You just can’t shut me up.

I’ve always enjoyed sharing my knowledge and experiences to help others find their own paths and solutions. Over the years, I’ve spoken to audiences big and small, and the Q & A session at the end never ceases to delight me. Here are a few such occasions:

In November 2023, I spoke about the Language Metadata Table as part of the Taxonomy Talk series, introducing new concepts and resources to the taxonomy community. Speaking with fellow metadata nerds is always a special kind of joy. I can get into the details and really geek out.

I spoke at the DAM New York conference, presented by Henry Stewart Events in September 2022 – my first in-person conference after the pandemic. I presented some thoughts about managing video content in a cloud-based DAM. My talk was drawn from both what I’ve experienced across my career and what MediaValet can do, both with integrations and out of the box. Click here to view the event description.

In March 2021, I spoke as Co-Chair of the Language Metadata Table, a language code standard owned by MESA, the Media and Entertainment Services Alliance, at the Smart Content Summit. It was my first presentation for the LMT, and I had a blast. I gave an overview of the LMT’s mission, history, and benefits. One of our SMPTE partners gave an update on our transition to being housed under SMPTE for technical support.

In April 2019, I spoke on a panel at the Society of California Archivists 2019 Annual General Meeting. Our panel, Entertainment Born Digital Archives: Challenges and Limitations, focused on the issues we face preserving born-digital assets and providing access to a global user base. I spoke with three other archivists and librarians who manage collections for Hollywood studios. My presentation was based in my particular role – governing cross-platform metadata and working with our engineering team to help our users make the most of it. A brief intro is available here.

In May of 2016 I spoke on a panel at one of the largest Digital Asset Management conferences in the world, DAM NY: The Art & Practice of Managing Digital Media. My panel, Decoupling of Digital Content: A Case Study on Collaboration, focused on my work as a metadata specialist with Allied Vaughn. Allied Vaughn had been working with two other consulting companies to decouple a client from their agencies by creating a unified DAM. I spoke about the challenges of migrating assets from multiple systems into a unified taxonomy and creating a metadata schema that makes sense to everyone, from packaging to marketing. It was a packed house.

My first presentation in a conference setting was my Lightning Talk presentation for QuasiCon 2014. It’s called ‘ Moving Beyond Preservation Week: Digital Preservation Workshops in Public Libraries’ and it was the first iteration of an idea I worked on for over a year – a public library partners with local cultural heritage institutions to teach the community about digital preservation.

This is me at my first big conference, the Michigan Library Association’s annual affair in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I presented a poster of my digital preservation workshop idea. The librarians who took interest had the best questions, and their perspectives have helped me shape my idea further. I took this picture for my mom. It’s on her fridge!

Since there was so much interest from the library side in my partnership idea, I presented it to the preservation community at the Mid Michigan Digital Practitioners’ meeting on March 27, 2015. Their questions and suggestions helped immensely.

I moved on to my next big idea, which I presented at UMSI 2015 ExpoSItion On March 30, 2015. I showcased my semester project for a course on research methods. I developed a research proposal studying libraries in prisons. The goal is to analyze rates of recidivism in various counties in Michigan in comparison to the presence of a general collections library staffed by an ALA-accredited librarian. Since the initial presentation, the American Library Journal expressed interest in the study as well as a handful of researchers. It’s my hope that someone can pick up where I left off and get funding to find out more about librarian impact on recidivism. Please contact me if you are interested.