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Another DAM Podcast interview with Jennifer Veiga and Theresa Honig on Digital Asset Management

Jennifer Veiga and Theresa Honig discuss Digital Asset Management

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 Jennifer Veiga and Theresa Honig. Thanks for joining me. How are you?

Jennifer Veiga:  [0:10] Good, how are you today Henrik?

Henrik:  [0:12] Great. How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Jennifer:  [0:15] We are involved in various ways and various capacities. We work for a media company, and we implement the standards in which the agencies and photographers and all of our contractors provide assets to us.

[0:35] We probably use Digital Asset [Management] in a very different way than most companies do, in terms of we also use it to a degree as a news feed. We have pretty much written the standards for how the photographers and agencies insert their material into our system, in terms of captioning, keywording, metadata so forth and so on. It’s what we require, what our standards are.

Henrik:  [1:06] How does an organization focused on celebrity media as well as health and fitness media use Digital Asset Management?

Theresa Honig:  [1:13] I think part of our way is getting on our news feed, getting information from the photographers and mainly these agencies. We have to catalogue our information as far as past projects that we’ve done, and also pictures that were used by getting different pictures into our database. We also have to get them out to our designers.

Jennifer:  [1:32] We have an enterprise digital asset management system as well as workflow, so there’s other software tied into it. It’s kind of a complex system in regards to that because there’s so many users.

Theresa:  [1:45] Also, programs have to be linked together to our database…

Jennifer: [1:50] …to support the DAM.

Jennifer:  [1:51] We use it differently in terms of from the celebrity and the health portion of it. Everybody has their own library and we give access to certain people. For example, some of the builders can’t go into some of the other titles’ libraries due to copyright and embargoes and permissions and certain things like that.

[2:19] In terms of the celebrity portion of it, the greatest challenge with that is being that we are such a huge company, and we work at iconic print brands, there’s a lot of photographers and agencies and so forth that want to contribute. It makes it difficult in the sense that the more you store, the more it’s going to cost you.

[2:43] When you implement the system, you only buy a certain amount of storage. It’s not just endless. That presents a problem. Sometimes, we have to be selective on who we allow to contribute. They have to go through a process, in terms of being allowed. I guess you could say like a membership to get username and password into our FTP. Some agencies stream. In that respect, it’s different.

[3:10] Obviously, it’s just different businesses. The entertainment, the celebrity brands, don’t get people working out, and the fitness titles do. In the same realm, we’ve implemented a library that’s for internal use, and it’s a free library we’d like to dole out.

[3:30] It’s basically stock images, product shots, generic things that everybody can use, though we try to repurpose that. In that way, every title doesn’t have to go out and do the same photo shoot for generic shots.

Theresa:  [3:45] We also have to have a bigger library for the celebrity end of it because there’s a lot more material coming in and out. The celebrities are out every day, whereas, the health and fitness end of it is a lot more photoshoots and freelance art and stock art.

Jennifer:  [3:59] A lot more tailored.

Henrik:  [4:00] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Jennifer:  [4:05] Well, I think the biggest challenge really is having an active commitment from the top to support our efforts. A lot of times at the top, they don’t really get all the techie stuff about it. They just think they’re going to buy a system, and that’s it. They pay one time, and it’s all over. That’s not obviously the case.

[4:27] I’ve tried not to sugarcoat the reality that you have to maintain it, update it, and care for it. That essentially is going to cost money and time. At the end of the year, a lot of times, for us, we’ve reached our limit quickly because so many people, every single day, are putting materials into our DAM.

[4:48] For example, when there’s award shows, in a matter of eight hours, you’ll get 75,000 images. It’s a lot for the system to handle, and it’s a lot for everybody to go through. For us to handle too, because at some point, there’s no need for 10,000 pictures of Jennifer Lopez smiling in the same dress.

[5:09] That’s what you run into. It’s hard to get to what you need because you have to dig through all of the award shows stuff. It gets, kind of hairy and complicated and annoying at times. Basically, on those days, we’re all working overtime because we have to go in, basically clean and edit.

[5:29] A lot of times, like photographers and agencies, and stuff like that…It seems cheap and easy to just shoot a bunch of pictures, but you don’t need all of those pictures. I think a lot of times, people just need to learn how to edit. That’s really important for any system because you get backlogged.

