Listen to Jennifer Anna speak about Digital Asset Management
Here are the questions asked:
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does an independent conservation organization use Digital Asset Management?
What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen 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 0:00 This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Jennifer Anna. Jennifer, how are you?
Jennifer Anna 0:08 I’m great. Thank you for having me.
Henrik de Gyor 0:11 Jennifer, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Jennifer Anna 0:14 Right now, I’m serving as the Digital Asset Manager for World Wildlife Fund. And my responsibilities actually encompass several different roles ranging from, say, contract manager, librarian, photo editor to product owner, so kind of a jack of all trades, if you will. And throughout my, I guess, 10 plus year career, I would say that the majority of my roles have been as product owner in some capacity.
Henrik de Gyor 0:52 Jennifer, how does an independent conservation organization use Digital Asset Management?
Jennifer Anna 0:57 So our Digital Asset Management platform is accessible by our entire network. We are a network of approximately 100 offices spanning from Columbia to Myanmar to US to UK. And at this point in time, our library is of photography and video that tells the story of the work that WWF or World Wildlife Fund does. So the way that we work, the DAM team are very small, but I’ll say DAM team works might be a little bit different than how maybe other DAM teams work, in that, we tend to be kind of involved with the full pre-production to kind of post-production processes as well as like the DAM processes of ingestion, cataloging, and distribution.
Jennifer Anna 2:08 What our library contains is the commissions, the trips that we send photographers, or filmmakers out into the field, again, to sort of tell the story of World Wildlife Fund’s work. So we actually have commissioned shoots in the library. We also have staff photography, because a lot of our colleagues are working in program science. And so they’re actually out in the field. And part of their research work is to actually document it. So we also have staff photography, in the system as well. Another thing that we have, to a lesser extent, are what we called camera traps. And this is the way that our science folk capture the actions of animals to sort of understand better how we can help conserve their landscapes, and also kind of like, yeah, conserve their landscapes conserve wildlife. So those are sort of and then we also, of course, have licensed images from stock agencies like nature picture library, we used to license from National Geographic or National Geographic Creative, even though they’re I think they’re no longer licensing. So it’s kind of those like, I think four or five buckets of imagery that we’re kind of pulling in from a global network.
Jennifer Anna 3:39 There’s different sort of like talents and expertise across the network, the DAM team, and also certain production teams across the network, kind of assist with different processes. And that can be helping with the contract process to make sure that we’re getting the right deliverables from our photographers and filmmakers to kind of helping with the editing process when those assets have been delivered, creating B roll packages, and then of course, and then the processes of actually getting them into the hive or which we call our DAM the hive and getting them distributed. So again, it’s a little bit different in that our DAM work actually extends sort of beyond the management of the DAM into said, like contract processes working with photographers and filmmakers, doing edits, and again, like getting them to the system and then getting them distributed. And the way that our DAM is actually used, for the most part, our DAM is accessible by again, our entire network. If you have a WWF employee, you have access to our DAM so we have approximately 4000 users And so, again, our DAM may be a bit different in that it’s not just utilized by marketing and communications teams across a network. Program staff use it. Science staff use it. Our accounting teams probably use it for if they’re working on something. So it’s very far reaching like our DAM definitely serves our users sort of beyond the marketing and tech teams at WWF.
Henrik de Gyor 5:34 Jennifer, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Jennifer Anna 5:39 So let’s start with successes. I think what I’ve seen in my time in DAM is that we’ve been rethinking DAM as part of a larger marketing technology ecosystem, which I think that’s been a very positive step for the industry. I think we are thinking about DAM more holistically. And understanding they are programs requiring long term management versus standalone platforms or products, which was more the philosophy when I got started, as I said over 10 years ago, I think we understand more now. I think the industry understands more now that it’s a kind of a people first, technology second initiative, and that it can take a village to make these Digital Asset Management platforms run. And I think that’s all very positive.
