Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Jade Jourdan.
Jade, how are you?
Jade Jourdan: [0:11] I’m doing well, thank you. How are you?
Henrik: [0:13] Good. Jade, how are involved with Digital Asset Management?
Jade: [0:17] I work at Edwards Lifesciences, and we’re a medical device company. I’m a Senior Digital Asset Specialist, and every day is focused on our Digital Asset Management. I’m responsible for the DAM structure and ensuring we are collecting all the necessary metadata for searching and making sure that everyone gets assets that they need for their projects.
Henrik: [0:40] How does a medical equipment company specializing in artificial heart valves and hemodynamic monitoring use Digital Asset Management?
Jade: [0:48] Our DAM system must primarily archive our marketing assets, product images, and corporate images. Once projects go through our regulatory approval process, they are uploaded by our creative vendors globally into our DAM system and then assets are processed, metadata tags added for searching, etc.
[1:10] Our DAM system is accessed globally by our regional employees and vendors and once our main creative is completed, our projects are repurposed locally and globally. Each region translates the project into their language, processes it to their regulatory, and then produces it for their marketplace.
Henrik: [1:31] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Jade: [1:35] Well, we are very successful at having our library organized by individual product groups and functional areas so that images and source files are easily located for individual projects and repurposing existing designs.
[1:49] The challenge is working with a high volume of projects and making sure we receive all of our source files from the many agencies we utilize. So working with their marketing departments which are very busy and getting them to retrieve all of our projects from the agencies that we work with, making sure we have everything in our library.
Henrik: [2:12] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Jade: [2:15] Well, I think DAM is an exciting and growing industry. I’m relatively new to it, four years in, and have learned a lot about it and I think the technology is constantly improving with innovative new ways to accommodate and efficiently store large data assets.
[2:34] Most companies have major digital components that need to be managed and organized for productive workflow and I would encourage people with an interest in becoming a DAM professional to absolutely go for it. It’s an exciting field to get involved in.
Henrik: [2:48] Well, thanks, Jade.
Jade: [2:49] Thank you.
Henrik: [2:49] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to anotherDAMblog.com. For this and 170 other podcast episodes, go to anotherDAMpodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Nila Bernstengel discusses Digital Asset Management
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Nila Bernstengel.
[0:08] Nila, how are you?
Nila Bernstengel: [0:10] I’m good. How are you today?
Henrik: [0:11] Great. Nila, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Nila: [0:15] I have been involved on the job and also in library school. On the job, I have worked in the DAM field for almost 7 years and digital repositories for about 10 years.
[0:26] I also went to library school. While in library school, I focused on emerging technologies, how to create digital repositories, digital collections and how to implement metadata properly.
[0:38] On the job, I have worked the full cycle of implementing a system and upgrading a system. This generally has entailed creating user files, metadata scrubbing or as I like to call it, “untangling the metadata”.
[0:50] I set standards, cataloging, standards for terminology, create dictionaries and permission sets and also taxonomies. In total, I did everything to bring up a system and release a system.
Henrik: [1:02] How does a nonprofit educational organization use Digital Asset Management?
Nila: [1:06] The main objective was to have a centralized location for the company assets for the purpose of storage access and content distribution. Having a centralized location of assets allowed for the discovery of our assets as well as new collections for the creation of either content or product.
[1:27] Not everyone knew what was being created in the company. People would just ask for assets. They would either come to the Creative Resources Department, or they would just look around on the servers, not realizing there was much, much more out there that they could be using.
[1:43] For this reason, we really brought in a system for the centralization for access. There needed to be a place where everyone could go in, view and download without having to contact us. That means we set up a system that was based on permissions, which was really, really important.
[1:59] This really tied into our content distribution. We wanted a place for people to go in, see everything the company offered them, and nothing that was on there was out of their reach. Everything they see, they could use and we really did that by setting up a system that was centralized and was focused on permission sets.
[2:21] Lastly, the content distribution part. This was key to bringing in a system because prior to this, we were mailing out assets, mailing hard drives, CDs, DVDs, even books in the mail and it became very, very costly and not time efficient.
[2:38] To cut down on that, we brought in a system to have something that was instant for someone to use globally and domestically. The system also allowed for the governance of assets. No more like, “I’m using the logo from 10 years ago”. It was up‑to‑date and current.
