Some observations about this forum

[AlanDunne]

Well, this forum has been up and running for a couple of months now. Traffic was slow at the beginning. Once the DAM Book was released and started getting some press, the momentum started to build. And in the last couple of days things have really picked up. Some high quality posters from other forums have joined the action here. Nice to see John Beardsworth making contibutions here as I have always followed his postings related to XMP, metadata, etc on other forums with great interest.

In the early days, most of the traffic was questions directed to Peter, and then he provided responses. If it had continued that way, then this forum would not have been sustainable. Any one person only has so much time to contribute. With the new members coming on board, and everyone's expertise growing, I am hoping that more and more people will be contributing answers and opinions, in addition to questions.

Certainly questions about the book and support related questions about the tools provided by DamUseful.com are best handled Peter.

Perhaps the one sided nature of this forum reflected the fact that, in general, people have a lot more questions than answers about DAM. It could just be that the DAM practices of the vast majority of photographers were really not that good. I know my system had a few holes, that I had been working to plug. But it was taking an awful long time working through the trials and errors. Let's hope that the DAM Book and this forum will elevate our collective knowledge of this important subject.

Cheers ... Alan

[peterkrogh]

Alan,
Thanks for all your participation, and thanks for your thoughts here.  Indeed, I hope that this becomes a place for other people to share and provide answers, as well as different perspectives.  I'll have to learn to hang back a little and let other people have a chance to talk...

A the moment, I'm intensely interested in whether the system is working for people, and so I'm constantly trying to address issues as they come up. It's a relief to see that there don't seem to be any big holes showing up...

Peter

[AlanDunne]

Peter,

just to be clear, I was certainly not suggesting that you scale back your contribution. After all, you did start this forum. It was more of an encouragement for others to contribute more than questions. We all benefit from the work you have done publishing your book and contributing to this forum, and others.

I will share some thoughts on the DAM system tha you have described in your book in a separate thread, although I may not get to it for a day or so. There are many aspects of it that match my own, although I only reached my own state of affairs in the past couple of months, so I haven't really addressed scalability of my approach.

Cheers ... Alan

[mikeseb]

I had some of the same thoughts as Alan: Peter, you must be the hardest working man in all Author-Dom! Given the level of interest displayed here, DAM must have been the same nightmare for everyone else it has been for me!

Even worse, I'm trying to overcome the mistakes I made in Mike's Dam System 1.0 to move to a more logical system for MDS 2.0 This time I'm looking before I leap, so I don't eventually have to keyword 8000 images a THIRD time!

Thanks for a great resource, Peter.

[peterkrogh]

No problem.
One tip here.  Get the new system up and running before attempting to tackle the old stuff.  I know it's hard to leave sitting there once you begin to see a better structure.  Getting the new system up, and making sure it works for you is going to be the best way to avoid having to recreate your work.
Peter

[AlanDunne]

Since my original comment more than a month ago, the nature of this forum has changed considerably. Not only is there a huge upswing in participation, but the quality of the postings has improved. Also lots of people beside Peter are contributing answers from their own experience, as well as questions.

As more and more of us put Peter's principles into practice, we are collectively improving and increasing our knowledge and awareness of DAM issues. It's like we are all beta testing Peter's book  

Cheers ... Alan

[peterkrogh]

And maybe alpha testing the next book, as new software comes available.

I would say that it was beta tested by a few folks earlier, Mike Stewart, Sam Kittner, Thad Watkins, and Rudy.
Peter