I spent Wednesday 1st July at the Henry Stewart DAM Conference in London.

In my slot I talked about, "Tagging Images for Findability - Making Your DAM System Work for You."  I used my 30 minutes to raise the issue of organising images using metadata and controlled vocabulary to connect the images to the people who want to use them.  I spent a little time looking at the ways to use text to categorise images and the advantages and disadvantages that brings.  I devoted a lot of the presentation to raising issues to watch out for when tagging images, in particular specificity and focus in image depictions, abstract concepts and image 'aboutness' and the deceptive simplicity of visually simple images.

A far braver presentation than mine was given by Madi Solomon. Madi ditched the PowerPoint presentation to facilitate a refreshing debate on metadata.  Questions from the floor came thick and fast.  Madi did a great job of presenting 'on the edge' and drew out the experiences of many of the attendees and the challenges they were facing.

Also of note at the conference was a very informative presentation from Theresa Regli on 'Evaluating and Selecting Technologies' and a stimulating piece from Mark Davey on the old chestnut of ROI and Digital Asset Management Systems.  Mark took a pretty dry subject and a slot directly after a good lunch and succeeded brilliantly in making it entertaining, informative and practical. Take a look at his excellent presentation Digital Asset Management ROI - the basics. I think this is a key resource for anyone interested in return on investment in the DAM space and it's fun to watch too.

I had a great day at DAM London and I hope my fellow delegates found the presentations as helpful and enlightening as I did.

Ian