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Another DAM Podcast interview with Mary Yurkovic on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • When you have many different photographers using different digital cameras, is there a preferred standard format for digital photographs you would recommend?
  • What advice would you like to give to 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 am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Mary Yurkovic.
Mary, how are you?
Mary Yurkovic: [0:10] I am fine, Henrik. Thanks for having me on your podcast
today.
Henrik: [0:14] No problem. Mary, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Mary: [0:17] I’m a consultant and adviser to organizations struggling with
Digital Asset Management and how Digital Asset Management works within
their organization. Additionally, one of my ongoing projects is working with
Createasphere in educating the community, similar to Another DAM Blog. [0:36]
We’re really trying to educate the community face-to-face and bring some problems
and issues that we have in this space to the forefront, and working with
vendors in this space and service providers in this space to help us come up
with some great solutions.
Henrik: [0:53] When you have many different photographers using different
digital cameras by different manufacturers, you may have experience with this,
is there a preferred standard format for digital photographs that you would
recommend?
Mary: [1:09] That’s a good question. Getting creatives to decide upon one
standard or even come to a common ground can always be very challenging.
Sometimes you have political issues to deal with, and sometimes you’ll have
a lack of understanding or knowledge of file format. [1:28] Whatever the case
may be, it’s extremely important if not critical is to have some sort of standard.
The standard that I think I’ve seen work fast with some of the organizations I’ve
worked with is the DNG format.
Henrik: [1:43] So instead of using the RAW formats that vary actually amongst
all the different camera manufacturers for the most part, you’re recommending
DNG or the Digital Negative format from Adobe?
Mary: [1:53] Yes. There may be a few steps you have to take to get to it, but the
goal is to preserve as much of the camera data and as much color information
as possible from the very beginning. [2:10] As I said, whatever the file format
you’re using, just pick a standard. I think it’s much easier with digital photography,
then it is with video. So within your organization that should be easier.
Henrik: [2:27] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Mary: [2:33] My advice for future Digital Asset Management professionals and
current Digital Asset Management professionals is to learn as many aspects as
you can about the Digital Asset Management arena, whether it’s project management,
library science, categorizing your data, digital work flows. [2:57] Learn
about video and how to deal with audio files and formats, document management,
rights management, storage, digital preservation. There are many, many
more areas too, but learn as much as you can about the other areas.
[3:17] Another very important area to consider for Digital Asset Management
professionals is to consider the human factor and how change management
affects implementing a Digital Asset Management project or process and how
humans interact with assets themselves.
[3:38] Whatever area you chose to focus on, just keep an open mind and explore
some of the adjacent areas and the adjacent technologies. For the future Digital
Asset Management professionals, this is a really, really exciting time. We’re
starting to see some really great technology improve and prove itself to organizations
and see the real potential with our digital data and digital assets.
[4:07] We’re really at the beginning of what can really happen with Digital Asset
Management and adjacent technology. I think the future for it is going to be
very exciting and challenging and rewarding. At the same time, especially when
you see what’s happening with some of the search and speech recognition,
there are improving techniques for preserving physical content.
[4:39] I think all of that is very exciting, and we’re really just starting to touch
upon the surface of that. Digital Asset Management and Digital Asset
Management community itself, how we deal with Digital Asset Management on
a day to day base just in our personal lives with iTunes, Pandora, go to YouTube
and look up a silly video to make you laugh, those are all forms of Digital Asset
Management.
[5:07] As I said, this is really only a fraction of how we use Digital Asset
Management on a day to day basis. For many organizations Digital Asset
Management seems to be mission critical, not just leaving it up to the technology
department to implement and let them steer this and leaving it upon them
to do upgrades and to look at the next capability. Or leaving it up to them or
getting frustrated because it hasn’t achieved its ROI status yet.
[5:40] Some of the trends, as I said, I’m seeing, is indeed many of these organizations
are making Digital Asset Management a vital mission in the way they do
their business. Which, to the delight of many of the future DAMsters, is taking
it a step further to do even more, automate work flow, the rights process, the
speech recognition, the better search capabilities. The list goes on.
[6:06] There’s so many additional capabilities of Digital Asset Management.
What’s really exciting is the really good ones, we haven’t even thought of yet.
