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Another DAM Podcast interview with Rob Le Quesne on Digital Asset Management

Rob Le Quesne discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Can you tell us about the Seamless End-to-End Experience you designed using Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to connect the physical and digital world together?
  • What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Rob Le Quesne. Rob,
how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Rob Le Quesne: [0:10] I have been working in digital media over the last 15
years. From 2000 to 2010, I had my own company in Milan, Italy called The Big
Space with my business partner, Dick Lockhart. We specialized in designing digital
installations and smart fixtures for predominately retail clients. That involved
working with Levi Strauss in Mexico City, Polo Ralph Lauren in New York, and a
number of other key European fashion retail brands. [0:47] That happened, I’d
say, quite organically. We didn’t have a plan to really be focusing on this area
when we started the company, but we ended up gravitating more and more
toward solutions that involved the use of radio frequency identification, RFID
technology.
[1:05] One of the key projects that we produced was for Polo Ralph Lauren in
Manhattan, New York. This was thanks to an introduction that we had to InfoSys,
the IT and consulting firm based out of India, who we met at the National Retail
Fair in New York in January 2007.
[1:31] They already had a working relationship with Polo Ralph Lauren, providing
them with a lot of their backend logistics. They were in initial conversations with
Polo Ralph Lauren to create a new digital archive system, in order to provide
Polo’s internal designers with a means of accessing the whole back catalogue of
Polo Ralph Lauren fashion designs to use as inspiration when designing a new
season collection.
Henrik: [2:02] Can you tell us about the seamless end-to-end experience you
designed using Digital Asset Management, or DAM, and Radio Frequency
Identification, or RFID, to connect the physical and digital world together?
Rob: [2:14] We were brought in to design the user experience for this new
digital archive. I guess from our point of view, the particularly interesting opportunity
we had with this project was to not only consider the user experience
that Polo’s designers would be having on a screen to access this digital archive
system, but they were also interested in creating a corresponding physical
archive of all their back catalogue of products that could then link to the digital
archive. [2:53] In other words, designers at Polo Ralph Lauren, the idea was that
they would be able to view the whole digital archive from their computer at their
desk, and then book products that they could then walk over to the other side
of the world in Manhattan and actually pick up the product they’ve seen on their
screen, and check it out from the physical archive space at Polo.
[3:17] It was a really great example of the online experience and the offline, the
physical experience, coming together. Thanks to the radio frequency identification
technology that we were going to be using to physically tag their whole
back catalogue of products. Then connect that tagging system into the virtual,
the Digital Asset Management System that the designers would be accessing
from their desks.
Rob: [3:44] How were we going to do this? There were some key players involved.
There was The Big Space, which was my company, that was really responsible
for the user experience, the front end design. Both of the Digital
Asset Management system, but also designing the physical experience of how
designers, once they were in the physical archive space, how they would then
actually check out a physical product, and check it in. Just like at a library, when
you check out a book, and then return it.
[4:19] We also came up with some other ideas of how they could best utilize
this RFID technology in the physical archive space to find out more information
about each product in the archive space. We came up with a smart surface
and a smart hanger, so you could just hang up a product in the space.
Then on a plasma screen you would access information from the Digital Asset
Management System based on that particular product.
[4:49] Coming up with these seamless experiences to marry all the metadata that
had been tagged to every product, and being able to access all that data when
you actually had the physical product in your hands, that was what it was about.
That was what The Big Space, my company, was responsible for.
[5:09] Alongside us we had Infosys, the IT consulting company, who were responsible
for delivering the whole backend, the database system that the
front end would be connecting to. They had picked a particular Digital Asset
Management software called Artesia, that they were using as the UI for holding
all the content that was being accessed from the backend system. There was
a lot of conversation whether we would build the front end user experience in
either AJAX, in dynamic HTML, or in a Flex based environment.
[5:58] In the end, we opted for Flex. We felt it would give us more freedom in
creating a more dynamic user experience. Being able to play more with faster
transitions and a richer user experience. We decided, with InfoSys and Polo
Ralph Lauren, to design the front end experience in Flex that would then bolt
onto the Artesia Digital Asset Management software. The whole backend
system and the integration of our Flex based front end with Artesia was then
handled by InfoSys, offshore in India.
Rob: [6:40] In the meantime, in Manhattan, New York, we found local suppliers
to build the smart fixtures. What I mean by that are these custom pieces of furniture
that would house the RFID technology that was provided by a company
owned by Motorola, called Symbol Technologies. The smart fixtures housed,
essentially, RFID, Radio Frequency Identification, readers and antennas. Which
would then enable the people in the physical space to just lay down a piece of
clothing on a smart surface.