Henrik: [2:57] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Nila: [3:01] One of the biggest challenges I have seen is changing workflow. There are a lot of companies that had the same work flow for decades and all of a sudden we’re asking people to no longer use servers, no longer to use their personal hard drives. We’re asking them to change workflow completely and that was pretty hard because a lot of people resist change, especially when it comes to technology.
[3:24] It was something that was different. They had to think about it differently. It really changed how they retrieved assets.
[3:30] The big selling point was showing them the benefits of a system. All of a sudden, you didn’t have to look for hours for something or that one photograph you were looking for. Now you could go on to one place, just do a simple search and download it and that would always be there.
[3:46] One of the biggest challenges was changing people’s workflow, changing them to move away from a physical to a digital environment. One of the biggest challenges for a system was having a lot of duplicates and a lot of versions.
[4:00] A version would be something like have a master file and then there’s five derivatives and different file formats under it. People really still wanted that and I eliminated that because I really believe that the system has the capability to download file formats, whatever you need it for. That was a big challenge also. It’s just like training people to understand all the capabilities of a system.
[4:26] Another big challenge was naming conventions. I standardized the naming convention for the system and people wanted to make sentence structures out of a name, which believe it or not, really actually affects the search. It was a big thing, standardizing how files are named and how they’re presented to people.
[4:47] One of the biggest successes I’ve heard from an end user was how easy the system was to use, how the learnability was really low. This really communicated to me that it was not only easy, but this was something that they would go back to readily and keep using because it wasn’t complicated. The visual space wasn’t overpopulated. That was really good to hear.
[5:10] I think for the company’s success, the ability to reuse assets was key. This really cut down on costs. It also cut down on time. People could reuse the same assets for many different things, which really helps the company also just save money. It enhanced work flow because it cut down on time also.
Henrik: [5:32] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Nila: [5:36] For people starting out in the field, I would recommend start small, something manageable and then use it as a model to scale up. What I mean by this is get your hands dirty a little bit.
[5:49] There was a couple of systems that people could easily download onto their own devices or machines. OpenRefine is a metadata cleanup program. It allows you to bring in a spreadsheet and really dive into cleaning up metadata and structuring metadata. That’s a really good tool for people to use who are looking to get into this field and also, understand the dynamics of metadata.
[6:14] A couple of systems they could try? I think SharePoint is really good. A lot of people use it. It’s pretty easy. I would really recommend going there. Try to create a collection, apply metadata and try searching. See how it works. See what it visually looks like once you apply metadata to it.
[6:30] Drupal is a system a lot of libraries use. It’s also open source. I recommend trying it. Create some pages, create a collection, apply metadata and then see what it looks like and see how it functions.
[6:42] I think just doing that over and over really clicks and makes people understand how dynamic the system is because we are moving from physical to digital and it’s basically a stratosphere of information that is being linked together.
[6:57] I think hands on is the best I could say for people. There is reading resources for people to supplement doing the hands on. I look at The Accidental Taxonomist quite a bit. I think it’s really great. It’s easy to understand and I think if you join, especially reading and a hands‑on experience, it will make you feel a lot more comfortable going into a company or going into an organization and tackling how to set up a system and how a system works.
[7:25] Another great reading source I also use is Real Story Group. They have great vendor information. They have really great white papers and documentation lists to look at because there is a system for almost everything.
[7:37] Different systems do different things. It breaks apart this idea that there’s just Digital Asset Management. There’s Digital Asset Management for a lot of different content types and a lot of systems gear towards different content types. I do recommend doing some reading and just doing a little bit of research on vendors.
[7:55] For people in the field, I would definitely recommend, even if it’s not possible, to reach out to the vendor of the system you’re using and really give them sky‑high expectations of something you want, because even if they can’t do it, they’re going to remember that and they’re going to probably try to put it into their core systems so it will be part of their system.
[8:17] Something like an example of that was we needed content pools. I needed a way to separate content by permissions without creating new portals. I wanted to use one portal for everybody to go into but not everyone saw the same content. Now that’s easily available in most systems.
[8:35] It’s really great if you really talk to the vendor, if you talk to people. It really advances the system. It advances our work flow, which I think is only beneficial.
