How to look after and manage your digital footprint and archive with ami Creates.

How to look after your digital footprint has only become a consideration in the last decade or so. This is how we do it at ami Creates.

These days, it is impossible to wander through life without leaving a digital footprint. From your weekly supermarket click and collect to settling down to enjoy the latest box set; companies can learn a lot about your interests and aspirations from what you search online.

At ami Creates we do digital diligently. Offering a curation service for the tens of thousands of photographs and videos that people amass over their lifetime; we edit, digitise and keyword loved images to create a searchable archive that can be accessed through our bespoke and intuitive app.

“We handle our clients’ digital footprint with discretion,” says ami Creates founder Adrian Myers. “Most people are concerned about privacy, not necessarily because they are recognisable but because all of us have elements of our lives that are just for us. Our clients’ initial concerns often focus on the fact that they are sending pictures of themselves, their family, friends and loved ones to a third party.”

When it comes to curating your digital legacy, your digital footprint couldn’t be in safer hands. Adrian explains why…

How to understand your digital footprint

Your digital footprint is the information that exists about you on the internet as a result of your online activity. There are two types: a passive footprint is captured by cookies which store your web-browsing activity while an active footprint is formed when you deliberately give information online – by entering a password into a website, for example, or posting on social media. The latter is the biggest consideration for ami Creates as our clients are actively sharing their pictures and videos with us.

How to build trust

We care deeply about our clients’ data – many send us content from their phones on a daily basis – which is why we have a number of robust systems and checks in place to make sure their information is always kept safe. Before we have access to someone’s images we meet them for a Discovery Day. It is a chance for them to learn about us so that we can start to cultivate a trusting relationship, which is vital if they are to share their lives, photographs and family’s legacy with us into the future.

How to maintain trust

A photograph holds a lot of valuable information: where you are, what you’re wearing and doing… One of the skills of our curators is to pick up on these clues to tag each image so it is as searchable as possible within the app. However, that same information can be incredibly useful commercially, which is why we never share or monetise the data we collect in any way – so our clients won’t get targeted adverts, for example. We are mindful that we hold a great deal of personal data, and we understand the importance of making sure our practices are sensitive, secure and robust.

How to start as we mean to go on

We trust our people. Everyone who works for us signs a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), as do our suppliers – all of whom have worked with us for more than a decade. We spend a great deal of time educating and training our people to make sure security is paramount. Individual projects are not discussed outside of each dedicated team, for example, while a member of the team is always present during the printing of the bespoke high-end photography books we produce for our clients to ensure any test pages are destroyed.

How to focus on digital security

Technology is ever evolving, so it is important we keep checking our systems to make sure they are robust. A ‘penetration test’ is carried out on all aspects of ami Creates at least once a year as well as after any major rebuild of the app. This basically involves an external company trying to hack into our systems – not just through the app but through the website, servers and other digital aspects of the business. This penetration test is not a legal requirement but it is good business practice, and it is important for our clients to know that our systems are robust, secure and regularly tested.

How to handle things properly

When clients give us hard copies of photographs from their family’s history to digitise for the app, our team of professional archivists are acutely aware of the level of trust involved in handing over these priceless one-offs. We never take for granted the trust that our clients place in us, which is why we employ strict systems to ensure photographs go back to the client in the same way they reach us. All images are stored in watertight boxes, where they stay until we need to interact with them. When we do start working with a client’s images, everything is handled wearing gloves because over time, the acid from just one fingerprint can burn into a negative. Everything is laid out onto tables, sorted by year, labelled and returned to the watertight boxes until it is time for them to be scanned.

How to streamline your memories

We are living in a unique era between a partly analogue and purely digital world. ami Creates bridges the gap between the two. People have shoeboxes full of old photographs in the attic, for example, that they are at risk of forgetting about. We take these analogue memories and create a meaningful digital narrative. Part of our responsibility is to carefully manage a client’s digital footprint by creating only what we need – by not duplicating any images, for example – so we streamline the curation process down to a client’s most valuable memories. In essence, we take the analogue and carefully and conscientiously make a digital footprint.

Discover more about our bespoke creation services at www.ami-creates.com