Consulting
During the Insight Exchange Network conference about Digital Asset Management (DAM) on January 24, 2018, a panel discussion was recorded on the topic of career paths in DAM.
Panelists:
Jennifer Anna, Photo and Digital Asset Manager, World Wildlife Fund
Kym Coffey, Director of Digital Engagement and Content Strategy, Marketing Media Communication
Moderator:
Henrik de Gyor, Chief Consultant, Another DAM Consultancy
Here is the audio recording from this panel discussion (Duration: 46 minutes)
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 Jay O’Brien.
Jay, how are you?
Jay O’Brien: [0:09] I’m doing great. How are you?
Henrik: [0:10] Great. Jay, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Jay: [0:14] In my role at the Baltimore Ravens, I’m the director of broadcasting and stadium productions. I fell into the Digital Asset Management role here. I started 11 years ago here as an intern, just logging tape, doing tape‑to‑tape editing and logging tape in the…I think it was AVID media logger.
[0:35] I got very good at Digital Asset Management in terms of typing out every single play of every single Ravens’ game. That’s how I became a stickler for asset management and also became a football fan.
[0:47] I say I fell into it, because Digital Asset Management, as I’ve advanced through the Ravens and now I’m in charge of the broadcasting department, we were faced with a situation where we basically had to make a move. The previous system we’re on was at its end of life and it was of course going to be a big investment to upgrade.
[1:06] I took on the role of learning as much as I could about all the new asset management systems that were out there. It’s pretty exciting. It’s not something I thought I would be interested in but I’ve been working with some great people at other teams, and with our consulting group that we used to implement this new system that we’re on.
[1:24] I’ve really learned a lot and there are some great people in the field like yourself who’ve been very, I guess, instrumental in helping me to learn as much as I can about this. Now, I wouldn’t in any respect call myself an expert. I’m an intermediate novice in this whole thing and learning more about it every day.
[1:38] Our primary objective here is to create great content. When we made this change, I guess more involved in automating our Digital Asset Management, helped us to get away from the tedious typing out every player’s name and to actually editing content.
Henrik: [1:53] How does a football team use Digital Asset Management?
Jay: [1:57] It’s pretty interesting. For an NFL team, there are actually two different video departments that are using Digital Asset Management for two completely different purposes.
[2:06] We have a coaching video department which is using Digital Asset Management to record every play from practice and every play from the games so that our coaches can then go through to analyze the plays for teaching and to get ready for future opponents and that type of thing.
[2:22] What my department does is more on the entertainment side. We create television shows that air in our local market here in Baltimore and Washington, DC, also on our team’s website and mobile app and iPad app and all that kind of good stuff. Then, we also create all the entertainment at our home games on our big screens and our ancillary video boards.
[2:47] What we’re using Digital Asset Management for is to capture all the footage that we shoot at practice, at games, off the field with our players doing work in the community and that sort of thing. We’re using Digital Asset Management to capture and tag all that media so that it’s very easily searchable for us.
[3:11] You don’t know that you need a shot until you need a shot. We were working on a feature this past season about our old national anthem singer who sang national anthem for the first 18 years of our franchise. We had logged the first game that he sang the national anthem.
[3:29] While you’re logging and tagging that asset, you’re probably thinking to yourself “When am I ever going to need this?” But you eventually do. I’m sure that the people that are for us doing a lot of loggings sometimes are thinking “Wow, they’re never going to use this clip.” Surprisingly, we often do.
[3:45] With a team that’s now in our 20th season of existence like the Baltimore Ravens, we’re getting to the point now where we’re doing a lot of look backs and in‑a‑moment‑in‑time of the most famous plays and players in our history. Without a robust Digital Asset Management system, we wouldn’t be able to create the content and the quality that our fans demand.
Henrik: [4:06] Jay, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Jay: [4:10] For us, the biggest challenge is, with this new system that we have, we’re utilizing the Levels Beyond Reach engine. But it gives you the chance to create as many metadata fields and as many metadata keywords as you want.