Jennifer Anna 6:45 That said, DAM program still continue to be undervalued and misunderstood by companies, and therefore, I think they’re still being under resourced. I see large companies, fully resourcing their CMS, their CRM, their social media departments, and other marketing comms tech platforms with teams and budgets. But then they only employ one person to manage all the aspects of the DAM platform. And just to reiterate, these DAM programs take a village to succeed. So I would really like to see the industry help companies set these programs, and the people required to manage them up to succeed.
Henrik de Gyor 7:36 Jennifer, what advice we’d like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Jennifer Anna 7:42 I would say a few things, I would say learn about the larger marketing communications technology ecosystem, and approach DAM holistically as part of a larger system of processes and people. I would also say you need to be prepared to speak to different stakeholders in their own language about DAM. Change management is a big part of making a DAM program succeed.
Jennifer Anna 8:20 That said, I would also say it’s important to set boundaries and expectations. Many DAM jobs, depending on what they are, are actually several jobs in one and you will need to be able to educate your stakeholders about what is possible. Many times when you are coming into a new workplace, you will be the expert. No one else in the organization or company will understand DAM the way that you do. And then I would say the final thing is with that said, know that you don’t need to know everything. Technology changes so fast that we are just really running along with it.
Henrik de Gyor 9:08 Well, thanks, Jennifer.
Jennifer Anna 9:09 Thank you so much. This is really a pleasure.
Listen to Another DAM Podcast interview with Iqvinder Singh about Digital Asset Management
Here are the questions asked:
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does a distributor of creative products use Digital Asset Management?
What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen 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 (00:00): This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Iqvinder Singh. How are you?
Iqvinder Singh (00:09): I’m great. How are you?
Henrik de Gyor (00:10): Great. Iqvinder, How are you involved with digital asset management?
Iqvinder Singh (00:14): I’m the DAM Librarian and Taxonomist for one of the country’s largest art supplier. MacPherson’s are based out of Emeryville, California. So my role is to manage all the assets associated with our over hundred thousand products. So our products are distributed through companies like Michaels, Blick Art and thousands of other art retailers across the country. And I basically activate three areas and in the DAM ecosystems. So I manage the day to day asset management. I define the taxonomy. I also manage the eCommerce business that comes out live on sites like Amazon and walmart.com. So that’s kind of what I do digital asset management.
Henrik de Gyor (01:12): Iqvinder, how does a distributor of creative products use digital asset management?
Iqvinder Singh (01:17): We get digital assets from many different sources. The main one is we get the product imagery directly from our manufacturers. So they send us anything and training videos through actual product photography. And then, we take those assets, we bounce it against our brand standards to make sure that it aligns with what we need to publish for our retailers. And at times, we also do our own in house photography and video to make sure that we have the needs for anything that a supplier or our vendors can supply to us. So we take the products and then we send it out to companies like Michaels, they might have needs for their catalogs. They might have needs for their social media. They might have needs for their website. And each one of these thousands of retailers across the country, they might have unique needs, which might be, you know, different in size, you know, some, it’s like a product from one angles. Others like it from a different angle, some prefer videos, you know, some prefer JPEGs and PDFs and TIFs and all kinds of different attributes. In our DAM we have total of, I would say, close to 200 different attributes tied to each product. So anytime a retailer comes back to us and say, Hey, we need the following for this particular product, we can easily automate that process and send them exactly what they need. And so, you know, at one point all of this was done manually, but we have the tools where we can output all this information automatically and we can do it for thousands of items at once.
Henrik de Gyor (03:23): And just to clarify, the attributes you’re speaking of, is that metadata fields?
Iqvinder Singh (03:26): Exactly. It’s a metadata field.
Henrik de Gyor (03:31): What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Iqvinder Singh (03:36): Right now? You know, we, we are in the process of cleaning our DAM libraries, so we have assets that are outdated. You know, we have products that were shot, you know, 20 years ago. And so it’s, it’s somewhat of a manual process to get some of the newer imagery for these product and deactivate some of the old product imagery. And oh, so, you know, when you have over a hundred thousand assets, you know, it’s, it’s hard to identify which ones are new and which one are outdated. We do have a process in place where anything that’s older than five years, we are reaching out to our distributor to validate, to make sure that there’s no newer packaging out there. So getting the product out to the market in a speedy manner is always a challenge. We have to make sure we’re not only getting first in the market, but also we have the latest and greatest product imagery and just, you know, simplifying some of our own internal processes.