[8:44] This is for people already in the field. If you’re creating a DAM team or a team that is going to tackle the DAM system, I really, really recommend having a dynamic from all parts of the company or organization. This means three or four representations of business IT, someone who can organize it, like a librarian and I would recommend having an end user involved in part of the process.
[9:09] IT definitely supports the company. They support the technology, but the business requirements and what the system is geared for and how it will used will come from business, because they are the ones who need to use it and they’re the ones who need this workflow to work for the company.
[9:24] A librarian or someone who can organize it is key. This is definitely a skill set people are trained to do. Organizing digital content is a huge task and there is ways to do it and ways to not do it properly.
[9:39] An end user are the people who are going to be using the system. They’re going to be the ones going into the front end and engaging in the system. They’re going to be searching, downloading. They’re key to how the system and the metadata is applied.
Henrik: [9:54] Thanks, Nila.
Nila: [9:55] Thank you.
Henrik: [9:56] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to AnotherDAMblog.com. For this and 170 podcast episodes, go to AnotherDAMpodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Adolfo Chavez and Francisco Vergaray discuss Digital Asset Management
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 Adolfo Chavez and Francisco Vergaray. How are you guys?
Adolfo Chavez: [0:12] Doing good.
Francisco Vergaray: [0:13] Doing well, thank you.
Henrik: [0:15] Great. How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Francisco: [0:17] Well, I think I’ll go first. This is Francisco. Basically, I am the system administrator for the digital asset management system that we have here in the institution. We have a system of 24 catalogs and over a million digital assets that are served throughout the institution.
[0:36] We have several clients that use the system including doctors and our regular staff. We have anything from patient images to images that I use for diagnostics, and also stock art that we use.
Adolfo: [0:53] I’m Adolfo. I’m in a different department from Francisco. I work in Communications, and I basically manage four catalogs within our digital asset management system, which is Cumulus.
[1:04] All total, I believe, we have about 200,000 images, mainly editorial in nature, again, I’m in Communications, so a lot of images are for publications. I don’t keep any clinically relevant images in there.
[1:16] A lot of portraits of doctors, doctors and patients, and stuff for marketing and communications purposes. I call myself a dummy user of Cumulus, where Francisco is more on the administration side.
Henrik: [1:28] How does a comprehensive cancer center use Digital Asset Management?
Francisco: [1:32] Cumulus that we use is actually a fairly robust system. Unfortunately, we only use the work group edition. We do not have the full enterprise version of the system.
[1:43] We cannot take full advantage of the capabilities of this system, however, we are pushing the system to it’s limit right now trying to get more catalogs and more digital assets into the system while we transition to possibly a future more robust system.
[2:02] At this point, we have been using Cumulus for over 10 years, and it’s come to the attention of the higher ups here in the institution. They are looking for a more robust system to replace Cumulus.
[2:16] Basically, it is used for many things. We have people for example in the skin center, they use it for comparing melanoma patients. They can look at skin lesions, making sure that there are differences between appointments. We have people that use it for just general stock photography or editorial. That’s basically there for run of how we’re using it.
[2:40] We have an Internet client, and we have several desktop clients. The desktop clients are actually what allow you to add visual assets today to the system.
Adolfo: [2:50] We’re having the DAM in place and actually using the DAM, because the DAM has been in place of a while. But, when I came on board about three and a half years ago, it was in place and there were assets in there, but there was no metadata attached to any of the images, so image retrieval was still kind of a chore.
[3:09] Now, since I’ve been there, I’ve kind of taken on the task of adding in that metadata so that when any media outlet calls and say, “When you have a photo of doctor so and so,” enter in doctor so and so, we have a whole treasure trove of images.
Henrik: [3:25] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Adolfo: [3:29] The biggest success we’ve had is image retrieval, essentially. Previously, which I’m sure many of your listeners are probably familiar with. When images are kept on someone else’s computer, usually the designer, whoever was working on the project.
[3:44] If somebody had an image request, went to one person who is like, “Oh, I think that person worked on it.” Then it went to that person, who happen to be out that day. So then it had to wait for the next day. When they got in, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, let me go back and look at that project.” So an image request took a day, two days. That was kind of ridiculous.