[4:24] That’s the challenge and the success of the new system. You want to be able to search by all sorts of different tags. You also don’t want to create too many that you get bogged down with it or that the tagging process takes such a long time that it becomes not very worthwhile.
[4:43] That was our big challenge with this new system. Now going back in time, before you were able to tag metadata using drop down menus and things like that, everything was manual. You were typing everything out. At least, we were.
[4:58] For example, we had someone logging for us back 10 years ago who spelt a certain player’s name wrong for the entire season and nobody caught it. That’s a big challenge because when we’re searching for that player’s name and we’re thinking, “We know this player had good plays during the year. Why aren’t any of them showing up in our asset manager?” It was all just because of a misspelling.
[5:19] That’s a challenge that we’ve certainly overcome now with this new system where we can easily load an Excel roster of our players and then you type in the first letter or two letters of the player’s name and you move on. This new system has saved us a lot of time.
[5:32] At the same time, when we were first establishing the system and determining what fields and what key words we wanted, I think at first we may have gotten too overly ambitious of creating so many different fields that it was taking longer for the first few weeks of our season to log our games and not less time, which is what we anticipated going into the season.
[5:54] We were logging everything from what color jerseys our players were wearing, what the weather was like. It’s really just trying to be ambitious without being overly so where it’s really costing you time and not saving you time.
Henrik: [6:07] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Jay: [6:12] When we went through the process of choosing a new asset manager, we demoed as many of the new systems as we could. We also spoke with, in our case, other football teams that we knew had made this transition to a new system or teams that we knew were as robust as we are in terms of the amount of content we produce.
[6:33] Reach out to other people. Demoing is great and that was certainly helpful for us to demo every system we could. It was equally important for us to talk to people who have actually used the system, specific to our needs.
[6:46] We talked to some people who were using the system we went with and other systems but whose objectives are different than ours. What system may work for a sports team may not work for somebody who’s doing news programming or something like that.
[7:02] Reach out to as many people as you can who you think would be using the system for similar purposes. In our case, we leaned heavily on our consultant and integrator during the project to have them connect us to other sports leagues and organizations who we knew would be using the system for somewhat similar purposes.
[7:22] As I said before, as much as you can, figure out in advance what types of fields and key words you would like to use and have that all laid out. In our circumstance, we’re still evolving and we’re still adding metadata fields and key words and we’re removing some too. Don’t be afraid to do that and say, “This one is unimportant. We don’t really need this.”
[7:44] Those would be my two pieces of advice. It’s certainly a learning experience. This will be our sixth game of the season coming up. Just now we’re starting to get really into a flow and using the system in a way that is most beneficial to us.
Henrik: [8:00] Thanks, Jay.
Jay: [8:01] Thank you. Anytime.
Henrik: [8:02] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics go to anotherdamblog.com. For this and 170 other podcast episodes, go to anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to reach out to me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple iTunes, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Play, RadioPublic, RSS or TuneIn
In October 2013, I gave a presentation on ‘The People Aspects of Digital Asset Management (DAM)’ during the Createasphere DAM Conference in New York City. This presentation was audio recorded so it could be shared with you. Enjoy.
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking about the people aspects of Digital Asset Management. Here is part two of the Createasphere DAM conference presentation I gave in New York in October 2013. Enjoy.
[0:20] You may need a gatekeeper. Most people don’t consider that when they get a DAM. They think that it’s just technology, it’s just software. No, that’s wrong. It’s not just software, and it’s not just technology. It involves people, process, technology and information. If you don’t have all four working together, you don’t have a working DAM.
[0:43] The other thing that I’m going to throw in there is, are we the new Mechanical Turks? How many of you are familiar with the Mechanical Turks? Not just the service that’s available today, but the chess playing tool from many years ago, where there was actually a skilled chess player underneath and nobody knew how the system worked.
[1:04] It just had a… “robot”. Not really, underneath there was a human, someone who did all the work underneath. No one realized what was under there. We may be the new Mechanical Turks. Are we? DAM is not a game, so not really. It involves more skills than just chess and it takes far more patience than chess.