Theresa:  [5:48] It gets too big, and then you have to…

Jennifer: [5:50] It slows the system down. It slows everything down.

Theresa: [5:54] You have to get it empty enough that it will take more on. You need to do the maintenance. At that point, empty some things out. Also, make sure it’s properly backed up is another issue we see. A lot of times things aren’t properly backed up and then we have to change servers, then we lose a mountain of information. We have to get it all back in again. It makes a whole, huge effort that was unnecessary.

Jennifer: [6:19] Another challenge that we have is making sure that everybody’s software, programs, technology is compatible. For example, ‑‑ what was it? ‑‑ today we had a problem where somebody’s Photoshop didn’t match up, wasn’t being properly ingested into our system. It wasn’t reading it.

[6:37] We get glitches like that and things like that come up. It’s frustrating because a lot of times it’s not the end user, so we not only cater to the end users here, but we have to support outside efforts as well. That sometimes gets to be difficult and stressful. I’m not sitting at whoever’s desk in California, so I don’t know what’s on their computer.

[7:03] And successes… I’d say our most successful implementation was SCC Media Grid, which is a digital asset management system that is basically created for the publishing industry. For our purposes, it is by far superior, I think, than most in term of  You can see everything immediately.

[7:25] You can do time searches. You can do looped-in searches. You can do Boolean searches. It is multi‑faceted, and it is extremely quick. It’s really easy to maintain. When people drop things in, it has pretty much ranks in most meta data.

[7:40] Once we’ve given them our style guides and standard guides, if they properly adhere to them, then it creates a nice workflow. It makes our job a lot easier.

Theresa: [7:53] It can handle a lot of information. There aren’t as many system crashes.

Henrik:  [7:57] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Jennifer: [8:03] First and foremost, make sure you have commitment from the top. Make sure that they know that every person that you visit, that’s a license fee. Everybody can’t share the same username and password. You can’t do that. That’s stealing people’s technology, and that isn’t right.

[8:20] Develop a strategy and customize it to your business needs. Talk to as many people as you can because it’s so imperative. Employees in different departments, everybody has data in their head. Data is essentially knowledge, so everybody is knowledgeable in some degree or another.

[8:42] We try to have an open door policy in terms of, we encourage people to come and speak to us with all kinds of questions, comments, concerns, ways to improve anything. It’s a work in progress. It’s not perfect now, but that obviously is our goal.

Theresa: [9:00] To really help, you have to know the ins and outs to the company you’re helping and know what the employees need and what they need to do their job and get it done efficiently. Also, like we said before, plan for the future. Make sure there is enough room in that database so that you have a plan after that. That you have a bigger system you can move onto.

Jennifer: [9:19] Obviously, you’ll need controlled vocabularies and your keywords. And I think sometimes with digital asset management people think the more metadata and the more keywords and the more this is better. I personally don’t necessarily agree with that.

[9:32] I think that there’s something to be said for simplicity. I think it needs to be straightforward… real people speak. Some people get a little too smart with their keywords. If it’s a picture of an island, just write “island”. You don’t have to have some crazy… I mean obviously you should [say] what island and where it is, and stuff like that is important, but sometimes people just get too literal about it.

[9:57] That’s happened here where they’ll write, “This is West Indies,” but it doesn’t say “island” and a lot of people are sometimes looking for an island. Develop a strategy and talk to as many people as you can because that’s where you will get ideas and solutions. And basically, that’s what we are usually trying to do. Find a solution to something.

Theresa: [10:20] Yeah. Talk to other professionals is great because everyone is running into a different situation. You might have a situation that somebody conquered last year.

Jennifer: [10:30] Glitches and things like that. Sometimes one person is able to pull up something on the other person like, “Well, I just typed that in, and it’s not coming up on mine.” For the most part, that is usually a user error. I have seen instances where things haven’t shown up, and I still don’t have the answers to those.

Theresa: [10:48] Stay on top of your software. Make sure you don’t forget to schedule your updates and things like that. There’s a lot of times where we have to work really closely with IT. I mean, IT is probably who we work closest with because they support our efforts as well.

Henrik:  [11:03] Thank you.

Jennifer:  [11:03] Sure.

Henrik:  [11:04] For more on this and other digital asset management topics, go to anotherdamblog.com. For this podcast and 160 other podcast episodes including transcripts of every interview, go to anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, email me at anotherDAMblog@Gmail.com. Thanks again.

