• How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
• Why does an information and media organization use a DAM?
• What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Abby DeMillo. Abby,
how are you?
Abby DeMillo: [0:10] I’m fine. How are you doing today?
Henrik: [0:12] Good. Abby, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Abby: [0:17] At the McGraw Hill companies, we view Digital Asset Management
as one component of what we call the digital supply chain. We’re not looking at
Digital Asset Management purely as an archival tool or as a brand management
tool. We’re looking at it as really a component of our content delivery ecosystem
so to speak. [0:48] It’s very much integrated in with our Content Management
Systems, our delivery platforms, our enrichment tools, so on and so forth. It is a
key component, but we look at it as a component of that whole chain.
Henrik: [1:03] Great. Just to reiterate, why does an information and media organization
use a DAM?
Abby: [1:10] We use it to help deliver content. Digital Asset Management
through the years has grown and matured, and the technology has matured as
well, to really offer more than just the storage and delivery out of rich media
assets. [1:30] It still does that. It still does that very, very well. I highly recommend
any company that has branding, marketing assets, rich media assets,
or any object related content to really invest in a repository, invest in a Digital
Asset Management. That is the best way to keep track of your master assets.
[1:54] B to B business are using it really in terms of delivering out and reusing
those components. You can supply a B-to-B site and web channel delivery of
content without a Digital Asset Management. It is completely possible to do
that, but you’ll find that you’ll be wasting a lot of infrastructure.
[2:20] Your technology footprint will be greater, because you will not have control
of your parent and child assets. The value to B-to-B business is to really keep…
you’ve heard of master data management. There’s not an acronym for this but
it’s really keeping track of your master rich media assets and delivering versions
of those assets.
[2:45] Rather than keeping the same asset in 100 different places, you keep it in
one place and deliver out renderings of that same asset. It saves a lot of money.
It saves in operations. It saves in human processes, business processes. That’s
why B to B businesses are very interested still in this technology.
Henrik: [3:08] It makes a lot of sense.
Abby: [3:09] It sure does.
Henrik: [3:10] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals or
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Abby: [3:15] For people aspiring to become DAM professionals, you can go to
school in library sciences. You can go to school and get your degrees in taxonomies
and all of these great things today. Don’t think of it as a siloed discipline.
[3:32] You can’t really today think of Digital Asset Management without thinking
of the related fields and the related technologies that help deliver content
including enrichment, which we haven’t really touched on. In other words, creating
metadata structures, and taxonomy structures that deliver that content and
make it reusable in a number of different systems, delivery platforms, and the
ability to transform those assets into a number of different channels.
[4:03] Be able to, if you’re holding video assets, because Digital Asset
Management today you can hold video assets or flash assets. Are you planning
on transcoding those internally and delivering them out? Or are you planning on
really just holding the end product in your depository?
[4:21] No matter where you work those are the types of questions that will be
asked of you. If you are aspiring to become a Digital Asset Management professional,
don’t think of it truly as an archival tool. Think of it really part of that
whole ecosystem. You really have to have an understanding, at least at a high
level, of how those other systems play into this.
Henrik: [4:46] Great. Thank you, Abby.
Abby: [4:48] You’re welcome.
Henrik: [4:50] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.