[1:31] People don’t understand DAM, and it takes often a lot of explanations. Everyone who’s worked in DAM long enough understands that they have to educate a lot of people in and around and across their organization, and whoever is going to touch their DAM. Make them understand why this is important for the organization, what value it serves to them, not just to me because I don’t count. It’s what the organization needs, and they need to be able to find their assets, otherwise you’re wasting money.
[2:09] Your DAM is only as good as its metadata and how well it’s been curated, and how well it’s cataloged to find those assets over and over again. There may be less reasons. You may have heard of others why we are not the Mechanical Turks, we may find it insulting. There’s a lot to consider in DAM, way too many acronyms and terms to consider and things to think about.
[2:36] Back to the who, there’s plenty of different roles to play within organizations that are involved with Digital Asset Management, at least when you’re starting out. These are all different roles that play a part, whether it’s temporary or permanent within your organization.
[2:54] A DAM shouldn’t be really stagnant. It should evolve with your organization, and the people should evolve too. That may take significant change management amongst all of you, and your organization itself. There may be resistance because [sarcastically] people love change, right? No, they usually don’t.
[3:16] One of the phenomena I’ve seen is, people are volunteered for DAM, or on rare occasions, people volunteer themselves to do DAM. Typically, they are volunteered and typically it’s not their core competency…what they were hired for.
[3:32] A designer or marketer or photographer or PM, they didn’t really sign up when they were first hired to do that. What is their passion and why would they stay through all this pain? Anyone who’s worked through DAM knows how much pain you have to go through to make people understand and show them the value, and explain it over and over and over again, and illustrate why this is important.
[4:02] You can show them the numbers, you can illustrate why it’s important to them, how it’s important to them, how they could use it themselves and how it could make their lives easier. They have to understand it themselves, otherwise you’re not going to win and you’ll keep on explaining it over and over and over again. Then, you’ll keep burning money until that issue is resolved.
[4:24] There’s often a lot of guidance, there’s a lot of training and it’s not just training once by a vendor and then they run away, but ongoing support has to exist for a DAM. Otherwise, you will not get the adoption, the user adoption of a system. You will stand up a system and it will be what’s called a ‘shelf baby’. How many of you are familiar with what a shelf baby means?
[4:44] Yes, it’s one of those systems that you pay lots of money, you put lots of care, lots of nurturing into it and then it just sits there and nobody uses it. That’s a big waste of money, right? It’s not a ‘check box’, you want the system to be used that’s why you invested in it. You want people to be able to find their assets. That’s an investment in time.
[5:05] If you are not tagging your assets and you are accumulating more and more every day, that means you have to tag those new assets almost every day, appropriately, so you can find that content within those assets. Not just, it’s a photo! How many photos do I have? 20,000. Well, I’ll just scroll endlessly.
[5:24] [laughter]
Henrik: [5:25] Bad idea. That doesn’t scale, right? It’s not scalable. You’ll just continue scrolling endlessly. It doesn’t work. Some organizations think that works. No, it doesn’t. Those solutions often don’t scale either, so there’s a lot to do there.
[5:45] There’s also the question, do I need additional headcount? Well, it depends on the volume of assets that you have. If you have a set number of files and you upload them, and you never have more assets…
[5:58] [laughter]
Henrik: [6:00] …maybe not, but if you accumulate on regular basis a small volume that it takes N number of people to tag and this is something that you have to measure. How long does it take someone to add the appropriate metadata so you can find it again?
[6:13] Your user groups, meaning the people who are actually going to use the system. Not the business people who are just going to pay for it and say, “OK, what business value is this bringing me? Why keep paying these $100,000 bills every year”? Or the IT people say, “It’s still up, go ahead and use it. It’s still working. No one’s touching it but it’s still working.” It’s often the creatives, right?
[6:37] It’s often the creatives that are creating more and more files, but they don’t like metadata. How many creatives are in the room? OK, a few. How many of you who are creatives love spreadsheets? OK.
[6:50] [laughter] Survival.