It’s the next DAMsters who will be thinking of that for us.
Henrik: [6:20] Great. Well, thank you, Mary.
Mary: [6:22] Thank you for having me.
Henrik: [6:24] No problem. For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with David Austerberry on Digital Asset Management

David Austerberry discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • You wrote a definitive book called Digital Asset Management in 2006. Do you see DAM changing or evolving?
  • What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with David Austerberry.
David, how are you?
David Austerberry: I ’m fine, thank you.
Henrik: [0:11] David, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
David: [0:13] Well, I guess it started about the turn of the century. At that time,
I was working in the video area. I got involved with a group of people who are
actually setting up a Digital Asset Management system. I got involved with it
very much hands on. [0:29] Back then, Digital Asset Management was fairly new
in the video field. There was a lot of it around photography for image libraries,
but nothing specifically for video.
[0:45] Now, the project we were working on was a service that would encode
and host people’s video and we’d be able to serve it over the Internet. I guess
today that would be called a cloud.
[0:59] I think we got into it far too early, though, because back then, everybody
was using dial-up modems. Although broadband was around, it was hardly
ubiquitous. The idea of delivering video over the Internet, although you could
do it, the reality was that very few people had broadband connections, so they
weren’t really able to use it. I guess we were too early.
[1:30] Out of that project, I learned a lot about Digital Asset Management.
Henrik: [1:33] David, you wrote a definitive book called “Digital Asset
Management” in 2006. Do you see DAM changing or evolving?
David: [1:41] Well, I actually wrote it, originally, in 2004, because it’s had 2 editions.
The first edition was 2004. I guess I did the research in 2003. I think it has
changed a lot over the years. [2:01] The initial products that I looked at when we
were setting up a Digital Asset Management system, on the whole, were not
really products. Let me qualify that a bit.
[2:12] They were projects that one particular customer had, had a requirement
for Digital Asset Management system and a software company had written
a custom system for them. Very few of the products had sold to more than a
handful of customers. They were not really salable products, more a custom
project. Along with that went a very large price tag.
[2:43] I think that was the big barrier to the sale of Digital Asset Management to
a lot of potential customers. The early systems ran on things like Sun hardware
platforms, they used historical enterprise databases, and the entry-level was
somewhere in the region of $1 million for a system. And you probably would
need to spend about $5 million to get a fully working system. And that was
completely out of the reach of most of the customers. Even the large broadcasters
balked at those sort of sums of money.
[3:24] What’s happened since then? Well, some of those companies have gone
out of business. I seem to remember one of the early ones was the Informix
Media 360, which probably pioneered a lot of the ideas around Digital Asset
Management. And that Informix has disappeared now. I think it’s been subsumed
into IBM. Some of the systems were just too complex. And at the end of
the day, they’ve got to sit on everybody’s desktop, be easy to use, and a lot of
those early systems just weren’t.
[4:00] So I think what’s happened since 2004, when the first edition came out, is
that people had got real about what customers really want from a Digital Asset
Management, and what they’re prepared to pay for it. On the point of what
they’re prepared to pay for it, it was always a problem proving an ROI for the
big systems.
[4:24] I think a lot of the customers looked at it from the point of view of this perceived
cost, that they know what it costs to put Microsoft Office on a desktop,
that sort of thing. They know what it costs to put video editing software. And
the early DAM systems cost about $1,000 a seed, and I don’t think most of the
customers felt that was value. Because to a lot of people it was just a fancy version
of a file search, and, well, from Google, you know, you get that for nothing.
[4:56] So until the seed cost came down to something more realistic, it was
very difficult to prove a return on investment for a DAM system. Google represents
just the search side, and there’s obviously more to DAM. There’s all
the indexing and the management of hierarchical storage systems. I think that
what has evolved is that a lot of the customers, what they’re really wanting is
management of the entire workflow, from ingest of a digital asset right through
to its publishing.
[5:35] Although the early Digital Asset Management systems handled the management
of that asset, there’s a lot more to dealing with assets beyond Digital
Asset Management. I think that some of the newest systems now include a lot
more workflow management, and they can also handle external media, like
video tapes, for example.
