Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Beth Goldstein.
[0:10] Beth, how are you?
Beth Goldstein: [0:11] I’m good. Thank you. How are you?
Henrik: [0:12] Great.
[0:13] Beth, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Beth: [0:16] I’m the International Digital Asset Manager for my company. I train and evangelize our DAM to all our business partners across the globe.
Henrik: [0:24] How does an American healthcare company use Digital Asset Management?
Beth: [0:29] Even though we’re based here in the US, we really are extremely global. We as a company use our DAM internally to save time, money, and better leverage our investments in all of our creative content.
[0:41] We call our DAM, the e‑Library. The e‑Library is only one component of our greater and smarter digital initiative that we’ve been rolling out, to our marketing teams across the globe for the past three years.
Henrik: [0:54] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Beth: [0:57] Honestly, the biggest challenge is moving the business partners and marketers from the old way of doing business. Some of them believe in shared drive, SharePoint sites, USB drives, FTP sites, and many times all of these at once. Then seeing the value of going to a cloud‑based stand, where everything works harmoniously together.
[1:17] I believe that change management is a huge part of my job in engaging businesses, partners understanding I will just save them time and money. I think that change management is always going to be a problem whenever you’re dealing with lots and lots of people.
[1:31] But if you can show them in big steps, if you get one group together that has a big part of your digital asset like a global team, and get them lessons first and show that they’re uploading files, it tends to get the smaller teams excited as well. I believe our biggest success to date has been the adoption, since our launch last September, 2014.
[1:52] Currently we have over 41 countries trained and using, over 800 users, and over 10,000 digital assets in our e‑Library right now. Our biggest push was going to the global teams that create massive amounts of material like I was talking about, and showing them how easier they can create and distribute materials to country marketers.
[2:12] It was a big win for everyone in that conversation. Most of big companies have a lot of little countries like Malaysia, or Taiwan. They don’t have these big marketing budgets. But the global in US teams has much bigger budgets, so it’s easier for them to make these big pieces.
[2:26] iPad apps or big inactive PDFs, or videos, and be able to put them into our DAM. Then the countries can bring them down, localize them at a cost that is right for them, and use them.
Henrik: [2:39] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals, and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
“…be relentless, but gentle…”
Beth: [2:45] The advice I would give is to be relentless, but gentle with your business partners. I think that any new process people have to get used to the fact that they’ll be doing something different, or in a new way. Embrace that by making it fun.
[2:57] Have a naming contest for your DAM, which we did. The e‑Library was actually named by one of our employee, who wanted to make sure that it had a positive connotation and that it was brought in across the business, and that’s what we did.
[3:11] We also had a contest to see which team internally could have the most assets uploaded by a certain time. Our time frame was September to the end of the year, and we just got done with that contest. It created a lot of excitement and competition, which marketers are very competitive. It was a really great thing.
[3:27] I think that with my job here, a big portion of it is you have to believe in what you’re doing so that other people believe in it, to get them to buy in. If I don’t believe that what we have is amazing and is going to work for so many people, then no one else will.
[3:41] Believe in your DAM with your business partners as well. Also communicate. My DAM users continually hear about me, whether they like it or not. It’s not just something that we launched in September, and then just continue something that went into the background.
[3:55] I have weekly DAM Monday emails, and I kind of tongue in cheek say, “Again, it’s DAM Monday.” I give to them a tip or trick, or communicate to them that something big is coming, or training, or just asking for feedback.
[4:08] This is a really great way to be, but to continually keep it in the back of your mind that you have these tools out there, and you need to remember to go into it because it’s a new process. I also have every other month email communication newsletters that I send out, and that gives actual updates to integration, new things that are out there, new training, new team members, all that kind of stuff.
[4:30] If you want to become a DAM professional, definitely get into understanding how you can be a great business partner. I think that the job sits between a business partner and an IT. If you have a good background of both, then you’re able to be a good business partner and saying that you can communicate to the rest of the business.
[4:49] Not just the technical aspect, but what will be the benefit to the entire company. I think that you’re going to go far.
Henrik: [4:56] Thank you so much Beth.
Beth: [4:57] Of course.