Iqvinder Singh (04:52): And, we still have so much, um, metadata sitting in spreadsheets and antiquated old tools and drives. So we’re just trying to flush out our own system too have the latest and greatest in our central hub.
Henrik de Gyor (05:11): And what advice would you like to share with them professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Iqvinder Singh (05:15): I would say anybody who’s coming into or even thinking about becoming a DAM Specialist, I would say is learn. Learn the life cycle of a product. In a lot of organizations nowadays you’re going to end up wearing many different hats. You’re not going to be just strictly a digital asset manager. You’re going to be providing creative feedback, you’re going to be managing, you know, assets for both web and print.
Iqvinder Singh (05:49): So I would recommend learn all the ins and outs of those… how your product’s going to be outputted so you have a better understanding of what you know, what you’re working with. And it will also make you a better communicator when you’re dealing with vendors and internal creative and marketing teams. because it’s, you know, your role as a DAM manager, it’s, it’s not a standalone role, at least not in my world. You’re going to be dealing with merchandising teams and marketing teams and logistics outside third party agencies. So kind of learn the whole ecosystem of where your role sits, learn the ins and outs of marketing and creative. And it will just make you a not only great digital asset management, you know, you’re going to be a librarian and a day to day and you’re sort of the role of a taxonomist and a lot of those companies that I worked with didn’t have that particular role, so I had to quickly speed up myself to kind of understand, uh, how the product is being used and what it means to the internal teams, what it means to people outside of our company that will be using this product and learning the proper terminology to house these products in a hierarchy that’s easy to understand and download by all different parties. There are great tools out there, but the one thing to kind of keep in mind is that, you know, all products have a lifecycle and at some point a new product comes in and we discontinue something else. So a lot of DAM Managers, they make the mistake of fulfilling their hub with all the products, but there’s not a cleaning up. There’s gotta be a process in place for a continuous cleanup of all the different assets we have in our libraries. Just in the last year, we wiped out over 30,000 assets either they were dated or no longer carried by our company. So you get to keep those kinds of things in mind. Otherwise, if the wrong product gets out in the market, that means you have to send retraction letters and could cause some other indirect issues. So just kinda keep that in mind.
Henrik de Gyor (08:30): Good point. There’s a lot of lifecycle management challenges because things keep evolving and it is not a one and done, to your point, in the world of DAM.
Iqvinder Singh (08:39): Exactly.
Henrik de Gyor (08:40): Well, thanks for your advice. Appreciate it.
Henrik de Gyor interviews Alan Gottlieb about Digital Asset Management
(duration 8:43)
Questions asked:
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does a nonprofit environmental organization use Digital Asset Management?
What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people who aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor (00:00):
This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Alan Gottlieb. Alan, how are you?
Alan Gottlieb (00:08):
I’m doing well, Henrik. How are you?
Henrik de Gyor (00:10):
Good. Alan, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Alan Gottlieb (00:14):
So I’m the Digital Asset Manager at a national environmental nonprofit. I maintain and develop a DAM system that serves upwards of 600 users at our headquarters in New York and in Washington and at state and local offices across the country. I’m something of a one-man-band. I’m currently doing much of the ingest, description and creating rules and standards as I move ahead of with development of the system while also identifying new content providers and monitoring users on the system.
Henrik de Gyor (00:50):
Alan, how does a nonprofit environmental organization use Digital Asset Management?