[5:59] You have a crossover between managing media assets, which, to me,
a physical assets, like a video tape, and digital assets. The thing which really
makes it much easier to prove in ROI for a vendor is to introduce management
of workflow processes, as well. Digital Asset Management has become a component
within the management of the entire workflow.
Henrik: [6:29] David, what advice would you like to give to DAM professionals
and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
David: [6:34] First of all, DAM is a rather vague term, and it means different
things to different people. To a photo library, it’s dealing with IPTC metadata,
and it’s managing maybe a website to sell the digital assets. To somebody, say,
in the broadcast or the media and entertainment space, it’s a lot more complex,
in that they may be wanting to handle the many thousands, or even millions,
of digital assets that go into creating something like a movie. [7:14] There’s that
front end side. Once the salable asset that the movie, the television program, or
the TV commercial is finished, there’s the managing of that finished asset and its
distribution.
[7:29] There’s very many facets to Digital Asset Management. For the DAM professional,
first of all, they’ve got to decide, do they want to be involved in the
entire business, or do they want to focus on particular area, like video production,
movie production, or image library management?
[7:54] I think somebody coming to it afresh will see that there’s a very large
number of different standards bodies involved, and they’re all vying for users
to adopt their tagging systems, their standards. There’s the IPTC, which I mentioned,
which is very strong in the newspaper industry, and has come to be
found to be very useful across the entire photographic profession.
[8:30] But the IPTC is focused, at the moment, on still images. I know they’re
looking at extending it to other areas. But if you look at audiovisual assets, there
are a number of organizations looking at Digital Asset Management and metadata
schemas for audiovisual systems. That can be rather confusing for somebody
coming into it from afresh, because there’s just so many standards.
[9:07] The SMPT is very strong in this area, but then there’s other things, like
MPEG 7. There’s 10 to 20 international standards group that are developing standards
that can be used within Digital Asset Management. This clouds the whole
issue, and removes some of the potential clarity within the area.
Henrik: [9:30] True. They’re adopting what’s needed of all those standards,
rather than necessarily, would you say, instead of reinventing the wheel, pick
what best fits the need of the organization that they are working with? Is that
what you’re saying?
David: [9:47] Yeah, very much so. I think one needs to have a pragmatic approach
towards choosing how you run a Digital Asset Management system. You
could overtag your content, and there is quite a cost involved in tagging content.
You have to balance that against the business need, the business value.
Henrik: [10:17] That’s true.
David: [10:19] I think that one of the areas that’s very important to focus on is
how one gathers metadata when one’s ingesting digital assets. In principle, that
should be done as automatically as possible. [10:35] Now, that is getting a lot
easier with, for example, video and still cameras can have GPS systems built in,
so that you immediately get assets tagged with the geographical location.
Henrik: [10:52] Yeah, it’s true. Geotagging as a they call it.
David: [10:57] Yeah. Things are getting easier and easier. But one of the big
problems with Digital Asset Management is that an asset will pass through
several organizations during its lifetime. The organizations downstream are the
ones who benefit from Digital Asset Management, if it’s well tagged. Because
they can then find things and makes it easier to monetize it. [11:26] The person
upstream who is actually adding all the metadata doesn’t see the value from it.
That’s always been a bit of an enigma with Digital Asset Management. Those
who do the work don’t necessarily benefit.
Henrik: [11:42] Yeah, I see what you mean. Thanks, David.
David: [11:45] Right, you’re welcome.
Henrik: [11:46] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
anotherdamblog.com. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Charles Cole on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does this organization use place holders for packaging?
  • Is there an incentive for getting that information in correctly in the beginning and actually delivering the assets on time?
  • What advice would you like to give for 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 Charles Cole.
Charles, how are you?
Charles Cole: [0:09] I am doing well, Henrik. Thanks for asking.
Henrik: [0:11] Great. Charles, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Charles: [0:15] Well, I manage Digital Asset Management at a film studio where
I handle mostly home entertainment assets, so for the marketing department
and creative aspects.
Henrik: [0:31] How does that organization use placeholders for packaging?
Charles: [0:38] Well, placeholders, it’s an interesting concept. First, I guess I’ll
explain the concept of placeholders. It’s a pretty interesting concept. Essentially
the way to upload traditional embarks is whoever is uploading the file will select
the file, and they’ll tag it with whatever metadata. That’s the traditional model.
