DAM industry is increasingly intertwined with other related industries that overlap significantly with it. 

DAM’s Extended Family

The most common of these sibling industries are Media Asset Management (MAM) and Product Information Management (PIM). MAM is concerned with the management of video, audio, and 3D content. As you might expect based on their acronyms, there's a lot of overlap between DAM and MAM, with many platforms serving both use cases. 

PIM, on the other hand, is focused on the organization, security, and distribution of valuable information related to a brand’s products and services, such as pricing, related content, specifications, colors, and more.  Just as with MAM, many DAM platforms have recognized the overlap between these fields and expanded their capabilities to serve both DAM and PIM user groups and workflows. 

Simplifying Solutions and Rebranding DAM

The blurring of the lines between DAM, MAM, and PIM by technology providers reflects the increasing complexity of managing digital assets. It also highlights the challenges faced by those responsible for managing both content and its associated information. Rather than distinguishing between DAM, MAM, PIM, and others, providers in the asset management field should focus on simplifying discussions, recommendations, and service offerings. This approach will better serve teams and users who lack the time to become experts in several distinct areas. 

Additionally, expanding the definition and scope of DAM without increasing its complexity could mitigate the problems many DAM owners have in communicating value to leadership. Many business leaders don’t fully grasp the importance of DAM or what it encompasses. With the blurring of content management lines and the resulting confusion, an industry “rebrand” seems to be on the horizon. 

Stacks is dedicated to making DAM, and by extension all asset management, easy and approachable. Our team will continue to grow our expertise and service offerings without adding complexity and confusion regarding the separation between DAM, MAM, and other fields. If you’d like to learn more about the future of the asset management field, how it applies to your organization, or how to communicate the value of DAM to leadership, don’t hesitate to contact us today!