Henrik: [4:58] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com.
Henrik de Gyor: [0:00] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Dan Piro.
[0:08] Dan, how are you?
Dan Piro: [0:09] I’m good, how are you?
Henrik: [0:10] Great. Dan, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Dan: [0:13] I work for Turner Broadcasting. I am the Digital Asset Manager for TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies, on‑air, creative services department.
Henrik: [0:23] Dan, how does a broadcast company use Digital Asset Management?
Dan: [0:29] When a company as big as ours, we’re talking about 10 national cable networks, implemented Digital Asset Management tool, you’re really dealing with an unfathomable amount of media that’s coming in and out. DAM is really the heart of our ability to get to that media.
[0:49] We use this system to manage all the media that’s coming in, it’s going out. We’re sharing it between each other throughout the workday. We have one enterprise system that everybody in the company uses, but we all have our own instances.
[1:04] In my case, I actually manage three different instances, one for each network. My role supports these different networks based on their different business needs. We setup each one uniquely for those networks.
[1:18] For example, TNT. They deal with mostly seasonal programming. You’ll have episodic shows, they have 10, 12 episode runs. They run 10 weeks in a row. Done. That show is going to go away for six months or a year until it comes back.
[1:33] Part of what we do is use our Digital Asset Management tools to, once that season’s over, push all that content offline. Bring it back online when we’re getting ready to lauch the next season. It really increases efficiencies across the board.
[1:48] Shortly before I started there and was in the interview process, I think we had about 10 original shows on TNT. Just in about two years it’s grown to about 25. We’re dealing with different kind of shows now too. Now we’re doing unscripted shows and a lot of big blockbuster shows.
[2:07] We had ‘The Last Ship,’ with Michael Bay. There’s all these big‑time people that are coming in to put stuff on our network which is great. At the same time, for my role, it’s like “OK, so we’re going to have 60 terabytes of footage from that show, and 40 from that show. Where’s all these stuff going to go?”
[2:25] That’s really where I come in. Making sure that all these raw materials have a place to go when they come in. Have a place to go when we’re done with them. Creating retention policies to determine how long certain things need to be around. Things we don’t need to keep forever. Some stuff we do need to keep forever.
[2:41] We have to make a long term storage solution for certain media that has to be around forever, that we’re always going to go back to.
[2:49] In terms of how we use it? We use it to create a central repository of massive amounts of media files. The benefits of it are that it creates wide access, where several people can use the same media at the same time. You can search for it, you can retrieve it. You have instant accessibility. You can view proxies of files that are not online.
[3:18] Years ago, you’d have to go pull a tape off a shelf, pop it in, fast forward to the part you are looking for, “Oh! That’s not what I need,” pop it out, put it back on the shelf, get the next one. Now, you are just looking at a screen. You’re never leaving your desk. Everything is right there in front of you.
[3:33] Metadata is absolutely key to finding anything. If you put something in your deep storage without applying metadata, you’re never going to find it again. Whether it be as basic as possible, it’s from this show, it’s from this season and it’s this type of asset. Be it shoot footage, a daily, an episode.
[3:52] Even that light level of metadata is good. When you have the option to go in and really tag it with key words and whatnot, it becomes more useful. At this point, the system is still new and we’re still growing, and I think we’re going to get to more of that in the future.
[4:10] In the very early stages, we’re more worried about making sure our new stuff is getting into this system. Then grow the abilities of it once everybody’s onboard and comfortable with it.
[4:22] I think the final aspect of it would be that there’s a safe and secure storage method where nobody’s taking a tape home, it’s disappearing in the background, they accidentally recorded over it. Everything is in one place and people have access to it, but it’s not going away. I would say those are some of the most important ways of how we use Digital Asset Management.
Henrik: [4:45] What are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset Management?
Dan: [4:49] The biggest challenge has to be putting in a new system and getting people to change their habits. It’s hard to convince people that there’s a better way than what they are already doing that works.
[4:59] The important thing as a media manager is to understand your business, how it works, and the role that DAM plays in it. It’s easy to come in and say, “I’m the Digital Asset Manager. This isn’t the way that things are supposed to work, and this is what we are going to do now.”