[1:00] What placeholders does is leverages upstream work that has to take place,
say in a marketing system where somebody is essentially planning out the marketing
and says, “I need this asset to fulfill my marketing requirements.”
[1:18] They put in all the information they need into the marketing system, and
then what happens is a placeholder automatically gets created in our Digital
Asset Management system where it’s already pre-populated with all the metadata
that’s required. So now whoever is uploading needs to find that placeholder
and just drop the file in. What happens is it’s automatically tagged with
all the appropriate metadata, and can even be sent downstream based on what
the marketing system says.
[1:47] If they for instance say, “I’ll pick the print vendor,” who is going to actually
manufacture this asset, this physical asset, then as soon as the file gets uploaded,
it can then be tagged with all the appropriate metadata and automatically
be sent downstream to whatever company has been selected.
Another D 82 AM Podcast Transcribed
Henrik: [2:07] Just to clarify, this is basically creating metadata and putting a
placeholder for an asset that will be created in the near future because there is a
schedule for it.
Charles: [2:15] Exactly. It is dependent on you having a plan and knowing what
assets you need. It’s not for everybody. So in a trim or ad hoc environment, or
you don’t know what assets you need, then, yeah, it may not be as useful. It has
been extremely useful in our case where we have thousands of assets that need
to be created, Yeah, it’s been great.
Henrik: [2:39] Granted, there’s a time frame or schedule of when you create
those things for your organization, so you already know that packing needs to
be created for that individual project.
Charles: [2:51] Exactly. Maybe it’s better just to explain it. A marketing manager
for a given territory, say Romania or whatever territory, will go into the marketing
system and say, “I need this specific asset, on this specific date.” The marketing
manager will go in and say, “For this given territory, for this given title, I need
these particular assets to fulfill my marketing plan. I need them on this specific
date. I need them from this specific vendor.” [3:28] As soon as they assign that
date and assign that vendor, that’s when the placeholder gets generated in the
Digital Asset Management system. Now, rather than the vendor just uploading
that file and tagging it with the metadata at the time of upload manually, it’s
done automatically. So they go in.
[3:49] The onus is on them to search for that placeholder using all the correct
metadata. It’s that subtle shift has created a really great situation in terms of our
metadata is now 100 percent accurate, 100 percent complete vs. before, just
trying to twist somebody’s arm into entering all the metadata and entering it
correctly. This just seems to be a much better approach.
Henrik: [4:19] Is there an incentive for getting that information correct in the
beginning, and actually delivering the assets on time in respect?
Charles: [4:27] Yes, actually. If you are responsible as marketing, for putting
together a well-executed marketing plan, obviously the goal is to generate the
most revenue possible. If you want those assets to be created, you have to ask
for them. You have to go into the marketing system and say, “These are the
assets I need to execute.” [4:58] If you don’t do that, those assets will never be
created, and you’ll be viewed as having falling down on the job. “Why this product
created and released? Well, I didn’t ask for it.” There is definitely incentive
there. If you fall short of your revenue targets, that’s a direct asset to revenue
correlation there. You want to make sure that you get those configured and set
up, the marketing funds configured and set up, including the assets that you
need in the marketing system on time, and we take care of everything downstream.
Create that container, and then creative vendor will go in above the file.
Henrik: [5:44] That’s a good way to keep people accountable. What advice
would you like to give to DAM professionals are people aspiring to become
DAM professionals?
Charles: [5:52] I think the best advice I can give which it’s sort I guess you
could say generic advice for maybe getting a job in general in the field that you
want is just really do your research. Go in, and if there is a company that you
want to work for, and do all the research regarding that company in that industry
space, as well. Do your Google News searches, see what all the relevant
happenings have been. [6:22] From a Digital Asset Management perspective, I
would say just network, ask questions. Go out there, do your research and sign
up for industry events, sign up for conferences. There are a lot of well-respected
digital a few really well-known Digital Asset Management conferences that you
can just sign up for. Go and just sit. Get an idea of what the relevant topics are,
and just familiarize yourself with the industry terms.
[6:57] I think that will go a long way towards getting you where you want to go.