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts,  RadioPublic, RSS, Spotify or TuneIn

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Jennifer Sellar on Digital Asset Management

Jennifer Sellar discusses Digital Asset Management

 

 

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 Jennifer Sellar. Jennifer, how are you?

Jennifer Sellar:  [0:10] I’m good, thanks.

Henrik:  [0:11] Jennifer, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Jennifer:  [0:14] I am the Senior Digital Image Archivist at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I’ve been here almost nine years. I started out working in more traditional archives. I’m working with photography and film collections. I have an MLIS. And then, a job opened up, when I moved to New York at MoMA. They were looking for someone to organize the workflow and the digital images they were taking in the imaging studio.

[0:43] When I came in, they were originally working with the Excel Spreadsheet, some basic metadata that they were adding in, while they were shooting images. My job was initially to organize the studio, and get all of their workflow, so that it was set up, so that they weren’t using [laughs] spreadsheets. We’re able to track all their images. At the same time, the museum actually started the processing of getting a DAM System, and had chosen one using a committee through various people at the museum.

[1:13] Once that was established, I was the primary person to the front-end of the DAM at the museum. I work with all of the different departments, working with their workflow, and getting their materials into the DAM. Then, I work with a committee and various people through the museum, primarily in IT, so that the DAM is running on a daily basis.

Henrik:  [1:36] Jennifer, how does a modern art museum use Digital Asset Management?

Jennifer:  [1:41] We use it as a workflow for all of our images. Actually now, not just imaging materials, but all sort of multimedia materials in the museum. We started out, as I’ve said, in the imaging studio, because the imaging studio’s responsible for taking all the images of the artwork. Those are used for publications, retail or anything at the museum. We would use it for the website.

[2:11] Once we got that established, we started using it for all imaging. It’s been slowly growing, retail, graphics, the conservation department. All of their images are also in there and fully searchable. Everyone at the museum has some sort of access. Most users have a basic access to be able to download a JPEG from the [DAM] system.

[2:36] We actually have our rights management outsourced to two companies. One is Scala, which is in Italy, the other one is Art Resources, which is based in New York. They oversee our Rights Management, but that flows through my department and through me. They are able to use the DAM System, to be able to find what we have for their researchers. It allows them to do research, where we don’t have to do it on our end, and then they’re responsible for overseeing the rights, and getting the images out to other people.

[3:07] We also use it as a workflow to get our images to our main museum database, TMS, which is used throughout the museum world. That also allows the website to be able to get images as well. We are now recently using another new system in the museum called “The Digital Repository for Museum Collections” which we call DRMC, which is basically a system archive and preserve any original digital artwork in the museum. They actually are providing access copies of those works that are available in the DAM for users. If a curator wants to watch one of those, they’re able to watch those in our DAM System.

[3:45] We, primarily, pull a lot of our data from the TMS System automatically. We put that in place. The TMS System has rights in regards to the artwork and uses in any of those documentation.

[3:57] That’s pulled into the Asset Management System. Our resources in Scala will be able to see what the images are, if they have any issues. Again, we’re providing the image. If a person is using that, they would actually go to the artists’ estate or the artist themselves, and then get their additional permission. It’s fairly complicated.

[4:18] We’ve actually looked into some additional rights system, because you’ll hear from a lot of people with DAM Systems. One DAM doesn’t usually fit everything perfectly. Rights seems to be a big issue. We have some basic rights information, but obviously, as you get into things like video, which we just started pulling in, rights gets much more complicated than with just one artist. It becomes very complicated.

[4:45] We’re looking at different ways of putting that in through using a documentation that would be attached with the asset, versus it necessarily being searchable directly as a field in the DAM. That’s one thing when you’re working in a museum, especially in modern museums. Somewhere like The Met, someone that’s dealing with stuff that’s out of copyright, it’s a little bit easier, but we have to be very concern about how our permissions are set.

[5:08] A lot of times, people don’t realize all the rights involved, when you’re working with people. They want to go ahead and use the image [laughs] , if they have full access to it or are able to download it very easily without going through a process of someone with checks and balances. A lot of that is set through permissions.

[5:26] Primarily, there are very few people in the museum who have full access to be able to download. Those people tend to be people who are working in departments who would understand rights, so publications obviously, they understand that they can’t just take an image and automatically use it.