[5:14] You can come in with that approach, but you are going get some resistance, and have trouble getting people to work with you. The best thing that you can do when getting into a new situation, is to really empower your clients, include them in the decision making.
[5:29] If your company has gotten to the point that they need this system, they’re probably already pretty successful. You need to understand that success and know the scope of the project that you’re putting in so that you can work with these people and kind of allow them to do things the way that they like to do them, but still improve processes regularly.
[5:51] When you can recognize the history behind why things are done the way they are done and let people be a part of making this new system with you, that’s really the best way to get buy‑in from you clients. I would say that’s probably my biggest success with the network I’m supporting right now is really just being able to say that it was a team effort even though I might be managing the project myself.
Henrik: [6:18] What about would you like to share to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Dan: [6:23] Whether you are a DAM professional or not, if you’re a producer, or editor, really anybody that’s looking to be in the media business, networking is probably the most important thing that you can do.
[6:34] One thing that I like to tell people is, you have all the skills in the world but they won’t get you a job. You can keep our job with one, but if you don’t have a network of people to go to, you will never get a job to apply those skills.
[6:46] The most important thing you can do these days is talk to other people that do what you. Compare notes, talk shop, go to conferences. Hopefully, you’ll be with a company that’s supportive enough to send you to them, because they can be costly if not.
[7:01] Just really see what your peers are doing. By seeing what they do, you’re going to be able to do your job better. If you’re an aspiring Digital Asset Management professional, get on LinkedIn, join discussions, ask questions. Just find other people that do what you do.
[7:15] A lot of times if you’re just approaching somebody and saying, “Hey, help me with this job,” they might not be so receptive. If you talk to people and talk to them about what they do, and why they make certain decisions, I think they’re going to be real open to discussing things with you.
[7:32] Later down the line, when you need them for that favor, you’re going to be in pretty good position because they’re going to say, “I remember this guy and he was really cool to talk to about DAM.” Or producing, or editing. Whatever it may be.
[7:44] LinkedIn is most powerful tool to anybody in my industry right now. It boggles my mind when I talk to people around the office. That are just, “I’m not on there yet,” or “I’ll get to it one of these days.”
[8:01] Don’t wait. Get on there. It can’t hurt and you are going to connect with people you worked with ten years ago, and be like “Oh, look. That person works at NBC now.” Now you have a contact with NBC. Great!
[8:12] Another thing to do, if you’re really aspiring to get into DAM, find a way to incorporate it into your personal life.
[8:20] In my case, I am a music nut. I have to have the whole discography of every artist that I love. I have 50,000 media files and they all have artwork. They all have metadata. The year that the album came out, what artist, what album. The ratings in iTunes. 3 stars, 4 stars, 5 stars.
[8:46] I can make a playlist of Rolling Stones songs from the 70s, which in my opinion are their best years. Exclude live albums, only include songs that I’ve ranked as 4 stars and 5 stars.
[8:59] Where your friend might want to make a Rolling Stones playlist, and it’ll take him three hours to go through everything, and say, “I want these songs. Maybe that one. Maybe not. I’ll come back and decide on that later.” They can work on it for three hours. At the click of a button, I have my playlist and I’m already listening to it.
[9:14] [laughs]
Dan: [9:15] Just finding any way. Be it your personal movie collection, whatever, find a way to incorporate it to your life. If you’re not already in the field, you’re going to go on interviews and explain it to people why you’re the best person for the job. If you don’t have that past experience, at least give them something that like that.
[9:33] You have Digital Asset Managers in everyday life every day, that don’t even realized that what they’re doing with iTunes is exactly what we do with these massive media corporations.
Henrik: [9:44] Great advice. Thanks.
Dan: [9:45] My pleasure.
Henrik: [9:46] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to anotherdamblog.com.
Alex Struminger on Digital Asset Management and Storytelling 3.0
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 Alex Struminger. Alex, how are you?
Alex Struminger: [0:09] Fine, Henrik. Thanks for having me again.