[4:02] Now, image requests take two minutes, literally. It actually takes two seconds, but because we vet each of the images, some of the images have patients in them. We have to make sure that we have patients that have been consented properly. That we have permission to use the image. That the employees depicted in photos are still working here, stuff like that. So yeah, that’s been a huge success.
[4:25] The biggest challenge, at least on my end, has been getting people to use it, which I think is universal challenge to everyone in digital asset management. I get emails everyday, “Hey do we have an image of doctor so and so?” “Yeah, it’s in Cumulus. You just got to search for it. That’s all you got to do.” [laughs] That’s the most difficult part, obviously.
Francisco: [4:48] Yeah, I think one of the biggest challenges that we had when we initiated this project years ago was coming up with a naming convention for our digital assets. I think that was what really we had to go around several times until we came up with something solid that at the time, we couldn’t search for metadata when we first started with this.
[5:11] We were looking at searching by the names of the files, but now we were able to add metadata to the file so the naming convention is not…We’re still using the naming convention, but it is not as important as adding the metadata. Still, we use both of them as just as a backup to double check, make sure things are named correctly.
[5:32] That’s what’s been also one of the biggest successes for us because we were able to locate patient images. For example, they’re going into the electronic medical record, and when the doctor comes in and looks at the medical record, they can pull their patient’s images that comes from our Cumulus system.
Henrik: [5:52] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people who aspired to become DAM professionals?
Adolfo: [5:57] I think this is something Francisco eluded to when we first started talking, is that really fully invest in the proper software. One of the big challenges that we’ve had is that we’re trying to…
Francisco: [6:10] We’re using a work group version of the system, rather than the enterprise version which we can’t really take full advantage of the capability of this system. It’s just having the proper budget.
Adolfo: [6:22] We have over 20,000 employees at this institution. Digital asset management is becoming more and more important everyday. There are new people calling for catalogs and they wanted catalog images, they want to do this, and it’s taxing on this particular version of the software we’re running.
[6:39] As far as, that’s for DAM professionals, as far as for people aspiring to become DAM professionals, I have a book called The Accidental Taxonomist which is the book that I got to do a little bit of research on digital asset management when I got into the position.
[6:53] That’s really the way I feel. I don’t feel I can actually give advice to anyone who’s trying to become a digital asset management person, but I’m accidentally fell into this position by nature of what it is that I do, which is photography and content creation, essentially.
Francisco: [7:09] I think one suggestion that I would give is you need to have…You heard of it, the phrase ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’?
Henrik: [7:17] Mm‑hmm.
Francisco: [7:18] You need to make sure that you have a specific group of people assigned to add digital images or digital assets to the catalog. That way, you keep consistency throughout your naming conventions, throughout the way things are organized in the catalog.
[7:32] The other thing I would suggest is make sure that you have people that have very good attention to detail. Just minimal things such as a space, or a comma, or just a period in the wrong place, what would throw things off. Just people that understand how complicated this can be and frustrating sometimes.
Adolfo: [7:55] It takes a special kind of person, I guess. Digital Asset Management, it’s a tedious gig. It takes a certain mind, I guess.
Francisco: [8:03] Yes.
Henrik: [8:04] That’s great advice. I would strongly recommend having a gatekeeper to your point.
Francisco: [8:08] We actually have a, at least from the photography people, we have several gatekeepers, we have about two or three of them.
[8:14] You go for one person, the photographer, they will need their files. Then they go to the manager, who double checks them. Then they go to the person that actually catalogs them, so there’s three people that actually make sure that these images, especially the ones that go into the patient chart, are named properly.
Adolfo: [8:32] I’m the only one in communications. There’s me, then I have an assistant now. That means that I get to make sure everything is cool, but I also get blamed for all the problems.
Francisco: [8:45] But nobody is perfect, so even three people can miss something.
Henrik: [8:49] That happens. Thank you, guys.
Francisco: [8:52] Thank you.
Adolfo: [8:52] Thank you.
Henrik: [8:53] For more on this and other digital asset management topics, go to AnotherDAMblog.com. For this and 160 other podcast episodes, go to AnotherDAMpodcast.com. If you have any comments of questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com.
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Kenneth Wilson. Kenneth, how are you?
Kenneth Wilson: [0:10] I’m good today. How are you?
