The Swiss Project Management Journal
The Creative Project
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.
MARTHA GRAHAM
Key indexing of all the materials: it has
only very recently become possible to
index and search media filed with special built-in words.
Fund raising: such a project requires
consistent support from various sponsors. Moreover, the sponsors need to be
constantly sold on the value of the project as it may not bring a profit from a
monetary perspective.
Shifting priorities: prioritization in the
project can change over such a long
time due to various factors such as
sponsor’s needs, technology changes,
funding challenges etc.
Regulatory challenges: even if the artists are in agreement, the procedure
needs to go through legal processes in
multiple countries and multiple courts
before all regulatory requirements are
met.
Intellectual property rights: even
though MJF holds the IP rights of all the
media, artists can still challenge this.
How was the overall project management and did you use any specific project
management practice?
The project does not have any previous
example to draw on and was consequent-
Project Management Institute
SWITZERLAND Chapter
I
n 1987 Thierry Amsallem met Claude Nobs, who offered him an opportunity to
apply his IT know-how to the Montreux Jazz Festival by hiring him several months
before he had even finished his Master’s degree. Amsallem quickly developed
innovative software solutions for the Festival and for Warner Music International,
directed in Switzerland by Claude Nobs. Apple Computer Europe offered him all the
support to pioneer Metamedia music tools but also to act as an "evangelist" in the
music industry for particular products and technologies. As a partner and associate of
Claude Nobs at Montreux Sounds, Amsallem promoted the adoption of new
recording technologies as well as the acquisition, preservation, digitalization and
utilization of the Festival’s concert archives. Following the passing of Claude Nobs,
Amsallem created the Claude Nobs Foundation in order to continue the legacy of the
founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival. He has also worked to raise the profile of the
Festival archives through a digitalization project in partnership with Lausanne’s Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and the recognition (in June 2013) of the
archives as part of UNESCO’s “Memory of the World Register”.
ly both a greenfield and pioneer project.
We didn’t apply any specific project management methodologies to the project.
The main approach in the project was to
stay flexible and tuned to the newest
approaches emerging in big data, database, and storage technologies. With this
approach, and taking the particular size of
the dataset into consideration, the project was able to benefit from the timely
appearance of new products such as the
brand new object-storage technology
from Amplidata in 2011, or the Active
Archive System, a high-capacity objectstorage solution launched in 2015 by
HGST.
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What are the key success factors of the
project?
The main key success factor is the founder’s passion for music. The other key success factors include:
Brands coming together - EPFL and
Montreux Jazz Festival
Fundraising and sponsor support
Latest technology in Hard Drive systems
EPFL’s innovation initiative and Metamedia Center.
2016 Edition