Here’s the Digital Asset Management articles from March which had a lasting impression on me – picked from the constant stream of blog posts you can see float by on Planet DAM. For more curated DAM links, see the weekly Digital Asset Management.com Links.

I highly recommend reading Ralph Windsor’s article Finding signs of life in DAM: Diagnosing what has gone wrong, along with the comments. Metadata entry, finding assets, and interoperability are at the heart of DAM, yet our systems aren’t exactly great at those. (Ralph also criticizes the lack of innovation in DAM in an IntelligenceBank-triggered “rant”.)

Combining DAM with a cross-silo knowledge graph is one of my pet topics (see Not just metadata). That’s why I love David Lavenda’s thoughts on Vannevar Bush’s 1945 “Memex” vision, Laurence Hart’s motto Information First, and IO Integration on the Semantic Network.

The DAM News “Improving DAM in 2017” series continues:

• The Digital Asset Transaction Management System – a time machine for digital assets by Ralph Windsor, with an introductory blog post Building time machines for digital assets
• Improving DAM interoperability in 2017 by Margaret Warren and Tim Strehle (full disclosure: that’s me), introduced by Ralph Windsor’s DAM interoperability in 2017 – where do we go from here?

There’s even more articles about DAM innovation and trends. First, from vendors: MediaValet writes about 5 evolutionary stages of DAM for marketing, Neil Monahan (Brandworkz) about the DAM evolution. Third Light has the new tick list for DAM, and Meg Prater (Brandfolder) presents a State of DAM Report. Then, the analysts: Jarrod Gingras (Real Story Group) with a webinar recording of Six DAM trends to watch, and Nick Barber’s (Forrester) slides on Trends disrupting the DAM market.

AI remains a hot topic: Seth Early and Tobias Goebel write about Successful AI-driven search, Dom Nicastro about Adobe Sensei's AI framework. Deanna Ballew (Widen) says Machine learning and AI aren’t ready for primetime.

On video, Alan Porter (OpenText): Time-based digital assets are now mission critical, and Jason Lambert (Sony Pictures): Insights on using time-based metadata.

Techies should enjoy David Diamond interviewing Urs Brogle on Picturepark’s New tech for a new generation of content management, and Nuxeo’s experiments with Virtual Reality in DAM and Amazon Alexa for DAM search.

Deb Fanslow’s DAM follows these enduring truths and Mark Leslie’s What is the Digital Supply Chain? remind us that DAM is much more than just software.

For commentary on Aprimo acquiring ADAM Software, see Kashyap Kompella (Real Story Group), Nick Barber (Forrester), Łukasz Szostak and Ralph Windsor.

The IPTC announces its 2017 Photo Metadata Conference in Berlin, Northplains introduces NorthplainsNEXT, Libris partners with FotoBridge to help digitize photo archives, and Brooke Emley (Widen) asks: Is it time for some digital asset management clean up?

In the “DAM people” section, David Diamond brings us sad news: DAM Guru Program says goodbye to Linda Rouse. Tracy Wolfe is taking a break from her monthly “10 Things” series. Widen’s Matthew Gonnering gives a talk on empathy in business, while MediaValet celebrates interns and women.

Listen to DAM practitioners Debra Risner (Hallmark), Jason Gould (L.L. Bean), Anthony Marshall (Kraft Heinz), Lara Simmons (Aston Martin) and Nick Felder (Coca-Cola).

I like the way Rob Pelmas credits his customers for the new features they added: What a long strange trip it's been. Xinet development at NAPC.

Cool DAM case studies: The White House Historical Association. The United Soccer League. New Balance. Matrix Solutions. The Colorado Rockies.

Interesting DAM screenshots / screencasts: What’s new in Canto Flight LHR. We get to look at asset-level analytics in Widen, and the new Brandfolder Insights. There’s info on the Salesforce integration in Widen and Merlin, a webinar on DALIM ES, and the ES Creative Cloud connector.

See you again in May!