Henrik:  [5:42] Jennifer, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with DAM?

Jennifer:  [5:45] For us, and this is a challenge, no matter where you are, people are producing so much content at this point. I’ve been in the studio. We’ve seen the number of growth images we do. It’s massive, the amount that we do now, compared to what we did eight years ago. Again, same thing with video and audio in the museum. Every department is producing more and more materials, honestly with less people.

[6:13] It’s very difficult to get people to buy into being able to put, to give us the information or materials in a way that will actually work in the Asset Management System. Also, a lot of times, the people we work with don’t necessarily even have the ability to do it. In the studio, we have great resources. We have Photoshop. We have Bridge.

[6:34] We have all of these ways to put in metadata, and set up metadata to automatically go into materials. There are a lot of people working in the museum who can’t even open a TIF image [laughs] on their machines. A lot of times, they’ll look at a disc from an outside photographer, and they won’t be able to even to do anything with them.

[6:53] A big goal for us is to try to figure out a good space, where those people can view enough information and have workflows that they can get that material to us in a way that it works in the DAM. It’s finding that sweet spot between that, which always very difficult.

[7:10] We have the luxury of being able to implement our DAM fairly slowly. We’ve been able to go to departments and realize when they’re ready and when they’re not [laughs] , because if not, if people just throw you materials, it doesn’t work very well with the DAM, because while you can put them in there, they’re not usable if they don’t have their correct data or organization with them. I would say that’s probably the biggest challenge for us.

[7:32] It’s being able to handle all the materials that are coming in with the amount of people working. We’ve had a lot of success. Because of that issue, we’ve been really successful of being able to integrate any systems that were available already, which I talked a little bit about TMS. We are able to pull a lot of data from that database, because it’s really rich.

[7:56] There are people who are working with that full‑time, who really know the art, the artists and all that information. It makes sense. We can do that with artwork. We have an object ID that’s unique. We’re able to pull all that information about the artwork automatically in every day. Also, we’ve been able to do a workflow, where we’ve been able to automate pulling and approving the materials.

[8:19] As we go along each step, we’ve been able to automate more and more. A curator has to proof an image, and it goes automatically to the database into the website, without them having to do a lot of work. That’s been a great success. Also, just putting the materials into the DAM System has allowed us to see overlaps in different departments, because departments tend to not necessarily always speak to each other.

[8:43] There were some departments who are taking similar images of each other, so that they could actually realize that they didn’t need to rehire a photographer to shoot something, since we already had it. They’re able also to understand a little bit more at the front end that rights are important. There used to be a lot of handshake agreements [laughs].

[9:02] They realize now if they’re going to pay an outside photographer for images that it would be great, if we can get the rights for those, and get people to sign off releases. It’s helped the museum realize that kind of thing that will help in the long run for these assets to be used more than once.

Henrik:  [9:21] Jennifer, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Jennifer:  [9:25] For people who are trying to go into the industry, I would say there is more and more course work raised on DAMs, but there is so much out there, if you are already working, so I wouldn’t go a more traditional library field. There are things, like the DAM meetups in New York, which are great. It’s really amazing. You can meet people. You can learn about the industry. It’s a great place for contacts, any meetups.

[9:46] I was going to the other day, there’s a meetup for that, if you need to learn about scripting, if you need to learn about taxonomy. Those are amazing groups, and they’re great resources. Now, there’s so much more material on the Web.

[9:59] I was looking at film and video. It’s not my strong suit and background, NYU has a film archiving program. They put all their syllabus online now. You can see all the course material. A lot of times, there’s links. Sometimes, there’s lectures.

[10:18] It’s really amazing from when I went to library school 15 years ago, what is out there and free. There is so many more ways to network than there were 10 years ago even. Just use every kind of person that you can go out there.

[10:32] I would also recommend getting internships. We always have interns. I’ve gotten a couple of interns actually from the DAM meet up for people who are interested. Some people were like adult returning students, and not necessarily who would have originally started out in that background. If you’re in a city or anywhere, there’s Asset Management Systems in every field. It’s a growing industry.

[10:51] For people who already work in Asset Management, for us the largest success for us is to look through the museum and see we don’t have a large staff. That’s very common, especially in non‑profits and museums. We’ve been able to collaborate and use other departments to get a lot of things done. That’s what I look at. That’s been successful here for us.

