Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Emily Klovitz. Emily, how are you?
Emily Klovitz: [0:12] I’m doing great. How are you?
Henrik: [0:13] Great. Emily, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Emily: [0:18] I’m involved in Digital Asset Management as both student and practitioner. I’m finishing my MLIS at the University of Oklahoma, and also working full time in the field. I currently am a digital asset manager for JCPenney at the home office. I’ve also worked on digital projects outside of a formal DAM environment, in archives and also a museum.
[0:48] Recently, I have become very involved in the DAM education and DAM community. Part of that is a desire to contribute to the field. Another part of that is just me segueing into the next phase of my life.
Henrik: [1:05] Emily, how does the national retail chain use Digital Asset Management?
Emily: [1:10] My company uses Digital Asset Management for a variety of reasons ‑‑ works in progress, distribution, and also brand management. In my specific area, we use Digital Asset Management for works in progress, and also on final, finished photography for marketing assets. The DAM is fairly new, only a couple of years old, and it’s really only been hard‑launched since last November [2013].
[1:39] There’s a lot of building going on right now. Basically, it’s such a large organization, there’re actually multiple DAM environments. We are positioning ours as the enterprise DAM, but we still have a long road ahead of us. In terms of other DAM systems, there are that some that makes sense, in terms of what kind of content is kept and described, and also the perks of that specific system.
[2:07] Then, the different challenges of the type of content we’re talking about. As time has passed, the various DAM managers have crossed paths, and it’s been very rewarding to speak to these people, and find out what we have in common, and where we can help each other out.
[2:25] There have also been systems that didn’t really provide value for the organization and were duplications of content. I worked very hard to get rid of those systems. They’ve been shut down, and that’s because we have been lucky to have very strong senior leadership and buy‑in behind our DAM.
[2:43] What’s really interesting about my organization, or any large organization trying to wrangle their content, is just the sheer number of assets you’re actually talking about. Also, the number of DAM systems actually used by the organization, because many times it’s often multiple DAM systems.
Henrik: [3:02] What are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset Management?
Emily: [3:05] The biggest challenge to Digital Asset Management is change management. Everything else is a problem that can be solved logically. People are more tricky than that.
[3:16] The second biggest challenge is probably that DAM does not happen in a vacuum. There are more than likely other digital initiatives in your organization, and sometimes being able to see a bigger picture, even bigger than Digital Asset Management, can help an organization implement control over information chaos. This means information governance should be part of the Digital Asset Management strategy, or perhaps the DAM strategy is a facet of an overall digital strategy or information management strategy.
[3:53] It’s been very difficult for me to stay in my DAM bubble, so to speak, in the corporate world. As an information specialist, it is so glaringly obvious all the areas that could benefit from information governance. Yet there’s only one of you, and a DAM manager has many hats to wear. That’s what I feel are the biggest challenges to Digital Asset Management.
[4:20] Successes? I guess getting buy‑in feels really good. Growing your user adoption, that’s very rewarding. Any time you have even a slight increase in user adoption, that’s a big success, and you should take the time to celebrate it. Speaking of that, with your successes in Digital Asset Management, it’s OK to brag a little. It’s part of the advocating for your DAM, so usage reports and celebrating that kind of thing is good for DAM managers to do.
Henrik: [4:57] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Emily: [5:03] Read everything you can get your hands on and don’t get married to a system. There are many sources for education pertaining to Digital Asset Management. Many of them are community‑, vendor‑ or organization‑based, not necessarily subjected to the rigor of scholarly publication and peer review, which we talked about previously.
[5:26] It’s important to be skeptical, I think. Verify the facts for yourself. Inspect methodologies, and don’t get sucked into buying something because of someone putting the weight of authority behind it. I also think that you should trust your gut, because you can usually tell when information is info‑fluff, versus substantial information that adds to your understanding.
[5:54] The part about the DAM system, we’re usually the ones enacting the change and we’re not the ones who have to deal with it, because we’re starting the change. But you have to be cognizant of this may not be the best solution long term, and you can’t marry a system. It’s not about the technology. Digital Asset Management is so much more than that. You need to constantly be benchmarking your DAM, inspecting your practices, and getting better and better so you can grow as a digital asset manager.
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.
Another DAM Podcast 