Henrik: [0:12] Alex, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Alex: [0:15] Henrik, in the last time we spoke, we talked a lot about the big enterprise rollout of the UNICEF Digital Asset Management System. That was a big project. It was terrific the way it came off, but one of the things that wasn’t happening then, that’s happening a lot now is the focus on transmedia storytelling. This has shifted my focus and the focus of a lot of folks in that direction.
[0:38] One of the areas I’m working on right now is the idea of storytelling. Storytelling supported by technology. I’m calling it Storytelling 3.0 to acknowledge the advent of semantic web, search and taxonomy, DAM enabled technologies, and you got to include mobile apps in that as well.
Henrik: [0:59] How is storytelling supported by DAM?
Alex: [1:01] It’s always been important. It’s one of the most engaging things you can do as a human being, I think. If you’re talking about engagement, you can point to the track record of stories as being the longest and best measurable forms of communication engagement out there.
[1:17] That runs the gambit from the famous “Star Wars” franchise and its success. If we go back 3,000 years and talk about The Iliad and The Odyssey, we’re still talking about that 3,000 years later. I think that that’s a measurable success.
[1:30] We’re talking a lot more about storytelling now in the digital world. And of course, Storytelling, especially the storytelling as it supports brands, has to be done in a way where you can manage the story across the franchise. Everybody took a different approach to how they did it, but it all required technology support, partly because there’s a lot of digital assets involved now in storytelling. We’re not squirting ink on paper like we did in the old days. We’re not even doing the digital form of that, which is the old web. We’re doing a lot of rich, layered media, and managing a tremendous number of assets to make that happen.
[2:06] I heard one person talk about 80,000 pieces of video that had to be managed. That didn’t even include the metadata or the supporting brand assets. So digital asset management is needed on the scale that we’re trying to do it with brands, especially global brands.
Henrik: [2:22] What is a co‑creation network and how does it fit with DAM?
Alex: [2:26] Co‑creation network are things to talk a lot about these days. Essentially, the idea behind a co‑creation network is if you have a group of people who are working on different kinds of product sharing a similar story. This could be for the Star Wars example. We talked about transmedia being something that literally transcends different kinds of media. I don’t know if transcends is the word I’m looking for. It is transmedia.
[2:51] It’s transmedia in the sense that there’s no uber story in any particular media so it’s not like “OK, I created the film. The film’s got all the bits in it. We’re just going to then repurpose those bits in these other places. I got the book, and I’m going to take all the stuff of the book.”
[3:06] The idea in Star Wars, again, is a great example, is that there are bits that are in one area and other bits in other areas, and they don’t quite overlap, but they share a common story. You can tell if they’re wrong.
[3:22] A great example of that, there’s the Star Wars films. I’m a big fan of them. I watched all of them several times. There’s the cartoon series about the Clone Wars, then there’s action figures, the product, there’s comic books, the novels, and all that stuff.
[3:39] Five years old at the time, my step‑son came in and he was trying to throw off the yoke of the homemade costume. After a lot of battling back and forth, and a good effort on the part of my wife and I to try and do the homemade costume thing for a few years, we finally capitulated.
[3:56] When he comes in with the costume catalogue from the online store, or the mail‑order store, and he’s got this whole page, there’s like six different bounty hunters he can be in Star Wars. He names every single one of them. I’ve seen every single one of the movies many times. I only knew the name of two of those.
[4:14] This is a great example of how the uber story and transmedia isn’t carried by one particular media type. It’s literally in that sense transmedia. In order to accomplish this, you have to have a co‑creation network in the sense that you’ve got to have a network of people who understand the brand, who understand the story, and who are essentially stewards of that canon, so that you don’t go over here and make that piece about the brand and the cartoon, or on the online thing, or this video over here, or an event in the physical world, and have it not be completely in line with the story. This is how the network has to be brought together.
[4:55] The role of DAM plays here is this is a really difficult thing to do. The challenge has been not just different skillsets with people doing different kinds of product, but they also span things like different localities. “I may need to have this done in French,” or “I may need to have this done in Chinese”. We have to make sure that that local translation works. Where do we keep all this stuff? In the DAM.
[5:21] The rights, the ability to use things for certain purposes, all that stuff has to be put somewhere. Otherwise, this whole thing has become way too expensive. DAM supports the co‑creation network in that sense.