Henrik:  [11:14] Thanks, Jennifer.

Jennifer:  [11:15] Thanks.

Henrik:  [11:16] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to anotherdamblog.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. For this and 150 other podcast episodes, including transcripts of every interview, go to anotherdampodcast.com. Thanks again.

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts,  RadioPublic, RSS, Spotify or TuneIn

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Jared Bajkowski on Digital Asset Management

Jared Bajkowski discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does a Medical Institute use Digital Asset Management?
  • What are the biggest challenges and successes with 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 Jared Bajkowski. Jared, how are you?
Jared Bajkowski: [0:10] Good. How are you?
Henrik: [0:11] Great. Jared, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Jared: [0:15] I’m the Digital Assets Manager for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. What the Medical Institute is, what we do..we are philanthropic organization. We fund by medical research across the United States. We’re a lot like the NIH.
[0:30] Being the Digital Assets Manager, I am in charge of cataloging, and keeping all of the photos that we use for our publications, all the photos, and graphics, and illustrations that we use on our websites, anything that we use internally for advertisements.
[0:49] Anything that we put out, we want to keep in our management system. What I do is, I gather it, I catalog it, I manage the metadata, I train the other users of the systems in the various departments, whether they be with the Science department or the Science Education department.
[1:10] Personally, I’m in Art Communications, that means that I’m in charge of whatever publications that we put out.
[1:15] The system that we use is a repository for all of the illustrations and all of the photos and everything that we’ve put out. What we want to do is make sure that everything is searchable, everything is findable, everything is safe.
[1:32] That’s an important thing. They’re not scattered around on this hard drive on that hard drive. I run the database and that’s primarily my day to day duties.
Henrik: [1:44] Why does a medical institute use digital asset management?
Jared: [1:46] We’re a large institute. We put out a lot of content and we have a lot of content on our website. We do have publications, we have educational materials that we put out. We have recruitment advertisements for scientists. That ends up being, it’s a lot of content.
[2:03] Now, without a digital assets management system, it’s really hard to keep track on what’s being used where, when it was made, what kind of rights permissions go along with a certain item or a certain record.
[2:18] It can get quickly overwhelming if you’re not certain about where something is or how something should be used or how something was used in the past. What we use it for is pretty much any illustration or photograph or graphic that we use gets put into the database system.
[2:32] It gets tagged with metadata, so we know what it is, who it is, where it was used, why we created it, who created it, who owns the rights. All of the information is important for tracking this kind of thing.
[2:46] I put it into the database before it’s actually published. There we have it, so we can reuse it in the future. It’s something that we can leverage.
[2:54] Someone asks us, “Oh, can I use that illustration? It’s a perfect illustration for an article I’m writing. I’m writing an article on such and such scientist, and I see you have a good portrait of him on your website. Can we use that?”
[3:06] Having a digital access management system allows us to quickly find that item, for one. And two, see who created it, and if we can even can distribute it or who owns the copyrights?
[3:21] This is all important, whenever you’re a large organization, or even a small organization, you have to keep track of this kind of thing.
[3:26] You don’t want to be distributing any materials that you don’t have the rights to. Even if you wanted, even if you could distribute it, you want to have that original high resolution scan or the original version of it to be able to distribute.
[3:42] The essence of this system is basically, it’s almost twofold. One, it’s the repository for everything that you’ve created. And two, it’s a system that you can use to distribute.
Henrik: [3:54] What are the biggest challenges and successes with digital access management?
Jared: [3:59] One of the biggest challenges I’ve found coming in to this job is, whenever you start a digital assets management system, it can be a bit overwhelming trying to track down all the different items that you know should be in there. It’s easy, if you’re starting from the ground up.
[4:16] But hardly, at least it has been my experience, with the other digital assets managers that I’ve talked to. Often, you’re not starting from the ground up.
[4:23] Often, you are coming in midstream where you either have an access management system in place already, or it’s an old system that maybe isn’t being used.
[4:37] Or maybe there is no system at all, and just now your organization is just coming to see the light of why digital access management is important, and then you’re charged with trying to gather up everything that you can.
[4:51] It’s very easy to get overwhelmed by simply the amount of material that’s there, or maybe the amount of material that’s not there and supposed to be there. It’s hard to prioritize, what do I take here, what do I take there? And it feels like it’s easy to get overwhelmed.
[5:08] That often is a challenge, to try to just prioritize what goes in first. And I think that’s how you have to do. You have to sit down and say all right, this is the most important or this department’s the most important, or everything in the past year is the most important.