Henrik: [0:11] Great. Kenneth, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Kenneth: [0:15] I orchestrate the operation of Kohler companies’ digital supply chain, the center of which is the company’s DAM system, and I’ve also recently taken ownership of the communications resource library. That’s how I’m involved in Digital Asset Management.
Henrik: [0:33] How does an American manufacturing company use Digital Asset Management?
Kenneth: [0:36] Kohler is a multinational manufacturing company. We have a very diversified group of businesses that are part of the Kohler company, that make up the company. Most people know very well in the plumbing, kitchen, and bath businesses.
[0:52] We also have a hospitality group that has The American Club, which is a five‑diamond hotel, that is in Kohler Wisconsin, along with many golf courses that make up Destination Kohler, along with golf courses in Kohler… Whistling Straits, Blackwolf Run… along with a golf course in Scotland, the Old Course hotel. That makes up the hospitality group.
[1:17] We also have an interior section headquartered out of Chicago, where we have furniture businesses… Baker, McGuire. A custom tile manufacturing company called Ann Sacks in Portland, along with… can’t forget our global power group, who has a number of companies they operate throughout the world.
[1:38] All those companies make up the Kohler businesses and we handle a lot of the communications for all of those different businesses. Right now, we use our DAM system to store a lot of the final marketing images, and the graphic layouts for most of our North American businesses.
[1:56] The global businesses also use the system to some extent. A lot of the products are US SKUs that are also sold in other places but some of our global businesses have SKUs that are specific to them. We’re actually trying to work to encourage them to supply our system with those unique‑to‑their‑location assets.
[2:21] The DAM system that I manage will house the packaging images, the web images that are used for the catalog, as well as the layouts for printed literature, catalogs, the sell sheets that go to our showrooms and also archives digital imagery that serves to document the history and happenings of the company. This documentary and archived footage is mainly captured digitally now.
[2:51] We’ve begun efforts to digitize years’ worth of the history that was not digital, both still and video, and that will all make its way into the system as well. At the digital supply chain, if we look at it as a whole, the front end of it we’ve got a lot of different content creators. We have our own photo studio.
[3:14] We’ve got photographers, who create content, and at the front end of that supply chain, you’re not trying to shape the standards for file formats and making sure things are consistent there. While we have our own staff photographers for the different businesses, globally, we’ll use a variety of photographers, so trying to make sure everything comes in in a consistent form.
[3:37] On the back end, assets from our DAM system are syndicated to a content delivery network (CDN), so that they can be published to our websites and to the web catalogs, and also manage that practice.
Henrik: [3:52] Kenneth, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with DAM?
Kenneth: [3:58] Personally, one of the biggest current pain points that I have comes around tracking renditions of assets that are headed for both digital and print destinations. It’s tricky to figure out what should be a version when changes are made, or what should really turn into a derivative asset. That’s probably one of the biggest pain points that I currently have.
[4:24] It’s really about educating the art directors on what it means when they version something versus what it means when they create a brand new asset. With all those businesses, we’ve got a lot of printed stuff that we still do, but there’s also a really big focus on digital, of course, using the web. A lot of our businesses are starting to do website redesigns, so that’ll continue to frustrate me this next year.
[4:53] That’s one of our biggest challenges right now. It’s trying to make sure that we don’t have a lot of duplicate content that varies so slightly that people couldn’t really do a search and be confident in the results they find within the DAM, and not really have to sort through, oh, this one’s slightly brighter, this one’s slightly darker.
[5:18] One of the biggest successes that I’ve seen in DAM lately is starting to overcome the notion of simply being a storage repository for the organizations that adopt it, more than a search tool to find things that already exist.
[5:34] One way we’re trying to get over that is the reuse of things we’ve already shot. An image that was shot for our hospitality businesses could be reused in marketing materials for the power businesses.
[5:50] So, that return on investment there. One of the bigger successes is DAM’s ability to shape workflows. One of my major initiatives this year is to implement a review on an approval workflow that we call creative review. In a digital form, it’s something that our creative groups already do, and it’s largely on paper. Trying to move that into a digital space is the big win.
[6:22] One of the major benefits we can get out of it is being able to inform content creators, our photographers, how successful they are shooting to a shot list, by having those discussions by art directors around the images and content they’re creating.
[6:41] Having some sort of record and being able to say, “It’s done, this set of images, you can do this slightly differently and these images will be able to serve a wider range of uses.”