Henrik: [5:32] It sounds like brand consistency.
Alex: [5:34] Brand consistency, brand protection, licensing. You don’t want to be shadowing the door of the lawyer’s office all the time, because you didn’t know you couldn’t use the product in China, or whatever it is. In this sense, I think the co‑creation is where the people, the creative people who are making the product, and all of the rules, the availability of the assets, their application, and who can do what with what come together. That’s technology‑enabled.
[6:05] That makes us better, faster, and more accurate doing what we’re doing, hopefully cheaper.
Henrik: [6:10] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Alex: [6:14] One thing that’s really caught my attention recently, that I think is super important. Zach Brand of NPR has mentioned it as he ralled against the monolithic giant one‑size‑fits‑all system. We really want to avoid that kind of thing.
[6:27] This has been back and forth for various reasons. There have been times when a standardized platform has benefitted the organization, but there’s also a give‑and‑take with it. There’s a cost. I think that we’re seeing now more bespoke or custom tools for particular creative tasks. You don’t want to force the creative talent to use a tool that’s a one‑size‑fits‑all and therefore going to compromise the quality of the product.
[6:57] More than anything else, we see that in the world of storytelling, and in the world where brand engagement has to come to entertainment and storytelling, mistakes and lower quality products are noticed.
Henrik: [7:09] In a negative sense.
Alex: [7:10] Right. In the sense that the technology of the co‑creation network can support all of the things that help us make use of the assets, find them, use them correctly, and stay on story. At the same time, we don’t want that technology that’s helping us to get in the way of us doing quality work.
[7:26] Caitlin Burns said Starlight Runner talked to me a little bit about the idea of an arts and crafts approach to content creation. We really have to be craftsmen in order to make the kind of product that people are going to consume. If you’re going to be a craftsman, you’re going to have to have the right tools. I am seeing more and more custom tools being made.
[7:47] But here’s the thing. Interoperability is still very important. If we take away the monolithic system that’s supposed to tie everything all together, how are we going to tie everything all together? Are we now back in our silos? We don’t want to do that. What seems to be the approach that is working is the same kind of approach that worked for web 2.0 in a lot of ways. Standards, APIs, interoperability.
[8:13] So if I’ve got a toolset over here that’s working really good for the person who’s curating my digital media video, and I’ve got another toolset over here that’s working really well for somebody who’s creating cartoons, so forth and so on, managing print assets. I don’t want to force them to use one tool that doesn’t do any of that quite as well, but I need them to talk to each other.
[8:34] I don’t want redundant assets. I don’t want redundant metadata. I want to tie it all together, in case I need to bring something from here, and something from over there together to create a product on the web, or through an app, or through any place I want to be able to publish out the content.
[8:51] We can do that by letting the systems talk to each other. We don’t have to insist on the monolithic system. In fact, we’re not dead in the water. We can take a very agile approach to this and knock out little things. Let’s make this system talk to that system. We did this when I was in UNICEF. Tie together taxonomy management with web search engines and web content systems, and basically creating APIs that let them talk to each other and it that turns out, it can do it. Everybody’s happy because I didn’t make the guy over here use something he didn’t like, the data is shared, and it works.
[9:24] That’s the bit, I think, to keep in mind. Stay over the monolithic. The bespoke system. You could do an awful lot that’s not bespoke but still custom these days. Just let them talk to each other, and think about the process, and the people involved.
Henrik: [9:38] Thanks, Alex.
Alex: [9:39] Thanks, Henrik. It’s always a pleasure to be with you.
Henrik: [9:41] For more on this and other digital asset management topics, logon to anotherdamblog.com.
Henrik de Gyor: [0:00] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Douglas Hegley. Douglas, how are you?
Douglas Hegley: [0:10] I’m good, thank you.
Henrik: [0:11] Douglas, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Douglas: [0:14] Currently, I sit at the executive leadership level in a major fine art museum in the Twin Cities. I would be the ultimate decision maker. The Digital Asset Management systems would be operated underneath my responsibility.
Henrik: [0:27] Douglas, how does a fine art museum use Digital Asset Management?