Alan Gottlieb (00:55):
So, on the downstream side, our contact team includes photography from the DAM to illustrate stories in our beautiful magazine and our websites and with reports that we share with the public. We’re a nonprofit, so we also use assets for fundraising and marketing. And we use assets for communication. Communications with media organizations and on social and we also have a large outreach and education component to our organization. So educators use these assets to help create public programs. On the upstream side, our organization runs a popular nationwide wildlife photo contest for amateurs and professionals and contestants who enter photos may as part of their of their entry grant just rights to reproduce their images to further our mission. The photography from that yearly contest is at the core of the wildlife photography on our DAM. And many people use those assets and you know, our efforts. We also maintain an ever expanding collection of creative photography shot by our photo department staff and network photographers. They shoot activities and events across the country, conservation efforts, legislative initiatives and local programs or citizen science events. Also scientists may do field work and contribute photography that documents that.
Henrik de Gyor (02:33):
Alan, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Alan Gottlieb (02:38):
So when I arrived at the organization, the DAM was about two years old and it was still in a pretty early stage of development. People who knew about it were using it. It was, you know, clearly meeting a need for high quality, interesting wildlife photography, but not everyone in the network was aware of the DAMs existance and if so, how it could work for them? Also, you know, initial metadata profile had been set up, but largely abandoned, you know, say for one important searchable field. There were really no controlled vocabularies, just backlog of assets and there was really no file naming convention either. So, since then I’ve worked to establish basic DAM design and good practices, you know, establishing workflows, creating system rules and governance structures and improving security and establishing, controlled vocabularies. You know, because there was a lack of metadata fields.
Alan Gottlieb (03:46):
A search wasn’t very flexible and people were getting, you know, I thought very incomplete search results. So as an interim solution, identify the info that we wanted to maintain and, you know, use a free text keyword fields to answer those values. And finally, now I’m in the midst of making more permanent changes by establishing metadata profile, finalizing controlled vocabularies and developing rights metadata. And you know, I think establishing this should make a lot of things easier, including, you know, ingest and just further stabilizing description. Oh. So I think managing rights on our systems is a challenge. And one I’m also tackling now, less than half of the photography on the DAM was shot by employees, is work for hire or is otherwise owned by us. The rest of the photography was a shot by some combination of contestants, freelance photographers on assignment and other employees. That is, you know, people who still own their work and also the rights that we requested from contestants change somewhat from year to year early on.
Alan Gottlieb (05:05):
So we have a big variety of rights situations that we’re trying to grapple with. And I’m in the midst of setting up rights metadata fields so we can maintain a self service model where users can understand that at glance, I hope, how they can use the assets at least for, you know, various editorial uses. And in the more complex uses usage situations, we’re going to have users come to us and request permission. I’m trying to get a bead on all our upstream content producers and media, you know, and that’s a challenge maybe in part because we have a kind of a nod, entirely centralized structure. Our DAM is administered in the photo department so we have that large amount of content being driven by our shooters. But we have shooters and videographers among our communications people and social media people and scientists may have content that our national local users would find useful.
Alan Gottlieb (06:09):
And identifying those people I think is also a work in progress for me. Our organization is also not entirely centralized for a historic reasons. I think I just mentioned that for example, our local chapters and there are a lot of them are each independent nonprofit organizations themselves and though the national organization support salmon, we coordinate so well. There was initially strong adoption by the people who knew about it. Making more people in these chapters aware of us in what we offer is a challenge and we’re using internal newsletters and web pages to make our presence known. And there’s been some word of mouth growth. Also. New initiatives brought us new users and, and between us, between it all, we’ve tripled the number of users or almost tripled the number of users and doubled the downloads on the system. And the time that I’ve been there.
Alan Gottlieb (07:09):
And I think a last challenge that we’re grappling with is trying to understand how people in the organization are using the system. What are they downloading? What are they doing with those files? Once downloaded, our vendor gives us a robust audit trail so we can understand a lot of what a search for viewed and downloaded and who’s doing it, but creating reports, consolidate this information to give us a broader understanding of subject use is another current initiative. Also conducting user interviews to bolster our understanding of what’s being done downstream.
