Digital Asset Management (DAM) is a set of practices for streamlining the creation and distribution of digital files, harnessing the value of reusable media and incorporating an array of specialized databases and workflow automation tools. DAM is not just a technology, but a strategic vision and an enabling tool for new efficiencies and reduced cycle times.

Early adopters of DAM were primarily in the print, publishing and rich media industries, but the majority of recent new users have been from the Enterprise Publishing and Brand Management space. Many leading vendors have recently been targeting an emerging market in Government and public sector organisations.

Making DAM Work
Implementing DAM can be a long and complex process (requirements planning, building a business case, securing funding, selecting technology, deployment, governance, change management and measuring ROI), and many projects fail because of mistakes in the actual deployment process. This is where Henry Stewart Conferences' DAM Symposium (www.DAMusers.com) can help.

The DAM Symposium is a forum for networking and for the exchange of best practice among DAM project leaders. The idea is to bring together an audience of peers to discuss common obstacles and how they are overcome. The focus of presentations is on real-life case studies and actionable advice.

The 7th DAM Symposium will take place at the Radisson Portman Hotel, London W1 on June 29th and 30th. The event operates a two-tiered pricing policy, with a 50% discount on conference registrations for all end users of DAM, meaning the audience is heavily biased towards Project Leaders.

The speakers are the people responsible for implementing DAM within their organisation, and this year's all-star cast of over 60 presenters includes representatives from Coca-Cola Enterprises, Boeing, National Magazine Company, Turner Broadcasting, ICI Paints, Reed Elsevier, Express Newspapers, BBC, Ogilvy and Getty Images.

The industry's leading analysts and commentators, and all the leading vendors, are thrown into the mix to create an indispensable guide to DAM, whether you're starting out with DAM, or moving to second or third generation systems.

Michael Moon of GISTICS, the world's foremost expert on DAM, serves as conference chairman and advises the organisers on the structure and content of the programme. Henry Stewart Conferences, an independent conference company based in London, organises and hosts the DAM Symposium worldwide. The event also includes a private exhibit featuring live demos of all the systems that are typically shortlisted in vendor selection. At time of press, exhibitors at DAM London '04 included Gold Sponsors Adobe and Quark, plus Artesia Technologies, Blue Order, Documentum, eMotion, Extensis, IBM, Picdar, Reaction Group and Sony Europe.

The evolution of the market
When the DAM Symposium started out in 2001, attendees were the real pioneers of what was an emerging market. The industry, and the event, have achieved a 'critical mass' of users in the last 12 months or so, and audience and exhibitor numbers are rising fast.

Osmotherly recently returned from the New York event; once again it was sold out, with attendee numbers up from 330 at last year's New York event to over 440 this year. The number of exhibitors also rose, from 17 to 25. The London event is of a slightly more modest scale, with perhaps 250 to 300 attendees expected, but is the fastest growing event in the calendar.

It will be interesting to see whether the audience matured to a similar extent as it did in New York, where audience surveys showed that the number of attendees in the early stages of DAM deployment fell from 43% of the total to 28%, while the number of delegates describing DAM as central to the way we run our business rose from 26% to 38%. Surveys also showed that delegates intended to buy DAM systems sooner - while previously 54% attendees said they'd be buying systems in 12 or more months' time, now that figure is down to 44%, with a corresponding increase of 8% in the number of delegates intending to buy in the next six months.

While previewing some of the companies taking part in the London Henry Stewart DAM Symposium, PMM's Susan Fakes wrote of Picdar:
Picdar is the UK market leader in scaleable, digital asset management and text/image workflow systems for organisations where print and web publishing are core business functions. Typically these are organisations like newspaper, book, magazine and catalogue publishers, corporate marketing departments and picture agencies. Picdar's solutions help companies of any size to benefit from the effective management, re-use and syndication of digital media. With Picdar's systems, internal publishing processes and resources work faster and with more control. In addition to achieving significant reductions in time spent searching for files, Picdar's systems allow users to re-use digital assets for original and new purposes.