Douglas: [0:31] What’s interesting, I think, what might be a misnomer for some people, the Digital Asset Management in an art museum is actually a business driver like it is in any business. Art museums have art objects. Those objects themselves have data records for them, and those are kept in a different system.
[0:47] But we do need a Digital Asset Management system for keeping photographs of those objects, and often there will be many of those. Various angles, raking lights. Sometimes x‑ray, other spectrometer those kinds of things, as well as images of people and parties and the history of the institution. It goes on and on and on.
[1:06] I would say at this point that museums are still sticking mostly with still images in terms of Digital Asset Management. We haven’t fully embraced media asset management. We’re producing videos and that production is accelerating. I don’t think we’ve really faced some of the struggles we’re going to have, similar to the ones we had with digital photography 5 or 10 years ago.
Henrik: [1:27] What are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset Management?
Douglas: [1:31] There are many. One of the biggest challenges for us as an industry is that our metadata models are not mature. There are many different standards for the way that you would record what is in that picture. The built‑in metadata is easy enough ‑‑ date and file sizes and everything else.
[1:53] For us, since it’s often object centered photography so we’ve taken that three‑dimensional sculpture, we’ve taken it to the photo studio, lighting it, shooting it.
[2:02] How do you attach that asset to the record that’s in a different system that describes that object? We struggle with moving data back and forth, mirroring data, coming up with better methods of attaching the digital assets themselves to all of the other kinds of content that we have about an art object.
[2:22] Then, I think for us, being non‑profits, being small, being very tight funding models, affording a fancy Digital Asset Management system is a bit of a struggle. Then the first foray into digital photography that museums took beginning about 10 years ago, we had a tendency to over buy. We would be sold very fancy Digital Asset Management systems that could do lots and lots of wonderful things.
[2:48] None of which we ever took advantage of.
[2:49] We kept paying the fee every year, and throwing the assets in, and struggling with metadata models. Not really making much progress. The success is that when I worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art the photo studio went digital. Within about a year, they had amassed an enormous closetful of CDs.
[3:09] How do we go back and find those images that we shot a year ago? If there’s a success that’s clear it’s in the capacity to locate, download, relocate, reshoot when necessary the assets that are actually needed. It’s not a manual process anymore. We can have multiple users log into a system, find the image you’re looking for.
Henrik: [3:25] You can more rapidly search, find, use, reuse, repurpose.
Douglas: [3:30] I think that was a clear business win. I also think it’s aged a little bit. That win really took place…at the Met it probably took place about 2003, 2004. I’m currently at the MIA. They had a system that’s about the same age. The systems are, in essence, aging because they’re becoming full of assets, and because the metadata model, as I mentioned before, is really not mature or specific enough.
[3:54] Really not mature or specific enough. We have issues with overflow of result set. People go in and they search on something like “Rembrandt.” They’ll get thousands of returns. Many of which are place‑holder records. They are old black and white study photographs. It’s not clear which one I’m supposed to use for my marketing campaign.
[4:15] I go and start asking my friends. Now we’ve blown it out of the water. The reason they have an asset management system is so that anybody, even with a cursory knowledge of what they’re looking for, should be able to come in and get what they need.
Henrik: [4:28] True. Let’s use that example of searching for Rembrandt and you get documents and records, and then maybe some photos of the Rembrandts that you may have. Can’t you filter down to, say, “paintings of” from the thousand records for the sake of argument?
Douglas: [4:41] Again, when you over buy a system of course that functionality is there. Users need a lot of training to understand how to use it.
Henrik: [4:49] Add that information in all fairness.
Douglas: [4:50] Right, exactly. The only keyword on the photograph is Rembrandt. I should say the photograph on maybe 700 photographs. There isn’t a really good mature metadata model. Now, maybe the photographers remember because they know that only Charles would be shooting the master image. He shot those paintings about in 2007.
Henrik: [5:12] At high resolution blah, blah, blah with the proper lighting.
Douglas: [5:14] They can go in the system and they can say, “I only need things shot by Charles. I want them 2007. I want them only the TIFFs.” They can get that for you.