[6:55] That’s one benefit of that workflow type of creative review and approvals implementations.
Henrik: [7:02] These are very common issues that many organizations have. Getting collaborative tools to your point, and also getting the tools to not only deduplicate, and control renderings, and version control, but also to know what the single source of truth is for brand consistency.
Kenneth: [7:18] Absolutely. That single source of truth is another pain point. I attend conferences, and a lot of the organizations that are attending may be in search of just starting the DAM process, as far as finding which software to use and how to set it up, how to govern it, and that’s always a battle with whoever holds the purse strings.
[7:41] I think one of the things I may have to be an advocate for within Kohler may be a greater emphasis on a PIM system, product information management tool, and how it integrates with a DAM system, because we use our DAM to drive that syndication of assets out to our web catalog. All those images have to marry to information about whatever’s pictured.
[8:05] Those catalog images, the data from that should come from a PIM. Right now we’re taking that information and inserting it into our system, manually, per asset. We have an opportunity there to automate that more by establishing a single source of truth for that product information.
[8:32] When product information changes, if something gets discontinued, all that information will flow automatically into the DAM system, and so that metadata is more dynamic, living, breathing kind of metadata.
Henrik: [8:47] That’s a very popular and hot topic in DAM, is to get to product information management to your point, tying with DAM so you don’t have to reproduce the data from one system to another, and have the master record of your information, your catalog items, and all the SKUs, product codes, et cetera, in your PIM, and sync up with the DAM.
[9:06] Your master record is your PIM and the repository of all the imagery that may or may not be active, to your point, is in your DAM.
[9:14] There are several vendors who are very interested in making that easier for companies. You’re not the only organization out there that has this issue, which is great to hear.
[9:24] Kenneth, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Kenneth: [9:29] That’s a good question. I can share a little bit of how I got there. Maybe that helps those aspiring to becoming DAM professionals and even inspires those who are. There’s a lot of talk about convergence. One of the topics at a recent DAM conference was, “Are we all becoming each other?” In a way, the convergence helps us push past some of the boundaries we run into.
[10:00] The breadth of knowledge has definitely been a factor in the success that I’ve had with DAM here at Kohler. Before being in this role, I was pursuing a career doing photography professionally.
[10:13] I’ve got an understanding of what the photographers, who are delivering creative content to be stored in this repository, a frame of reference to what they’re thinking or doing. In addition before that, I studied at the University of Michigan.
[10:29] I studied industrial product design, and I was in a school of art and design, and was able to take all the photography requirements as well in my time there.
[10:41] The industrial design thinking, the problem solving, the creative problem solving, those have really been helpful in coming into Kohler, a place that already had an established DAM system, and being able to see what was already happening, and trying to come up with new, more efficient ways to do some of the things they were doing.
[11:06] Our studio’s been digital for probably the last 10 to 12, maybe 15 years. There was a lot of existent content when I got here, but we’re creating more and more images each year than before.
[11:20] The design thinking has really helped to push the boundaries and to come up with creative, new ways of looking at solving the workflow problems, or how content comes into the supply chain, how it moves around and really completes a circle for the asset life cycle, I like to call it, where it may go out to a vendor, but it’s got to come back and it lives in the system. How does that asset end up becoming an archive that we reference back, historically.
[11:49] This year, I’ll be collaborating a lot more with our corporate archivist, as she digitizes a lot of the historical content that she has in her archives. Our history is increasingly becoming captured digitally. We’ll still have physical artifacts in archives in the future.
[12:09] A lot of the speeches that may have been written 60 years ago, that we have a paper‑printed copy, they won’t have a digital equivalent. Trying to preserve some of these things so that they are useful, working assets now, but turn into archives later, that design background has really helped me there. Even before that, I started off pursuing an engineering degree.
[12:37] Coding, computer science, writing code, is also a really good set of skills to have when implementing a system, working with IT to resolve and troubleshoot issues. I think that convergence is something that will really help shape and push the boundaries of the industry. That’s what I would share.
Henrik: [13:01] Great. Thanks, Kenneth.
Kenneth: [13:03] Thank you.
Henrik: [13:04] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast has over 150 podcast episodes for you to listen to, including this one. Visit AnotherDAMpodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 