[7:24] Each piece of clothing had an RFID tag sewn into each product that enabled
the clothing to be washed, with no detrimental effect to the RFID tags.
These tags enable these products to just be thrown onto the smart surface.
Automatically, it’s read by the antenna that’s housed within the smart piece of
furniture. Obviously, massive benefits over the traditional bar code. Because no
longer are people actually having to line up the bar code with an optical scanner
device.
[8:06] Instead, we’re using radio waves to communicate the unique product
number of each product to a database. Thanks to the antenna that’s housed
within the piece of MDF furniture. So you could then throw onto this surface 20
or more products, all in a heap, and they would all be individually read. Thanks
to the RFID tags sewn into each garment. At the beginning of this project, from
my point of view as a designer, the most important thing was to actually understand
how the design process at Polo Ralph Lauren currently worked. How a
Polo Ralph Lauren designer proceeded to work in the real world.
Rob: [8:57] How we could optimize and improve their experience through
technology and through this Digital Asset Management System. It was interesting
getting inside Polo and understanding the reality of the design process
there. Because they were relying on a very non-technological process at that
point. The design process they currently had was that they would initially look
for inspiration. How they would do that would be looking at their back catalog
of products, looking in magazines, going to old thrift stores, looking for vintage
garments.
[9:33] Initially, they would just be looking for a theme to tie their inspiration together.
Let’s say it was Wimbledon tennis in the 1930s. They would then create
a physical wall, a physical collage of inspiration imagery, involving old photos,
magazine articles, old garments. They’d create this physical wall of inspiration,
which would then be used to brief the product designers to go away and come
up with designs that reflected this particular inspirational theme. What we
wanted to do, using technology, was to replicate that physical wall of inspiration
and to help the designers in their quest for both inspiration, and being able to
look at the whole back catalog of products. To do that, we created a virtual wall
of inspiration.
Rob: [10:36] Through the interface that we designed for the Artesia Digital
Asset Management System, we enabled designers to pick particular items that
interested them. They could do this through a number of entry points into
the database. One would be by categories. You had, for instance, a different
season, summer, winter or through male, female. But also through inspirational
themes. Then you could create your own virtual pin board, a cross between
a pin board and a mood board, of content you found in the Digital Asset
Management System.
[11:23] Our idea was to play with the space and the spatial confines of the interface.
The idea was that, in the same way that previously they would have that
initial, key inspirational theme like Wimbledon in the 1930s. Our idea was that
you’d be able to have your key inspirational image in the center of the screen.
Then you could position your different images that you’d found in the database
around that central image.
[12:01] The further from the image you dragged the images, the smaller they’d
become. So the idea was to create this visual mood board on the screen that
you could then take with you to the physical space, and start finding the real
garments that corresponded to that mood board. That mood board really represented
your wish list of garments, which you can then book. You could send
a message to the archive manager in the physical archive, walk over the road to
the physical archive, and collect those garments.
[12:39] Check them out of the physical space. To do that, we created a check-in,
checkout table which, essentially, was a custom piece of furniture that housed
an RFID antenna and reader and screen, embedded within the surface of the
table. You would lay down on the table your pile of garments that you wanted
to check out. They would then automatically be displayed as a list view on
the table. Then you’d have your own ID card that you would swipe on the
side of the table, where there would be a reader for your ID card, identifying
who you are.
Rob: [13:26] Confirm that you want to check out those garments, and then off
you go. As I said before, there was an additional smart fixture in the physical
space that enabled you to just find out more, if you just browsed in the physical
space. Being able to put any garment on this smart hanger that had a plasma
screen next to it, to find out more about the details of that garment. When it
was designed. What the inspiration for that garment was and so on.
[13:54] That, in a nutshell, was the work that we did for Polo Ralph Lauren. Just
looking at it in hindsight, the key success factor for the project was having an
archive manager at Polo Ralph Lauren who really owned the project. It was her
baby. It was thanks to her that we managed to create that end-to-end solution.
It’s very interesting, RFID. It’s been around now for a fair amount of time.
People have been talking about it within the customer facing retail space for the
last 10 years.
[14:36] What we’re seeing now, obviously, is the telephone companies really
starting to embrace RFID as a means to communicate between your phone and
the real world. We’re seeing this a lot now, in terms of digital wallets, and the
ability to use your phone as a way to pay for stuff in shops, using NFC technology
in the phone. My personal interest now is just looking at ways of exploring
new solutions using NFC and RFID technology, for people within both retail
space and day-to-day lifestyle services.
Henrik: [15:22] That’s so fascinating. There will be a link to the article in the
podcast notes, on AnotherDAMpodcast.com. Lastly, what advice would you
like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM
professionals?