Henrik: [6:53] Fair, fair, yes, so aside from the one…
[6:57] [laughter]
Henrik: [7:02] …yes, sometimes you have to do what’s needed, right? A lot of creatives prefer to create files for some reason, because that’s what they were hired for and that’s their passion, right? Getting creatives to actually do that tagging work is next to very rare, to put it nicely, because they don’t want to.
[7:23] They don’t want to…they’ll pretend they can’t spell, they…
[7:28] [laughter]
Henrik: [7:29] …won’t spell, they won’t use any instructions, they won’t read, they’ll pretend they can’t. I’ve seen it all, so DAM hiring is quite often the need. Your options are, learn what’s out there, there’s more and more resources now. One of the reasons I created my blog is because there wasn’t enough information in the user and administrator perspective of DAM. That’s why I started blogging, because there wasn’t enough information.
[8:00] There is more now, not enough, but there is more now. I blog on a very regular basis about what is needed by the DAM community, not just us, the users, but the vendors, and the readers are users and vendors and everyone else who kind of cares. There’s plenty out there to talk about and I’m not the only blogger, I recently did a talk with some other bloggers and there’ll be more.
[8:29] Bloggers are just one part of it. There are also websites like CMSWire, like the DAM Foundation, the DAM Coalition, a bunch of others that have information about DAM that is very useful, so read about it. Watch webinars from all the different vendors, not just your preferred one. Some of them are more useful than others, especially the ones that are less salesy.
[8:52] Network with others. In New York, we have the luxury of having the world’s largest [DAM] meetup group, which you’ll meet tonight, from 5:00 to 6:30. We have 570 members, 106 of them are coming tonight. I’m one of the co‑organizers, Michael in the back is another one. Chad, if he’s in the room is, is the founder.
[9:13] We doubled the size of our membership this year, so there’s plenty of networking available and we video record every session whenever we have a panel. So worldwide, even if you are not in New York or your schedule is busy, you have the availability to watch our videos and they’re on YouTube for free.
[9:33] Use consultants as necessary. I’m a DAM consultant, full disclosure.
[9:39] [laughter]
Henrik: [9:40] …and there is DAM hiring. There are more and more DAM jobs, there’s about a hundred almost every day available. You go on indeed.com, on monster.com, dice.com, you can find DAM jobs and you can also post DAM jobs just make sure you know what you’re looking for. When I talk to recruiters, most of the time they don’t know anything beyond a req. Fix that.
[10:03] [laughter]
Henrik: [10:04] Know what you’re looking for yourself. It takes people obviously. To do the research, to prioritize, to make the decisions, to analyze the information because the analysis isn’t done by a machine, to create processes and actually follow them, to hold those accountable, usually everybody, and to select the right system for your organization, and not to over‑complicate, but to simplify, and to do the DAM work…
[10:38] [laughter]
Henrik: [10:39] …or to fail or to succeed. It’s up to you.
[10:44] Thank you for listening. For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics log on to anotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM podcast is available on AudioBoom and iTunes. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me at anotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Click here to revisit Part 1 of this presentation
In October 2013, I gave a presentation on The People Aspects of Digital Asset Management (DAM) during the Createasphere DAM Conference in New York City. This was audio recorded so the presentation could be shared with you. Enjoy.
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor, today I’m speaking about the people aspects of digital asset management. Here is a recording of the Createasphere DAM conference presentation that I gave in New York in 2013. Enjoy.
[0:19] I’m Henrik de Gyor. Some of you may know me. I recognize some of the faces.
[0:22] For those of you who don’t know me, I am the Director of Digital Asset Management services. That means I am a consultant in the DAM space. I have been there for a few years.
[0:33] You may also know me as blogger at AnotherDAMblog.com and AnotherDAMpodcast.com. I did a few of those podcasts and blogs. Also authored a couple books and still working on others as well. I’m a regular speaker at Universities and lectures and conferences like this.
[0:51] Nominated DAMMY of the Year few times. Quick shot to the company I work for. We do a lot of all things aside from DAM. We are vendor neutral. We have offices all over the world.