Henrik de Gyor (07:51):
Alan, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people who aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Alan Gottlieb (07:57):
Well, I’d say if you’re coming out of library school, library world, working a basic cataloging internship in the library or museum, be it with digital media, but also analog media. I think that’s really very helpful. Also, if you’re on a system, understand your users. Use system statistics, interview people, do outreach. Find those people who are using your DAM, you know, and let them give you information about what’s happening.
Henrik de Gyor (08:32):
Thanks Alan. For more on this, visit anotherdampodcast.com. Do you have any comments or questions? Please feel free to email me at
Henrik de Gyor (00:00):
This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Alan Gottlieb. Alan, how are you?
Alan Gottlieb (00:08):
I’m doing well, Henrik. How are you?
Henrik de Gyor (00:10):
Good. Alan, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Alan Gottlieb (00:14):
So I’m the Digital Asset Manager at a national environmental nonprofit. I maintain and develop a DAM system that serves upwards of 600 users at our headquarters in New York and in Washington and at state and local offices across the country. I’m something of a one-man-band. I’m currently doing much of the ingest, description and creating rules and standards as I move ahead of with development of the system while also identifying new content providers and monitoring users on the system.
Henrik de Gyor (00:50):
Alan, how does a nonprofit environmental organization use Digital Asset Management?
Alan Gottlieb (00:55):
So, on the downstream side, our contact team includes photography from the DAM to illustrate stories in our beautiful magazine and our websites and with reports that we share with the public. We’re a nonprofit, so we also use assets for fundraising and marketing. And we use assets for communication. Communications with media organizations and on social and we also have a large outreach and education component to our organization. So educators use these assets to help create public programs. On the upstream side, our organization runs a popular nationwide wildlife photo contest for amateurs and professionals and contestants who enter photos may as part of their of their entry grant just rights to reproduce their images to further our mission. The photography from that yearly contest is at the core of the wildlife photography on our DAM. And many people use those assets and you know, our efforts. We also maintain an ever expanding collection of creative photography shot by our photo department staff and network photographers. They shoot activities and events across the country, conservation efforts, legislative initiatives and local programs or citizen science events. Also scientists may do field work and contribute photography that documents that.
Henrik de Gyor (02:33):
Alan, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Alan Gottlieb (02:38):
So when I arrived at the organization, the DAM was about two years old and it was still in a pretty early stage of development. People who knew about it were using it. It was, you know, clearly meeting a need for high quality, interesting wildlife photography, but not everyone in the network was aware of the DAMs existance and if so, how it could work for them? Also, you know, initial metadata profile had been set up, but largely abandoned, you know, say for one important searchable field. There were really no controlled vocabularies, just backlog of assets and there was really no file naming convention either. So, since then I’ve worked to establish basic DAM design and good practices, you know, establishing workflows, creating system rules and governance structures and improving security and establishing, controlled vocabularies. You know, because there was a lack of metadata fields.
Alan Gottlieb (03:46):
A search wasn’t very flexible and people were getting, you know, I thought very incomplete search results. So as an interim solution, identify the info that we wanted to maintain and, you know, use a free text keyword fields to answer those values. And finally, now I’m in the midst of making more permanent changes by establishing metadata profile, finalizing controlled vocabularies and developing rights metadata. And you know, I think establishing this should make a lot of things easier, including, you know, ingest and just further stabilizing description. Oh. So I think managing rights on our systems is a challenge. And one I’m also tackling now, less than half of the photography on the DAM was shot by employees, is work for hire or is otherwise owned by us. The rest of the photography was a shot by some combination of contestants, freelance photographers on assignment and other employees. That is, you know, people who still own their work and also the rights that we requested from contestants change somewhat from year to year early on.
Alan Gottlieb (05:05):
So we have a big variety of rights situations that we’re trying to grapple with. And I’m in the midst of setting up rights metadata fields so we can maintain a self service model where users can understand that at glance, I hope, how they can use the assets at least for, you know, various editorial uses. And in the more complex uses usage situations, we’re going to have users come to us and request permission. I’m trying to get a bead on all our upstream content producers and media, you know, and that’s a challenge maybe in part because we have a kind of a nod, entirely centralized structure. Our DAM is administered in the photo department so we have that large amount of content being driven by our shooters. But we have shooters and videographers among our communications people and social media people and scientists may have content that our national local users would find useful.