Rob: [15:32] What it really taught me was the need to be able to always check
your solution, compared to people’s familiar working methods in the real
world. [15:44] Finding ways to always ensure that the solutions you’re providing,
through Digital Asset Management, is actually complementing and improving
the methods that people already are familiar with in the real world. To ensure
that they don’t only use it once, but continue using it, so it’s sticky.
[16:05] Instead of just, “Wow, that’s great.” But then they only use it once, and
don’t use it anymore. It’s about maintaining people’s loyalty to these services.
Henrik: [16:14] I couldn’t say that better if I tried. Thank you so much, Rob.
For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com.

Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments or questions,
please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com.
Thanks again.

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Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic, Spotify, TuneIn, and wherever you find podcasts.

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Christy King on Digital Asset Management

Christy King discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does an organization involved with mixed martial arts use Digital Asset Management?
  • What advice would you like to share with 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 Christy King. Christy,
how are you?
Christy: [0:10] Very good.
Henrik: [0:12] Christy, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Christy: [0:14] I am the newly appointed Vice President of technology research
and development for Zuffa, which is the parent company of the Ultimate
Fighting Championships and several other MMA brands, mixed martial arts
brands. We started down the Digital Asset Management path by trying to
organize a method to distribute video to nontraditional resources. We have a
very young audience, tends to be males, 18 to 34. [0:46] Very much closer to the
18 range. These guys all have every gadget, new fancy, cool thing that hits the
market sooner than almost everybody else, so we really tried hard, very early on,
to be able to distribute to all of those devices, and many of those outlets did
not have traditional ways to take in video content, meaning take…
[1:08] In order for us to create a file-based workflow that made any sense, and
deliver the accompanying metadata, which means images, and text descriptions,
and price points, and policy rules about where things could be shown and
what country, we had to come up with a distribution methodology, and a way to
create all those materials, and distribute them, and keep track of them all over
the world and all of these technologies.
Henrik: [1:33] Christy, how does an organization involved with mixed martial
arts use Digital Asset Management?
Christy: [1:39] What we do, since we started out trying to distribute in all these
places and all these different ways, what you discover very, very quickly, when
you start with a relatively contained, single goal, which is, we wanted to deliver
video, which you find very, very quickly no matter where you start an organization
with asset management, is that it sort of snowballs into a really big
effort. [2:07] All of a sudden, you learn a whole bunch about all these different
technologies and all these different vendors that can solve all sorts of problems,
and gosh, people in the company get a load of the first problem you solve and
their eyes lit up, and they get super creative and excited, and go, “Gosh, if we
can do that, then we can do this, and we can do this other thing, and we can do
this other thing.”
[2:28] Pretty soon, you have yourself a huge variety of problems you can solve,
and every time you solve one problem, then there are three more, because no
piece of information in the company lives in isolation. One of the things you find
is, you’ll discover that if you start to distribute something and you’re going to
change somebody’s work flow, let’s say, in marketing. Now, instead of emailing
a picture to the advertising agency, you’re now going to upload it somewhere.
[2:56] Right? Seems simple enough. You change that, you’re done. What will
happen is, within a couple days, you’ll have four other people that come out
of the network that say, “Hey, I copy and paste that out of the website.” Or,
“I download that image and send it over here in order to do the poster or
the podcast.” Or whatever it is. All of these people had just figured out a way
to adapt and survive, with the information wherever it lived. Somewhere in
the company.
[3:23] What you discover is, when you start down the Digital Asset Management
path, work flow becomes a really interesting challenge to solve and get communication
and effort out of everybody, so that you don’t create five more problems
by solving the first problem. So mixed martial arts is no different than any
other company, in that you’ve got to figure out a way to make sure everybody
has the resources they need to get their job done.
Henrik: [3:47] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Christy: [3:52] We work with several vendors. There isn’t any one particular
vendor that solves all of our problems. One of the interesting changes that I’ve
seen in the way that I use technology is that, it used to be that if you needed to
have somebody edit video, you bought an edit system. If you needed to deliver
something, you used a shipping company. All of these kinds of solutions
were separate, disparate and had nothing to do with each other. [4:22] When
you get into Digital Asset Management, everybody’s stuff lays on top of everybody
else’s stuff. I would like to see an awful lot more vendors do what my
vendors have been really willing to do, which is work with each other. We have
a company called Levels Beyond that deals with our video solution, with their
reach engine. But we’ve asked them to work very closely with the folks at Denim
Group, who have designed and built our CMS backend for our website.
