DAM Guru and the Plight of CMS Industry Organizations

The DAM Guru program has changed ownership.

It was started at Picture Park by David Diamond. When he left to go back on tour with Berlin (not even kidding – that’s him on the left), the program went under new management. Apparently, Picture Park still owned it, but it was managed by Ralph Windsor at Daydream, who finally acquired it outright.

I’ve been a member of DAM Gurus for a few years (despite admittedly not specializing in DAM). It’s a professional organization which seems to have an emphasis on job sharing and hiring.

There’s a dearth of professional organizations in the technical CMS space. I was a board member of Content Management Professionals, and I was in “office” when we shut the program down. CM Pros started before the content strategy identity took off, and it was left straddling a huge gap when that segment forged its own path. Without content strategy, many people didn’t understand what was left.

Here’s the 2014 “ceasing operations” notice for CM Pros. It has a list of the founders, which is a rogue’s gallery of the giants of this industry’s early years.

I’d love to see a CMS Gurus exist at some point.