Henrik: [7:00] Thanks, Charles.
Charles: [7:01] Absolutely.
Henrik: [7:03] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Roger Howard on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does an entertainment software company use a DAM?
  • You recently started a Digital Asset Management meetup group in Southern California. Tell me more about this meetup group.
  • What advice would you like to give for 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 Roger Howard.
Roger, how are you?
Roger Howard: [0:09] I’m good. How are you today?
Henrik: [0:10] Roger, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Roger: [0:13] I’ve been involved on just about every level with Digital Asset
Management as a developer, as a systems administrator doing metadata taxonomy
design, designing work flow, building applications. I’ve gone through
vendor selections with about 10 different projects over the past 10 or 12 years.
Henrik: [0:32] Excellent. Roger, how does an entertainment software company
use DAM?
Roger: [0:37] Digital Asset Management means a lot of different things to a lot
of different people. In entertainment companies like video game developers, we
have Digital Asset Management systems involved in the production pipelines
for developing the actual games, the assets that go into the games, the source
code repository management. There is, of course, the marketing DAMs that
manage marketing assets, distribution for sales channels. [1:05] My involvement
is particularly focused on archiving valuable assets, so things like concept art,
and also in providing workflow applications for marketing, PR, and web teams.
Henrik: [1:22] You recently started a DAM Meetup group in Southern California,
along with Lilly. Tell me about this Meetup group.
Roger: [1:30] Well, inspired a couple of other groups around the country, we
thought that, given how dispersed people are in Southern California, but also
how many Southern Californians are involved, in one way or another, in Digital
Asset Management, it’d be a great opportunity to get people together in
person, maybe have a few drinks, talk, share war stories. [1:50] We just had our
first event, in fact, two days ago at the Henry Stewart conference in LA, the
night before the opening day, and it was fantastic. We had a lot of people. We
had maybe 20, 25 people show up. It was a good time, a couple of hours of
hanging out with colleagues, and we hope to keep repeating the event.
[2:11] We’re shooting for another event in maybe a month or two, after the beginning
of the year, and then we’re going to try to keep it going every two to
three months going forward.
Henrik: [2:21] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals, or
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Roger: [2:25] Well, I think it’s actually a great career. I think that there’s a lot
of different opportunities. There’s a lot of different roles people can play that
all are kind of lumped under DAM, but I think my best advice is to go after as
broad and diverse a set of skills as you can possibly manage for yourself, so
both communications and business skills, but also technical skills, I think, are
incredibly important in many DAM careers. [2:59] Myself, I have a very technical
background, but I also have a background in creative production. I’ve done a lot
of production management. Now working mostly on the administration, design,
development, planning aspects of Digital Asset Management systems, having
that background both in technical skills that allow me to work with developers
and IT folks but also having an understanding and background in creative production
and, to some extent, in the business issues around content production
and distribution.
[3:30] It really gives you a much better insight into why it is that people might
want to take advantage of what you have to offer. My advice is not to pigeon
hole yourself into a very limited set of skills. If you can build up a basic understanding
at least of database management, get some basic Sequel skills that are
incredibly handy. XML skills can be incredibly handy, basic scripting tools.
[3:58] So if you’re working in a primarily Mac oriented creative shop, learn a little
bit of Apple script, learn a bit of Python. Learn some web development skills so
you can at least do basic html, a little bit of Java script, a little bit of CSS .
[4:12] Ultimately I think the most important think you can do is spend time kind
of living and walking in other people’s shoes, the people whose jobs you touch
as a Digital Asset Management expert. If you work in a creative environment,
spend some time with the designers, with the artists, with the production managers
that you work with.
[4:33] Try to see if you can book time and work as an intern for a day or a week.
Likewise, if your Digital Asset Management system is heavy on cataloging and
data entry, spend time frequently as a cataloger in your environment so you
understand not only the application of the taxonomy and metadata models
that you develop but the limitations of the tools that may be frustrating your
users. Live and breathe and walk a few miles in your user’s shoes. That will go
a long way.
Henrik: [5:04] Great idea. Thank you, Roger.
Roger: [5:06] Thank you.
Henrik: [5:07] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.

Related Articles

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

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