Alan Gottlieb (06:09):
And identifying those people I think is also a work in progress for me. Our organization is also not entirely centralized for historic reasons. I think I just mentioned that for example, our local chapters and there are a lot of them are each independent nonprofit organizations themselves and though the national organization support salmon, we coordinate so well. There was initially strong adoption by the people who knew about it. Making more people in these chapters aware of us in what we offer is a challenge and we’re using internal newsletters and web pages to make our presence known. And there’s been some word of mouth growth. Also. New initiatives brought us new users and, and between us, between it all, we’ve tripled the number of users or almost tripled the number of users and doubled the downloads on the system. And the time that I’ve been there.
Alan Gottlieb (07:09):
And I think a last challenge that we’re grappling with is trying to understand how people in the organization are using the system. What are they downloading? What are they doing with those files? Once downloaded, our vendor gives us a robust audit trail so we can understand a lot of what a search for viewed and downloaded and who’s doing it, but creating reports, consolidate this information to give us a broader understanding of subject use is another current initiative. Also conducting user interviews to bolster our understanding of what’s being done downstream.
Henrik de Gyor (07:51):
Alan, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people who aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Alan Gottlieb (07:57):
Well, I’d say if you’re coming out of library school, library world, working a basic cataloging internship in the library or museum, be it with digital media, but also analog media. I think that’s really very helpful. Also, if you’re on a system, understand your users. Use system statistics, interview people, do outreach. Find those people who are using your DAM, you know, and let them give you information about what’s happening.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Why is Digital Asset Management so complex?
What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen 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: 00:00 This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Ian Matzen. Ian, how are you?
Ian Matzen: 00:08 I’m well, thank you very much, Henrik.
Henrik de Gyor: 00:09 Ian, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Ian Matzen: 00:14 I’ve been involved with Digital Asset Management for about six years professionally. Four of those years, I’ve been a remote Digital Asset Manager. I’m currently working as the Digital Asset Management Librarian with Wells Fargo. They have a Marketing Department and they have a Digital Asset Management system there. I’ve been helping with the system’s rollout and testing new features, training new groups, and setting up the system for those new groups. I’ve also been working on asset migration, workflow automation and spending a bit of time on user adoption. In my work there, I have been serving as a consultant. We had a DAM reporting project that involves data analysis and display… or working with that… Visualizing that data for us to understand that better. I’ve also been working on some projects involving record retention and various user adoption projects including a DAM gamification project that I’m currently rolling out.
Ian Matzen: 01:24 Before that, I was the Digital Asset Manager at America’s Test Kitchen, which is a Boston-based publisher where I managed not only the Digital Asset Management system, but also their content management system and our workflow management system. I did a fair amount of metadata modeling for both the DAM and the CMS, Digital Asset Management system and the Content Management System. And one of the high points there is I built, designed and deployed an enterprise taxonomy and did a fair amount of automation, including asset ingest automation and digital rights management tagging automatically to digital assets for digital rights management tagging. I also did a bit of work on capturing raw data around system usage and analyzing that data to measure specifically the way that our users were reusing digital assets to show the value of the system.
Ian Matzen: 02:24 Even before that my work was as a Digital Asset Technician for a Net-a-Porter. They are a London-based luxury brand online retailer. They have offices around the world. And there, I developed a controlled vocabularies for various groups. I configured the user interface and did a quality assurance during various upgrades.
Ian Matzen: 02:45 But my work with digital assets really predates the six years I’ve been doing Digital Asset Management professionally. I’ve been working with digital assets ever since I took my first film editing class in university. I was part of the first class to really move away from the Moviola flatbed and into nonlinear editing. So, I’m really passionate about rich media, about audiovisual media workflows and technology especially as it relates to part of the creative process. For me, nothing’s really more exciting than helping art directors, designers, editors, and motion graphic artists and other artists create their work.
