By Editor Morten B. Reitoft

Imagine that you operate a company where you use thousands of photos, videos, illustrations, etc. Imagine that some of these are licensed to you. Imagine that you use these assets on various websites, media, brochures, etc. Imagine that the licenses are regulated towards a specific use. Or imagine that some of the licenses are granted for a specific time.

Not difficult to imagine how difficult it can be for a company to manage all these licenses. Not difficult to understand what the implications are if you violate the license agreements that you have accepted. Not difficult to imagine that some "treasure hunters" could have an incentive to try to find companies who don't have their licenses managed.

To manage all above, and probably a whole lot more, you will need to have a database that manages all your digital assets from where it's used, to under what terms it's used, who own the rights, and under what license the assets can be used.

This is by major companies managed in a DAM system which is short for Digital Asset Management system. 

At the recent SPICYtalks 19, we got the chance to talk to Theresa Regli from Vox Veritas Digital a UK/US-based specialist in DAM. You can see the interview we did with her here. 

She has a vast knowledge about DAM's - maybe less from a technical perspective, to why you should consider having one. As mentioned, she spoke at SPICYtalks 19 in Berlin, and you can ask yourself why is this, in particular, relevant at a conference for CHILI Publisher users?

Well. If you believe that all above is complex to manage, then think about the complexity added when variable data are used in mass customization? Can you imagine how many files, and how many rights you'll need to have under control when companies within fast-moving-consumer-goods send our a Direct Mail, or a mail campaign to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people? All with variable content, images that match the specific customer, map data, catalogue data, etc. 

I don't know much about the technical aspects, but even without, I can easily imagine the number of images used for such a campaign and how important it is for a large corporate to manage this.

With an ever-increasing focus on mass-customization and personalized content, the need for DAM's is probably increasing a lot over the coming years. Even smaller companies might be interested in looking into this, and fortunately, there are open-source options in the market. As Regli explains, however: It's not the systems that make this happen, it's how the data is captured, stored, and used.

Theresa Regli also explains that more and more museums are using DAM solutions, and I believe it's a very wise choice.

Interesting is, and it was great to hear Theresa Regli at SPICYtalks.