This is the question that we ask everybody [What do you want to do with DAM?] because that is what you should be able to answer if you are going to get a DAM.
[1:11] It’s not just one of those check boxes where I need is a CRM, I need a DAM, I need a CMS. I don’t know what I am going to do with them, but I have to check that box. Couple of things that you want to remember is most organizations want to be able to search, find, use and then the thing most organizations forget about is you want to able to re‑use and repurpose those assets.
[1:33] In order to get other ROI, return on investments as much as possible on all of your assets. Or as many as you can, not just use it once, or archive at once. The other thing to keep in mind is that there is the asset and there is metadata. A lot of people forget about the information part. The metadata makes your asset searchable, otherwise they’re not.
[1:58] As you accumulate more and all of us are, you want be able you find them. Then you want to have accountability, meaning the people who are going to be doing all that information, adding the information, finding the information, delivering that information, and those assets together need to be accountable through use through groups and roles.
[2:17] Then the access, people who should be accessing those files and have the permission to do so. Those who can’t or shouldn’t, don’t, that’s the security part. Then the distribution download or delivery of those assets, because if you can’t deliver it to whatever platform you need it on.
[2:36] Why do you have a DAM? Is it manual? How much time do you want to spend? How many people do you want to do it with? The other things to keep in mind is you find a lot today and you will have a lot more tomorrow, about the four parts of DAM.
[2:51] There is four parts. You heard a lot about the technology. Every conference talks about the technology. Views vendors X or vendor Y, solutions X or solution Y. Some people will be talking about the information, the metadata, or the taxonomy.
[3:07] Some people will be talking about the process. Today I am going to talk about that part right here. The people which everyone forgets about. That’s why I’m here to talk to you today. I propose this talk to several conferences. This is the only one who was willing to talk about the people part. Interestingly enough.
[3:31] I am being a proponent for those of you know for the users. Specifically for the people who use DAM, not the vendors because there are not there for you, they’re there to make money, for the most part. There is a lot to talk about in as far as people are concerned.
[3:49] Most people, before they get the DAM, waste a lot of time searching. Remember, there is searching, finding and using. They search for stuff, but they don’t necessarily find anything. They have lots of silos, folder structures which magically will help them find something.
[4:08] Or at least the person who created the folder structure. Or the file naming convention that means something to the person who originally created it, but nobody else or is not shared by everyone else or used by anyone else. Then, there is reuse or reacquiring of these assets, because you can’t find it. You reacquire, relicense, you repurchase, or you recreate new ways for more money.
[4:26] The whole process of DAM search, find, use, reuse, repurpose it, otherwise you are wasting your time and you are wasting your people’s time. It goes back to the people. What you are trying to do for your people? You are trying to save them time, you are trying to save you company money.
[4:41] Typically, there’s access free-for-alls, because you have silos everywhere or you have everything of all then you misuse it. That increases your liability because oops we weren’t suppose to use that talent for the last five years. We only had a license to use it for one year.
[4:58] Oops, well I guess we had to pay one lawyer time and lawsuits, and settle that out of court. Some companies actually have a budget for that, literally. Their account, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars to settle things at court, because they don’t fix their liability problems.
[5:13] DAM can and should fix your liability problems with the right management for your licensed assets. Things that you acquire from Getty, from Corbis, from wherever you are getting it. Or the talent that is creating your assets externally. Or the talent that is in your images or videos.
[5:30] Then, they built silos. Each fiefdom has its own silos because it’s “their assets”. No, it’s not. It’s the company’s assets. You get a paycheck from the same company, right? So start sharing.
[5:46] [background conversation]
[5:48] [laughter]
[5:49] Fiefdoms? Oh yes, that is a politics thing. We can get into that. Then you have Communication with the right assets. That breaks down and is limited to file names and folder structures. Your storage increases, while your management decreases.
[6:09] After DAM hypothetically if you do it right, you can save money and time. More time than money necessary sometimes. You can reuse and repurpose your assets if you can find them and know that you can use them legally. Right?