[5:25] And we’ll get the previous years as we go. You have to sit down and and make a hierarchy of what needs to be in there first, and then start at the beginning. If you take it step by step, it takes a huge project and makes it much easier for you to get a handle on it.
[5:42] And that goes both hand in hand with another major issue that a lot of digital assets managers have, is getting the organization to buy-in to it.
[5:49] You have people, if they’re busy, they’re already working at their jobs and then you come along, trying to get them to use the system, trying to get them to work with you to load their assets into the system and so you can catalog them. So, that can often be a bit of a challenge.
[6:07] Because people frankly, either they’ve had bad experiences with databases before, or they don’t see the value in it. And it takes a lot of effort on your part to show them that it is in their benefit to use these systems, because it is.
[6:22] Whenever it works, it works fantastically. It’s almost like magic, someone comes to you and says “Oh, there was this illustration that I believe we used in an issue four years ago. I don’t know who made it.
[6:38] I don’t know the article that it was in, but I do remember it was an illustration of a red blood cell or what have you.” And if you have a good access management system with good metadata.
[6:51] Look at what the access management system was, or even something as small as perhaps, maybe a year or even a color, you should be able to find it for them.
[7:00] If you can produce something like that on a consistent basis, it really shows people the value of the system that you’ve created. If you can pull out with relative ease the items that people are looking for without having them search too hard for it.
[7:16] That’s the dream of the digital asset management system. I mean, that’s something that makes it worth their while. We’re bringing, it’s almost a cliche to say you’re bringing order to the chaos, but that’s what you’re doing.
[7:28] If your organization has a wealth of materials, but if you have a consistent system and a consistent database, all of those materials should be easily found and easily usable again.
Henrik: [7:40] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals, and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Jared: [7:45] I would say my advice, to be fair, I’m still pretty new to the profession myself. I’ve only been doing this for about two years, and I can say what was the biggest help to me really was getting to know the community of digital assets managers.
[8:03] Going to conferences, trying to link up with people through LinkedIn or joining professional groups, or subscribing to trade journals. That’s a wealth of information, you’re drawing on information of people who have been there, and have been in your position.
[8:19] And they know, they’ve done, they’ve probably heard of or done themselves whatever project that you’re currently working on. And being able to draw on past experience is a huge, huge thing for helping you develop in your career.
[8:35] Being able to ask advice is so big, and being able to have somebody to go to is huge. Another piece of advice that I would give would be really, if you’re trying to prove that the worth of your organization who is investing in a digital assets management system.
[8:53] Really, return on investment, ROI is huge for that.
[8:57] I mean often, I know and you know, people probably listening to this podcast know, you know the value of a digital asset management system. Because that’s what we do, we live it. We know why it works, and we know why it’s a valuable thing to have.
[9:12] Management may not always know that, so if you can go and you can prove to them how a database such as this is going to save money or save time, or make people more effective workers, that kind of speaks management’s language.
[9:29] And that’s how you’re going to get them to buy in to a system such as this. And you do that, I remember, I went to a conference, and it was a presentation from a major company, a major manufacturer.
[9:45] How they got their management to buy-in to the digital assets management system is that they made a presentation, and they had groups of photographs saying here are blueprints. Here’s a picture of the product, here is the commercial that we advertise this product in.
[10:04] When they went through all these different things, of all of the photographs or illustrations or video, or documents, all of the items that go into making a single product, and it was up there all on the screen. They said, “This is what we’re keeping now.”
[10:20] Everything on that screen fell off except for one thing which was the actual photograph of the product itself. What they were saying, and what they were showing is, “This is a multi step process from the idea scribbled on the napkin to the actual item being created.”
[10:39] All of this is getting lost except for photographs of the actual item itself. This is valuable things that we should be keeping. This is legacy data. This is a narrative of how an item goes from idea to product.
[10:52] This is something that can be leveraged for future products. All of it was not being kept. By showing their management by instituting this database for every product that we make, this is the amount of stuff that we can catch, and this is value.
[11:12] This is something that we can use again. This is something that we should be keeping.
[11:16] You want to speak management’s language. You want to show them how you can save money or how you can make your organization better by having a Digital Asset’s Management System.
Henrik: [11:28] Thanks, Jared
Jared: [11:29] You’re welcome. Thank you.
Henrik: [11:31] For more on Digital Asset Management, logon to anotherdamblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom and iTunes.
[11:39] If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at
anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