Ian Matzen: 03:24 That was the case when I first started working at an advertising agency and remains so in my work at I’m Marketing Department at Wells Fargo.
Henrik de Gyor: 03:34 Ian, Why is Digital Asset Management so complex?
Ian Matzen: 03:39 There are several different aspects that are complicated or complex about Digital Asset Management. I think the first that I can think of is the ever-expanding definition of what we mean by digital assets. And in most circles, when we think of or talk about digital assets, we think of audiovisual media including images, videos, animations and audio. However, more recently in some of the jobs that I’ve been in, we’ve added a lot, many more different types of files and formats for that list, including emails, text, HTML, even data are being managed by DAM Managers. So the question is, you know, should every type of visual file be supported by the DAM system?
Ian Matzen: 04:22 Ideally, they should be, but not all of the DAM systems out there are created equal. And really, you mean what it comes down to is, is choosing the best option for the digital content you’re managing. For example, the Digital Asset Management system I worked with at America’s Test Kitchen worked very well with images, whereas the current system that I worked with at Wells Fargo worked very well with video. So when it comes down to, you know, finding the right system for the material that you’re managing.
Ian Matzen: 04:53 Another aspect that adds to the complexity of Digital Asset Management is managing expectations. And that goes for users as well as the stakeholders and folks who you might report to. I think many users expect the Digital Asset Management system to behave in the same way that a search engine does. They might be similar, but the two are inherently different when it comes to search.
Ian Matzen: 05:19 Content is index differently. For starters, search engines rely on inbound links and sitemap indexing. Whereas Enterprise search requires applying terms from a controlled vocabulary and the context, of course, is very different. Also, companies want to capitalize on their investment in a DAM system. And so they turned customizing the system to meet their business requirements rather than opting for another best of breed product. So in this way, companies unknowingly risk customizing themselves into a corner, making system upgrades and migration, very challenging if not prohibitively expensive. So before or enhancing the system, it’s a good idea to ask whether another reasonable, reasonably priced system might be a better option and seek out other customers of that system who have done some enhancements to the same system that you’re using. There are risks for either option, whether you want to customize or build out your current DAM solution or go with another system.
Ian Matzen: 06:19 So a good project manager can help mitigate those risks. Finally, I think the other aspect that lends itself to the complexity is the accelerating pace of technology. Whether you know how to build an extension in Java, design a workflow automation using logic or having a solid understanding of what these are, I think it’s a good idea to at least be aware of them and have some idea of how to develop a software, how workflows can be put together and at least designed, because I think there are a lot of aspects to Digital Asset Management and the more you know, I think that the more valuable, the more helpful you’ll be in your work.
Henrik de Gyor: 07:00 Ian, What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Ian Matzen: 07:07 I think one of the main challenges to Digital Asset Management is search. Search is dependent on metadata. Much of the metadata needs to be manually entered. Though some of it can be automatically appended to digital files or to the records within a DAM system. Really it comes down to users devoting the time to adding that descriptive information. it is challenging to get them to do that and even more so getting them to do it consistently and over time. That time never really ends because metadata must change to reflect new contexts and new users that are being onboarded. So I think that that is a challenge to managing digital assets. I think the other aspect that is challenging with Digital Asset Management is showing trust. And I think what I’ve seen with many of the systems that I’ve managed is that slow interfaces or slow experience, buggy systems. If there was poor UI or lack of transparency, they all had people’s view of that DAM system.
Ian Matzen: 08:17 Their trust in that DAM system will be impacted by those aspects. So it’s much harder to win back that trust if people are experiencing one of those issues. So it’s important to, I do a lot of testing to ensure that the system is working. Quality assurance is a huge part of my job. And also to a certain extent doing a fair amount of examining the user interface and doing a UAT to ensure that the interface itself is making sense to them. And, of course, having some sort of way of tracking the digital assets through their life will end, have they been downloaded when they’ve been used in a layout perhaps if there are images. All that adds to the trust that the users have in the system.