[4:53] I’ve asked them to tie in very tightly with the company that produces much
of our fight statistics. All of these folks need to work together and understand
each of their technologies, not necessarily even at a surface level, but at a pretty
deep level, so that they can understand how to use the best of what each company
has to offer. Really, it’s that interesting ability in people to think in a more
open source and shared kind of way.
[5:22] Not necessarily to give their trade secrets away, but just live in the world of
understanding that whatever they’re doing is going to be needed to be shared
by several other people, besides the company they’re selling their product to.
That’s probably the biggest piece of advice I would give.
[5:43] Be a little bit more willing to be open and work directly with other vendors.
I started my process very much in the production department. It has
blossomed to being an asset management solution that we’re applying, with
lots of people, across our entire organization. Really, I have one big Digital Asset
Management system, but I’m calling each departments little asset management
system a little bit different name, as we implement this stuff. So as not to scare
people to death. [laughs]
Henrik: [6:11] Good idea.
Christy: [6:13] You’re asking people to do a huge amount of change and work
flow and culture shift, in order to think about, create… Now, everything they do,
they have to at least put a little bit of their mind towards the fact that whatever
they’re doing, they’re communicating that to everyone else in the organization
and other people outside of the organization, at the moment they create it in
a shareable form. [6:39] Communication becomes even more important than it
might have been to an organization before. You just don’t upload an image. You
need to upload an image and call it something that makes sense, in the bigger,
organizational sense, that’s related to search terms, dates and maybe days that
the things that invoice should be issued so that someone gets paid when this
thing gets uploaded. You’re talking about marketing, accounting, financial analysis,
and invoicing process.
[7:14] Maybe rights are communicated that’s related to your legal department.
[laughs] This is a pretty demanding, big kind of concept to introduce to a company.
Vendors and people thinking about doing Digital Asset Management, in
general, really need to make sure they take it slow and explain to people a lot,
all along the way, the purpose of doing each of these extra tasks, in order to
make the overall company run more efficiently.
[7:47] Especially if you’re a worldwide company or you have organizations spread
across several states or across the world. Really getting taxonomy right and
communication paths tight in a Digital Asset Management system can make a
huge difference in a company that’s spread out like that, geographically.
Henrik: [8:07] Thanks, Christy. For more on Digital Asset Management, log
onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments or questions,
please feel free to send me an email at anotherdamblog@gmail.com.
Thanks again.

Related Articles

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic, Spotify, TuneIn, and wherever you find podcasts.

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Ben Blomfield on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does the largest broadcasting organization in the world use Digital Asset Management?
  • How does the organization deal with the long history of analog formats to be converted to digital form for future re-use?
  • What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Ben Bloomfield.
Ben, how are you?
Ben Bloomfield: [0:09] Very well, thank you.
Henrik: [0:10] Ben, how were you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Ben: [0:13] My own experience in Digital Asset Management is within the world
of video. I’ve worked for a number of broadcasters around the UK and the use
of Digital Asset Management is something which is becoming increasingly
important. [0:26] Where I really started to get involved was when I was head of
content management at ITV. We were looking at what was regarded as the lensto-
lens process. That’s about the point of capturing a program, capture it digitally,
capture it straight onto disk. It would then be edited on disk. It would then
be pushed through the transmission process through to the point of actually
being transmitted as a file.
[0:50] I’ve then moved onto BBC Worldwide where I’m Director of Global
Operations and where I have a team of 40 staff based in the UK, but also have
people dotted around in other parts of the globe who facilitate the distribution
of BBC Worldwide’s content for the sales and distribution division.
[1:09] Now, we manage the distribution of around 74,000 hours of content. We
have about 1,000 customers in over 100 countries around the world. As you
can imagine, you start doing the math, it’s ensuring that the right programs we
manage some very large kind of international brands like Dr. Who, Top Gear
ensuring that those versions are the correct version for that particular area.
[1:33] They may have a foreign language version associated to them. They may
have other additional attributes. There may be photographs, metadata, as in
editorial metadata. It’s to ensure that the deals that our sales and distribution
business make…Last year, we did in the region of 260 million pounds worth of business. We’re turning a profit around 52 million. It’s a responsible job ensuring that once those deals are done, the customers can then receive their content in the given format.
Henrik: [2:07] How does the largest broadcasting organization in the world use
Digital Asset Management?
Ben: [2:12] We are wholly owned by the BBC. Our job is to distribute the BBC’s
content on a worldwide scale. We invest in the content along with BBC or
we work with our co-producers and produce the content and we bring those
assets in and we digitize them into a large sound system, which is run by Deluxe
Media. [2:36] Deluxe is a global distal asset management fulfillment organization,
and we store the store the assets within a master file format. We have a master
mezzanine format, which is at the highest quality for the standard definition or
high-definition files. We will then forward it on, given the deal.