[6:24] You can access your assets and the people who should have access, can access those files, if you use permissions properly. Role-based permissions meaning the functional role of this group can use those assets. The other groups that shouldn’t be using, because they don’t know what to use it for or how it should be used, don’t.
[6:44] They can see it and go “yes I approve that. It looks great”, and that’s it. Then you get the people like the right managers and things like that to clear those things for them.
[6:54] That can minimize your liability.
[6:55] You visit your legal department slightly less often. Your legal department shouldn’t fear when you come to them. And they should not call on a regular basis. They don’t like to see you when you have problems. They have enough problems already.
[7:11] Consolidating silos. Now, this is back to politics part, right? You get minimized fiefdoms if you actually communicate and share your assets. Some people don’t like that. They like ’empire building’, so that there is another breakdown of things that you have to do.
[7:28] You can communicate and even collaborate. This is a new thing for some. Most organization are drowning in assets, because they are only accumulating more. How many people are in this room are decreasing the number of assets they accumulate every year? None, because we all hope that we have a job tomorrow.
[7:49] The only companies that are decreasing the number of assets they have, won’t be employed or exist very long. One question that we ask, that most people can’t answer, unless they do their homework is how long does it take you to find an asset for a new campaign or project?
[8:06] That number should decrease as you get a DAM and as you increase the efficiency of your DAM. One organization which will remain nameless. A Fortune 500 took ten people 30 hours to find one file. Who thinks that is acceptable in this room? [no one] Right, I didn’t think so.
[8:28] The other part that DAM should be able to do is manage your IP, just because you can find it, can you legally use it. Most organization can’t do that because they don’t look at their rights and is not clearly defined in a templated fashion. That’s part of their metadata it’s like this is who you need to contact for that, in order to reuse that asset.
[8:51] This is how much we paid last time for it. This is what rights we have to use it. This is where we can use it or should use it, because we have all rights reserved. This is royalty free or whatever is public domain or whatever it happens to be.
[9:10] The other thing is metadata is not ‘automagically’ created. There is no metadata fairy. Still to this day. We’re still looking. Still haven’t found one. It still takes people to catalog and apply metadata to assets.
[9:29] An example is, when we license music when we go to iTunes, when we go to get a movie or an eBook from your favorite e‑retailer, we don’t look or assume there is so much metadata in order to find that file.
[9:48] We just think it looks so done, it’s already there. Someone actually applied that, well before you saw it. That’s why you can buy it. The most successful companies out there have metadata applied to all their assets. No matter how much you search for that file, you will find it. That leads to more sales.
[10:09] Shocking, isn’t it? If you can find it, you can use it. If you can’t find it, you can’t use it and they won’t buy it. They won’t be able to use it again. The other thing you have to keep in mind is there are three perspectives in every organization. At least three.
[10:26] There is the business side which cares about how much money is going in, how much money is going out. What value they are serving their customers and clients for their services or products. Are they delivering on time?
[10:39] Then, there’s the creators who want to do anything and everything with as much time and resources as possible until deadline comes.Then, there is the technical perspective that don’t get any feedback, don’t get the requirements they need to deliver the product that they need to deliver to the end users within the organization or externally.
[10:57] Neither of them, all three, don’t talk to each other unless they are talking amongst other organizations. The idea is these three circles do intersect, because they work usually within the same organization. They collect a paycheck from the same organization.
[11:10] They deliver probably the same products and services that people will use or do use, hopefully, but they don’t communicate enough. Often the DAM professionals sit in the middle or should sit in the middle of all three.
[11:28] They need to be able to communicate in their perspective, of all three, why DAM is important. Why they should see value in it, in their perspective. Including creative, including technical, including business, not just “it’s going to save you money” the creators and technical, they want to save money, but that’s not why they are there…
Click here to continue to Part 2 of this presentation
If you have any questions or would like to hear more about this topic, please feel free to contact me directly.
Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple iTunes, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Play, RadioPublic, RSS or TuneIn
Based on the blog post from Another DAM blog:
Written and read by Henrik de Gyor
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