Ian Matzen: 09:05 Some of the successes that I’ve seen in Digital Asset Management have been that for one, Digital Asset Management is a bonafide profession. I think because we have conferences now there are many job postings that ask for Digital Asset Management professionals. I think that that is a win. I think it’s very important to acknowledge and acknowledge the work that you’ve done and that other writers and other folks who are in our industry, I think it’s that’s good. Also, I think another success is centralization, and I’m not just talking about having all of our assets in one system, but also consolidating the number of systems that are found at that various companies. I think, in a rather than having, you know, four or five different, systems, some of which might be system of records, some may not be. I think it’s important to acknowledge that being able to consolidate them, that the material, but also reduce the number of systems that are being used and paid for by companies is a success.
Ian Matzen: 10:11 Another aspect or another success of Digital Asset Management is realizing workflow efficiencies. I think there’s an opportunity to renegotiate and redesign workflows. And I think that many of us working in this arena in Digital Asset Management would say that that’s something they spend a good deal of their time doing. Some examples are auto ingesting digital assets into the system. At America’s Test Kitchen, I set up a fully automated ingest. We went from doing a lot of the cataloging manually and would, you know, the folks who were consuming those digital assets had to wait for that material to be ingested before they could see and use that. Having that automated allowed people to access us those much quicker. The other aspect I think of automation is validating metadata at, again, America’s test kitchen, we found a way to actually go through and ensure that the metadata was there, that it existed.
Ian Matzen: 11:13 Folks took the time to put it in, but also validating the name against a convention we had set up. And then finally there’s a way that you can do a fair amount of work auto-tagging material. The taxonomy, that I set up for America’s Test Kitchen. One of the aspects that I, or at least challenges that I faced was applying that taxonomy to our existing or legacy content. We had over 800,000 records. Having an enterprise taxonomy is a great accomplishment, but if you can’t go back and, and actually tag that material, it’s not going to have as much impact or value. So I did develop a means of auto-tagging or existing content through automation.
Ian Matzen: 11:59 So, the last success I wanted to mention was the increased value of digital assets. I think by having a digital asset sitting on your desktop, it may be the most wonderful, incredibly creative item, but if no one can see them… To see that asset, it’s not going to have as much value as it would if it was in a Digital Asset Management system where it can be found and reused. So I think access is a huge part of that equation. But I think ultimately our goal is to make digital assets findable and see that their value increase.
Henrik de Gyor: 12:35 Ian, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Ian Matzen: 12:41 I would suggest that they would navigate to my blog. I have a blog called tameyourassets.com and I do a fair amount of blogging and writing and my intent is to share my knowledge and experience with others, especially best practices. So I hope that listeners would consider going to that URL. I think another aspect or another suggestion that I have is just know your DAM systems. It’s important to know what current systems there are both within the organization that might be a part of, but also, systems that are being offered by other vendors. It’s important to see what current and upcoming features they’re offering so that you could ask for those features for the current system that you’re using. I think another aspect of that is as partner with other system adopters or other people managing the DAM system, the same DAM system that you’re using to drive that vendor road map. So I think partnering and forming that network of system users and managers is very important. And then, also another aspect is education. I think it is very important to learn and master DAM best practices, to ask questions, learn from other practitioners, take online courses or even take courses at a local community college.
Ian Matzen: 14:05 I think finding courses in library science or computer science or data analysis, will all help you at least to give you that understanding of what those aspects are that, you can talk with other folks in your organization to help manage digital assets. And then finally, I just wanted to mention, finding a mentor in the Digital Asset Management space. They don’t have to be necessarily someone with much more or any additional experience that you might have. It could be a peer, but the benefits of having a mentor would be to find some encouragement and support for your journey in the Digital Asset Management space. They can offer you honest advice and feedback, what you’re doing and how you’re managing digital assets, and then, of course, having a mentor is helpful to expand your professional network.
Henrik de Gyor: 14:57 Great. Well, thanks Ian.
Ian Matzen: 14:59 You’re welcome. Thank you very much.
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