[2:58] If we’re sending it to a broadcaster or if we’re sending it to a VOD platform,
we will then use the Digital Asset Management platform in line with a
transcode platform to then deliver the end program onto a partner.
[3:12] Those partners could be Netflix, Hulu or any number of…we have over
1,000 customers globally, of which about 160 of those customers receive files in
a digital format. Those digital formats are varying in their complexity.
[3:31] We have the DAM, which really feeds the transcoding system, which then
gives us the ability to deliver to our customers in the given file format that
they require.
[3:39] We also have a separate area where we have an internal editing facility,
where we have a storage of around 300 terabytes. We will take those programs
in from our master DAM. We may take those assets in and this is where we may
cut promos or cut promotional material or additional sales packages, which we
then use to help sell our programs internationally.
[4:06] The final piece is we have an online platform called the OLC, which is the
online catalogue for BBC Worldwide. There we have in the reason of about
5,500 to 6,000 of hours, long form programs, but they’ve been condensed
down into viewable assets over the Internet. They’re streamable assets of any
low bit rate.
[4:27] The buyers are able to watch the videos online. If they like them, they will
go forward in their sale.
[4:33] Our businesses, we have around 23,000 hours digitized in a number of
different areas. We then sell in the region of 74,000 hours of content a year
that’s licensed. Of that 74,000 hours of material, around half of it comes from a
digital source.
[4:52] We may take a digital file, turn it into another digital file, send it to our
customer. We may take a digital file and put it onto a tape and send it to the
customer. That makes about 54-55% of our business.
[5:05] The Digital Asset Management plays a huge part of how we do business
and how we keep our costs down and help drive our revenues.
Henrik: [5:13] How does the organization deal with the long history of analog
formats to be converted to digital form for future reuse?
Ben: [5:20] It’s a very interesting question. It’s certainly one that is a hot topic
for us, because we’re going through an interesting stage at the moment where
we’re transitioning away from the certain tape formats. We either choose to
digitize those assets or we lose them. That’s the bottom line. [5:37] There’s a D3
tape format, there’s a 1 inch tape format, and in some instances, 2 inch tape
formats which we’re currently going through the process of evaluating, and to
say, what are the one, there are some instances where we have to digitize them,
because if we don’t we will lose them and we will lose that content forever.
[6:00] There are some instances where there are programs which are looked on
which are saying, actually we see no commercial value in keeping this program.
There’s no historical value in keeping this, so there will be a decision to not
encode those.
[6:13] It’s really a case of, one, if it’s going on a historical figure or an historical
value to it. We are now viewing budgets so we can actually then put forward
and preserve those assets. The other side is there are programs we’re going
through and we know that we can get a commercial sale against.
[6:32] So it’s working with our internal partners to say, if we work with…there’s 2E,
which is another part of the business. If they are willing to work with us, we can
cofund restoration and preservation projects where we could then do a joint
release, or we could remaster assets which would be then used for Blu-ray, DVD
sales as well as international TV sales.
[6:55] It’s a long process, as we’ve got about 120,000 assets, tape physical
assets, in our library at the moment, and as I said those are made up of 1 inch,
2 inch, Beta SP, DigiBeta, D3, and HD. It’s a very slow turning wheel. I’m sure
in 15, 20 years’ time we’ll be thinking about how we’re going to get rid of our
HDCAM SR tapes.
[7:21] At the moment, the idea is we digitize the asset. If it needs restoration,
there is some digital restoration work that can be carried out to remove some of
the older artifacts within the material. We then store an uncompressed version
of that. It takes up a huge amount of space. For an hour program, could take
anything up to 200 gigs worth of disk space.
[7:43] We’re then looking to store those assets on a non-spinning disk. We’ll put
them on an LTO5 type system. At that point, we will also create a working mezzanine
file, a file that is regarded as broadcast quality, either standard definition
or high-definition mezzanine file format, which we could then work with. We can
then take that mezzanine file and then transcode it onto a lower bit rate or to a
specific platform’s requirements.
[8:16] The other problem we have is that within BBC Worldwide, amazing as
it may sound, we don’t actually have a single vision of the truth. We have a
vast number of assets spread across a multitude of libraries. We’ve got library
storage in LA, New York, Germany, France, the UK, Australia, Japan, and
Hong Kong.
[8:37] We have multiple foreign language versions, so that could be a program
which has an English language track on it. It could also have a foreign language
audio dub on it. It may have subtitles associated to it. It may have a slight different
variation or a different edit compared to the main master that was originally
produced in the UK.