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

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Michelle Lowe on Digital Asset Management

Michelle Lowe discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does an organization focused automobile advertising use Digital Asset Management?
  • What are the biggest challenges and successes you have seen with DAM?
  • 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 Michelle Lowe.
[0:09] Michelle, how are you?
Michelle Lowe: [0:10] Hi, Henrik, good. How are you?
Henrik: [0:11] Good. Michelle, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Michelle: [0:15] I am the Digital Asset Manager in an automotive agency, and I
was introduced to the Digital Asset Management more than a decade ago when
we started producing digital assets and that created a need of storage for all
the photography, illustration, videos. Now, in the recent years, we started the
apps, too, the applications. At the beginning, we created a rudimentary digital
storage. We didn’t have anything. We called it a jukebox. That was based on the
[0:37] hard drives, DVDs and servers, which didn’t work very well with us.
But later on, we were able to acquire a Digital Asset Management system, and
our lives completely changed, became a lot easier.
[1:01] A couple of years ago, I moved to another agency that didn’t have any
type of storage system. They were in big need of a DAM. With my previous experience,
I was able to put in place a Digital Asset Management system, making
sure all the assets are easy to be accessed, the metadata is correct, the rights
and expiration dates are up to date. For legal matters, this is very important in
the advertising world.
[1:30] I am responsible for adjusting and processing all the agency’s assets and,
also, for delivering them to our clients’ central DAM system. They have one, too,
because they have many agencies they work with. They use all the assets such
as digital assets, from every other agency.
[1:51] Our agency’s digital asset system is a central repository where every art
director, or designer, or buyer, competitor even, account executives can access
the assets and use them for their project.
[2:05] DAM is a very flexible storage system, we have all kinds of files, APS, has
JPEG s in designs. We have them in all kinds, audio and video files, too. That
helps a lot.
Henrik: [2:21] How does an organization focused on automobile advertising use
Digital Asset Management?
Michelle: [2:26] Because our client operates globally, we must be efficient.
When it comes to digital assets, advertising now is a very fast paced environment
and projects have a quick turn around and having DAM systems helps immensely.
[2:41] We’re introducing a very large number of assets with our projects
but at the same time, for budget purposes, we have to share the assets with
other agencies that work for the same clients. To meet these needs, we deliver
to our client everything we create along with the metadata and they add them
to their central DAM system where the other agencies, around the world, have
access to.
Henrik: [3:07] What are the biggest challenges and success that you’ve seen
with Digital Asset Management?
Michelle: [3:11] Usually, adoption would be one challenge, and getting people
to know about Digital Asset Management system and accepting it and finally
using it. But since I have the system, I had to train and many times, I go one-onone
team members and it’s challenging. [3:30] Another challenge is the metadata
which is a very important part of any DAM system and everyone needs to
be involved in it, in the input of it. Not only for the legal aspect of it but also
because the quality of the metadata we applied to the assets can affect the
chances of them being found and subsequently used. Every word becomes
of keyword.
[3:55] Eventually, if you research that, DAM has a great future. I would like to be
better at it that and advertising. It’s a challenge, at this point, too. That’s the
best thing when we have our colleagues and team members learning something
about it and working with it and finding that it’s making their lives a lot easier
that is the best thing.
Henrik: [4:23] What advice would you like to share with other DAM professionals
and people aspiring to be DAM professionals?
Michelle: [4:27] A Digital Asset Manager needs to have great organizational
skills, be focused, and try to stay consistent. I think a bit OCD, if I can say that
would actually work because a perfectionist is an ideal candidate for the DAM.
[4:46] Another advice would be understand the user’s rights and copyright law
and really understand the work flow process of your organization that you are
involved with that is very, very important.
[5:00] I’ve been doing this for a while and I think working on DAM is just perfect
because it gives you challenges and gives you joy. Every day, I can tell you,
it’s the best.
Henrik: [5:13] Thank you, Michelle.
Michelle: [5:14] You’re welcome. It was a great pleasure.
Henrik: [5:17] For more on 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.

Related Articles

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

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