Henrik: [5:22] To your point, you can search for the TIFF, or you can search for the file type, meaning, “I don’t want a .doc of Rembrandt’s about the insurance record, or the transfer record, or the purchase record or whatever. I want the TIFF or the raw file or the JPEG or whatever.”
Douglas: [5:39] Although, to be clear, we’re not currently in the DAMs that we have storing any .docs. They could, I suppose. We’re not doing that.
Henrik: [5:45] Or PDF, for that matter?
Douglas: [5:46] There may be a few PDFs. That’s not really the core business case right now. The core use is still images, high res, primarily objects. Secondarily, events, people, activities of a museum being recorded.
[6:02] We also have an archive dating back 130 years, but it’s a physical archive. A few of those things get digitized now and then because there’s some need for them in a publication or something, so some of those things in there. Right now, it’s mostly just still image.
Henrik: [6:19] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals, and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Douglas: [6:23] It’s a really good question. First of all, I don’t consider myself the world’s expert on answering this question. I would say that in the museum arena, which is the arena I know best, museums are in need of people to come into our world and help us adapt best practices, help understand how businesses are running in this way.
[6:48] One of the core differences, in a way, is that we’re all looking at Digital Asset Management systems as if they are at their core set up to be persistent electronic archives. We’re not a for‑profit vendor who is creating products for which there are seasons and catalogues and websites to be made, and campaigns to be run, advertising, marketing, press, everything else, and then a year later it’s all new products. It doesn’t matter what happens to the photos of the shoes from last year.
[7:18] For us, every time we take a photo, there are a number of things. First of all, I’d say it’s a fine work of art. You’ve moved it from its safe storage space into a photo studio. Any time you move something that old and that fragile, you’re damaging it. Maybe it’s not obvious, but you have micro‑fractures, or you’re exposing it to different atmospheric conditions, or different lighting conditions, whatever it may be. You’re actually not doing good by the artwork.
[7:46] I don’t mean to belabor that point, because people are very professional and very careful. Accidents almost never happen, but it’s still a fact that it’s a risk. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to move this work of art into a studio, light it, shoot it, let’s do it at the absolute most professional, highest resolution that we can.
[8:07] Let’s get as many angles. Let’s get as many types of spectral photographs that we can manage right now so that we put that wonderful and rare and unique object back into its secure storage space and don’t touch it again for years.
[8:20] What we’re doing is we’re capturing these incredible photographs, but we’re amateur in then what we do next. We have a very professional production process, followed by a very amateur archival metadata process.
Henrik: [8:36] Does the workflow fall off? Is that your point?
Douglas: [8:39] Workflow falls off a little bit. The folks who are doing it are probably the photographers themselves, and/or relatively junior people, probably not a strong metadata library background. I don’t mean to single anyone out. There are certainly people there who are skilled. If any of them were to leave their positions, it’d be hard to replace them.
[8:58] It’s specialist knowledge. Even with that specialist knowledge, what’s missing then is some real world experience of having run this kind of system, where it’s a really rapid fire production environment.
Henrik: [9:10] You’re embedding the information, to your point. That may be missing because most photographers don’t like adding metadata to their files. There’s a lot of value to finding it again if they add a lot more than just the word Rembrandt, to your point earlier.
Douglas: [9:24] You’re right. There’s been talk here at the Henry Stewart DAM New York about having workflows that would capture data that would then automatically become metadata. That’s terrific. There you get subject and photographer assigned, and all these other kinds of things that can happen automatically.
[9:41] In the use cases that we’re seeing, though, whether it’s internal. In the internal, you would have content creators, writers, editors, people working with the press, marketing, whatever it may be. They don’t think in those more academic, scholarly ways. They want the hero image of “Lucretia” by Rembrandt, and they want to be able to get it right now because they’re on the phone with someone who wants to do a story.
[10:03] We need keywording in a very…
Henrik: [10:07] Consistent way?
Douglas: [10:08] It’s consistent, but it’s also natural language. We have keywording that says things like in the acrylic on canvas.
Henrik: [10:18] Which you probably have a few.
Douglas: [10:19] Yeah. Oil on canvas, oil on copper, terracotta, these kinds of things, which are very important and they are the fact.
Henrik: [10:26] Yes, the medium.