[8:57] We’re going through, at the moment, a huge piece of work which is about
looking at our assets across the globe and evaluating those lists and producing
a single vision of the truth.
[9:09] That’s to say, this is what our product catalog looks like. Let’s say we own
a 120,000 assets. Each asset may have a number of different versions relating to
that given title. We’re having to trawl through Excel spreadsheets, Word documents,
Access databases, and really do a huge data mining exercise to evaluate
and organize all that material together.
[9:34] There’s no easy way of doing it apart from drawing in all that information
and then finding common fields within that data to then help us evaluate
whether or not we should be keeping those assets, or whether or not we’ve got
duplications.
[9:49] The first exercise is to delete the duplication, but ensure that in deleting
the duplication, it really is a duplication. There’s quite a lot of manual thumbing.
Then it’s a case of evaluating the content in a world of sales. That’s what we’re
all about.
[10:05] BBC Worldwide is about selling content internationally, but at the same
time we have a role to play in terms of maintaining the historical assets to insure
that nothing is lost.
[10:16] I mean, it’s very interesting. We’ve just been looking at some David
Attenborough material which was shot on 16mm film that was shot. I think it was
about 30 years ago, on film. But when they transferred it onto videotape, they
did it in quite a crude manner. The action, what was broadcast at the time, and
what you look at now doesn’t look great.
[10:37] But we’ve gone back to the film, and we’ve gone back and we’ve cleaned
the film up, we’ve dusted it, they call it dust busting. But it’s the removal of any
foreign artifacts, and re-transcode it, re-telecine that, or scanned it into a far
system. The quality is phenomenal.
[10:53] By going through and actually trawling these assets, we really are finding
that we’ve got some gems hidden away. We’ve known they were gems, but it’s
only when you go back to the actual master source, do you realize that it really
is fantastic quality.
[11:05] In answer to your question, I guess, the organization, to how do we actually
deal with the long issue of it, we have to understand it first. That’s something
which we’re only just starting to do. At that point, we can then prioritize
what we absolutely must keep in terms of historical, what we can lose, because
it’s duplicated, or it doesn’t have a perceived value within the business.
[11:27] It’s a case of picking the content that is of the least quality first, really,
so we know that our 2 inch and 1 inch material, it really is falling apart. It’s old
magnetic tape that we need to capture and turn into a digital file as soon as
possible, or we do run the risk of losing it. Then working through the D3 and
then the B2SP, then, eventually, we’ll be moving on to our DigiBeta, as well. But
it’s a lengthy process.
Henrik: [11:53] That’s an excellent example of how do you determine value
and what are valuable digital assets. [11:59] Lastly, what advice would you
like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM
professionals?
Ben: [12:03] People wanting to become DAM professionals, certainly within
a broadcast environment, the details around the previous questions say a lot
about what it takes to become a DAM professional. That is, attention to detail,
and the process of reviewing data from multiple sources to come up with, as I
said, this idea of a single vision of the truth. It’s the accuracy needs to be applied
when reviewing content. [12:31] It’s the methodical, patient view, analytical,
as well, to insure that where trends are taking place, where irregularities are
taking place, where mistakes are being made, they’re being picked up.
[12:46] Having a great deal of patience with Excel at the moment is a good
place to start.
Henrik: [12:51] Yes.
Ben: [12:52] It’s amazing how many broadcasts, from my previous job, working
at ITV, where I was head of content management and now moving to the BBC
here. It’s amazing. ITV is the largest commercial broadcaster in the UK. BBC
Worldwide is renowned for being the Europe’s largest distributor of broadcast
material. [13:17] I’ve come from fairly weighty backgrounds, but those businesses
are driven by Excel at the moment. They are going into a world where we’re
building systems, building new platforms. We’ve just announced at IBC this year
that we are now partnering with Sony DADC, who are Sony Pictures’ chosen
partner for distribution of content globally.
[13:40] The relationships that are being forged are based on the fact that we’re
trying to get away from an Excel business. Which is laughable, to one degree,
but brilliant for Microsoft, certainly. [laughter]
[13:50] If they knew just how, the strength of those pieces of software for us.
[13:54] But for the professional who is, certainly, there is an understanding, as I
said, about the patience and accuracy. There’s also having a peripheral technical
view on the industry that they choose. I can’t talk for any other industry, really,
other than broadcast.
[14:12] There is a base level of understanding within digital and technology that
needs to be taken on board. Then, there’s the broadcast element, can talk
about digital broadcast, talk about editing, you could talk about transcoding.
You could also get very lost in the jargon.