Douglas: [10:27] When your press agent is on the phone with a reporter from the New York Times, they don’t go to the system and type in terracotta.
[10:34] They are on the phone, they’re talking, they’re trying to type to try to type things like clay, pot, Africa, bead work and you do desperately trying to find the image, like, “I am trying to find it for you right now, Mr. such and such.”
[10:47] Because we don’t have that piece in there, it makes the system of much less use to them. So instead what they’re doing is emailing somebody, like a photographer, their friend, saying, “What do you have that pot for Africa with the beads?” They’re like, “Oh yeah, sure” and so two people get involved in the work when it really should just be one.
Henrik: [11:03] It is really tied to, in part, institutional knowledge.
Douglas: [11:06] Here is what I want, because I am not a Digital Asset Management worker, expert, it is not my training, but if you had an organization that was constantly feeding stories to the press. So whatever that may be, there must be folks out there who do sports photography, something like that.
[11:28] They got to be uploading those things quickly, they got to be tagging them with the kinds of words that sportswriters are going to use, like “World Series Game 3” and you better have it or no one is going to use your images.
[11:36] We don’t have that discipline, is a weird word for it because it is kind of lightweight, but it’s so absolutely necessary to make the asset findable across a much broader swath of people.
[11:49] If I were to tie it back to some of the strategies that we’ve been talking about in the art museum world anyways that we have been in an industry that for 150 years has been in the kind of, if you build it, they will come mode.
[12:04] We’re great, we’re fancy, everyone should come. If you’re not coming, there’s something wrong with you.
[12:10] This was the old model, the old elite model in having an art museum. What you’re seeing art museums do in the last, I don’t know, 10 years, maybe a little bit more and say, “No, no, no, no. Look, this is important. Art education being gutted in this country, creative thinking gutted, innovation gutted.”
[12:27] You can’t get this kind of stuff in school anymore. You should come to a museum. That makes museums need to be more engaging, more embracing of different points of view.
[12:38] Instead of saying to someone, “Welcome to the museum, you must be very proud to be here,” we have to say, “Welcome to the museum, we are really glad you are here. How can we help you have an experience that you will never forget?”
Henrik: [12:49] To your point, even with DAM, it needs to be more accessible. Once they are more accessible, then people can obain it. Hypothetically in the virtual museum sense, I’ve worked with some that are doing that piecemeal. That’s the future challenge, I assume, with some.
Douglas: [13:07] That’s the tactical implementation of a philosophical point. Let’s say our PR marketing hire a couple of young social media folks. They want to throw together a Tumblr site or a Pinterest or Instagram. They want to grab some photos from the collection.
[13:23] They go into the system and start saying like, “Give me an exciting photo that shows women having fun.” The system doesn’t have anything like that in there. It has like Matisse “Bathers,” but that is not what a 28‑year‑old social media manager is looking for.
[13:38] I know we’re a little bit, I’m beating the horse to death here, a little bit, but it is a metadata model is less about this sort of deep scholarly academic information and more about, “Hey, guys, what exactly do we have here?”
Henrik: [13:49] That could be controlled but that could be a taxonomy, because of those events, to your point earlier, happened regularly in the kinds of activities that happen in the museum, because there’s only so many things that will happen in a museum.
Douglas: [laughs] [14:00] There is a lot of things that will happen in the museum.
Henrik: [14:01] That are permissible in a museum.
[14:02] [laughter]
Henrik: [14:05] If it’s a fundraiser, or…
Douglas: [14:08] It is funny, we’re beholden to our own approach when I worked at the Metropolitan. There were years when there were almost 20,000 events on the event calendar in 365 days.
[14:18] Now I am at a smaller regional museum, but the number of events still is in the thousands for year. Now that’s counting things like tours and school groups coming in, but each of these things happen and we are slaves to our own success in this way. We do not want to stop doing all of that.
[14:36] It is a little overwhelming, there’s photography of all a lot of it that nobody can find and that is the whole point of having a DAM in the first place.
Henrik: [14:44] Thank you, Douglas.
Douglas: [14:45] Thank you.
Henrik: [14:46] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to anotherdamblog.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 