[14:28] Some people, that’s suits them well, in terms of, they take a given career
within their industry. But being able to cut through the jargon and explain it
on a simple level, insure that what they’re saying is understood is, I mean, I
think it speaks for a lot of industries, I’m sure. But it’s amazing how complicated
it can get.
[14:49] But actually, it doesn’t need to be that complicated. Because you’re
crossing in so many different disciplines, it does become complicated. It’s how
to see the complication, but find the simplistic way of putting that information
across to insure that your point is being made.
Henrik: [15:05] Well, thank you, Ben. [15:06] For more on Digital Asset
Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast
is available on Audioboom, Blubrry, iTunes and the Tech Podcast network.
Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Andrew Mannone on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does a media company focused on cooking use Digital Asset Management?
  • What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Andrew Mannone.
Andrew, how are you?
Andrew Mannone: [0:09] I’m good, Henrik. How are you?
Henrik: [0:11] Great. Andrew, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Andrew: [0:15] Well, that’s a great question. When I was first hired at America’s
Test Kitchen as an Imaging and Color Specialist, we were really at the beginning
stages of bringing all of our production work in-house for color correction,
proofing. We had some established processes and workflows already, but it was
all rather informal, to a certain extent. Production, my department, is kind of
like the central hub. All of the print projects that my company produces flows
through our department in one way, shape or form, sometimes twice in the life
cycle of a project. [0:54] I was given a really large degree of latitude to completely
rebuild the imaging workflow, from the ground up, which was awesome.
That’s really where I started getting involved in Digital Asset Management,
especially in how we think of it today at the company.
[1:15] Ever since then, production has established itself as the go to place for
anything that the company needs, in terms of retouching, compositing, silhouetting,
proofing, anything prepress, and, of course, Digital Asset Management.
[1:32] Since that time I have a new role at the company as the Workflow and
Asset Manager. Primarily, my goal now is to develop and support the workflows
for the existing products and publications that we have, but all the new initiatives,
the kind the business picks up, whether it be some sort of online social
media initiative or whatever.
[1:59] Like a lot of other publishers, a component of our business model revolves
around repurposing content. In America’s Test Kitchen, we’ve got some,
what I would describe as, unique challenges, one individual image of a plate of
food. That image might have, through its life cycle of going through different
products, up to six to seven output color modes, based on whatever the requirements
are for that publication it appears in.
[2:31] Our job in production is to be able to track all of those assets, where they
came from, what app that they were dragged from, where they were used, back
to the source digital negative file, whenever we need to create a new output
color space.
Henrik: [2:48] Just to clarify, when you mean outputs do you mean prints versus
web versus other?
Andrew: [2:53] Yeah, exactly. Our flagship magazine “Cook’s Illustrated” relies
heavily on duo tones. Whereas some of our other magazines or books use
quad tones in addition to standard CMYK full color images. Then of course, the
web has its own requirements. To support all of that we had to come up with a
metadata driven automated work flow that not only ties desktop applications
together, but ties together our DAM system.
Henrik: [3:21] How does a media company focused on cooking use Digital
Asset Management?
Andrew: [3:26] We think about what it is that we do. We’ve got not only our
TV shows, our magazines, our books, and our online websites. We all generate
images and design layouts, PDFs. We need a way to track it all. We use DAM
as a two prong approach. There’s the repository quality of it, storage of our
finished assets. [3:52] There’s also a work flow component of it. That’s really my
focus on DAM. Is using DAM as work flow from the start of an asset’s life cycle
all the way to it goes into the repository side of DAM. When we started using
our DAM system we ultimately decided to go with Cumulus, put out by Canto. It
threw us for a loop at first.
[4:18] We approached it thinking it was an out of the box solution ready to go,
kind of like Adobe Bridge but with a big database backend. After a while it
was like, “Something’s not right here.” Then I started to realize that it’s not just
an out of the box solution. What we got when we chose our system was really
a platform.
[4:46] That’s when the real power of what we got was fully realized. My favorite
way to explain Cumulus to people not familiar with DAM or some other departments
is to think of it like a Lego set. A Lego set for that really awesome
medieval castle, but you threw out the directions. You’ve got all the pieces
there, but you need to figure out how they fit together to build that castle.
[5:14] It will take a while but it’s a puzzle that you have to solve. Once we got the
hang of it, that’s when really good things started to happen. It falls into one of
two categories for what I’ve been trying to use our DAM systems for. Solving a
workload problem or to better communicate information to a user.
[5:35] There are some simple things that you can do on the web front ends,
tweaking the CSS to convey the company branding so it has a consistent look
and feel across all of the different other online systems that we have at our company.
Presenting information to the user in a way that makes sense. Like if you’re
searching for various recipes.
[6:00] Are the recipe elements grouped in a logical fashion? Recipe name is a
part of a book chapter, what’s the book project name? Then there’s the work
flow component. Sometimes it’s really simple things like Cumulus will capture all
of the excess information from the digital camera but it doesn’t always render it
in a completely human consumable way.
[6:25] For example, exposure mode. It renders it as an integer and in most imaging
applications, you would see something like aperture priority, or auto exposure,
but in Cumulus it shows up as zero. I wrote a really simple formula to parse
the integer into an auto exposure. It’s simple things like that that give more
context to the information that’s already there.
[6:58] It helps the user interpret what they’re seeing when they’re viewing the
various records in the DAM. When it comes to solving a work flow problem, a
lot of what I do is getting Cumulus and Photoshop to talk to each other. Most
DAMs have some sort of way or method to convert asset X format into asset Y. I
need this JPEG into a PNG. Most of the times that’s fine.
[7:28] For us, it’s not as sophisticated as we need it to be, because our publications
have some really not mainstream print outputs. Like duo tones or quad
tones. We need to harness Photoshop to get everything the way we need it for
a particular publication. I was able to use the tools that Cumulus provides and
some scripting to select images in Cumulus, route them to Photoshop, process
them based on metadata that’s embedded in the image, then save out the
result and catalog it back into Cumulus.
[8:11] That lets us track where an image has been, what other output mode it’s
come from very easily.
Henrik: [8:19] You mentioned earlier that you didn’t have the instructions for the
castle but you were able to build your own castle.
Andrew: [8:28] I’ll wager to bet that another user using the exact same DAM,
it won’t look anything like what we built here at ATK. We’ve got tons of formula
fields that pull information out of a file path to display a project name and a lot
of nomenclature that’s specific to America’s Test Kitchen. When people first
start their eyes glaze over because we have so many acronyms that we throw
around. [9:01] We joke that we can talk in complete acronyms and have it make
perfect sense to the people in the know. We’ve incorporated that into our DAM.
It’s familiar to the people who have been here. One of the other things we were
able to do is now that more than ever cross media publishing is important, it’s
just growing exponentially.
[9:28] We needed to rewrite our web CMS and our internal web development
team rewrote the CMS that drives all of our websites and we took that opportunity
to integrate our Cumulus DAM into the CMS with the web services API.
That has saved countless hours for the web editorial department. Saving off
hours from load times for each magazine content load cycle.
[10:02] That’s actually set us up to do some really great things in regards to the
cloud. I can’t get into details right now, but we’re looking to putting a lot of
assets into the cloud, using the DAM to control who can see what. It’s going to
be exciting.
Henrik: [10:23] Sounds like it. What advice would you like to share with DAM
professionals, and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Andrew: [10:29] I thought about this one for a little bit. It occurred to me, I’ve
been working specifically in DAM for three years, and I still feel like I’m just starting
out. I still feel like I’m in that aspiring to be a DAM professional category,
but I’ve learned a few things. [10:50] Having a natural curiosity is really one of the
requirements to do this type of work. You really need to enjoy solving puzzles,
finding a solution to a challenge, and being detail oriented.
[11:05] Once you get past that, read up on some of the industry standard
groups, like Adobe’s XMP, IPTC, Dublin Core, PRISM XML. These are all really
great resources that you can take and figure out, “What’s the best way to
structure my metadata? Can I use something that’s already existing for developing
my taxonomy, instead of having to start from scratch?”
[11:32] Then learn all you can about XML. Whatever your operating system of
choice is, learn the scripting language that’s native to that platform. We’re an all
Mac shop, so AppleScript is my goto for scripting.
[11:53] We’re doing a lot of web projects now. Cumulus has several web front ends
that we use. JavaScript has become one of those languages that I kind of
knew, but I’m learning a whole lot more of.
[12:09] If you can find any sort of professional organization to connect with, to
find people that are in your field, doing what you do. LinkedIn is a great resource.
If your DAM system has a user forum, get involved on that. I’ve met a
lot of great people and made some really great contacts by participating on the
user forum for Cumulus.
[12:31] Read a lot of books, blogs, whatever you can get your hands on.
[12:36] Have fun. Play with stuff. See what works, what doesn’t. The way I learn
the best is to kick it around, see how it works. Possibly break it, and then try to
put it back together. I was the guy who took apart all their toys as a kid, and it
drove my parents nuts. That’s kind of the way I approach working with DAM,
and it’s panned out so far.
Henrik: [13:02] Excellent. Thanks Andrew.
Andrew: [13:03] Thanks Henrik.
Henrik: [13:05] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.

Related Articles

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic, Spotify, TuneIn, and wherever you find podcasts.

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Schedule a call today