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Another DAM Podcast interview with Charles Duncan on Digital Asset Management

Listen to Charles Duncan discuss Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions answered:

How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

How does a unique destination built around storytelling and immersive experiences use Digital Asset Management?

What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Transcript

Henrik de Gyor 0:00
This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Charles Duncan.

Henrik de Gyor 0:07
Charles, how are you?

Charles Duncan 0:09
Great. I appreciate you having me.

Henrik de Gyor 0:12
Charles, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management,

Charles Duncan 0:15
My career has evolved over a lot of media experience. I moved to Los Angeles many, many years ago. Ended up at Disney. Worked on several large enterprise DAM systems. Millions and millions and millions of assets and super complex data models and security models. And I just have a strong affinity for content pipelines. And I’m very drawn to the making of a commercial franchise and all the machinery that goes into a franchise.

Henrik de Gyor 0:50
Charles, how does a unique destination built around storytelling and immersive experiences use Digital Asset Management?

Charles Duncan 0:58
Well, when we talk about our experience, we’re talking about content. And when we’re talking about a product, you’re talking about organization. And so in order to be organized, you have to have some sort of managerial governance oversight of your content. So really, it’s about how can we organize our content, and use it in a way that immerses our customer into our brand and in our experience.

Charles Duncan 1:28
The interesting thing about where we’re at today, is that the experience portion is really becoming a formal thing. So we have, you know, experience officers, people who are working and their title has experience in it, no matter whether you’re going to theme park, or you’re going to a movie or you’re on your app, shopping, you know, shopping and e commerce, there’s an experience. So a lot of the leading companies nowadays understand that that is an experience and understand that, you know, they need to be reaching towards their customers with, you know, a consistent brand that immerses them. So, you know, we’ve talked a little bit about personalizations… personalization in some of these conferences. And it’s just, it hasn’t moved quite as much as I had hoped. But, but where we’re at now is I think we’re very conscious of the experience. And then that requires, you know, obviously, a pipeline that can support that.

Henrik de Gyor 2:33
Charles, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Charles Duncan 2:39
Well, on the challenge side, you really have, you know, stylistic time to market, like, when you’re talking about, you know, a large commercial franchise that you’re trying to get to in front of your customers as an experience, it’s how quickly can you get there. So the challenge really is time. Because if it takes too long, you’re talking about risk, because the market can change. And so sadly, a lot of the huge challenges right now is our ability to get from the production to the consumer. So I’ve been talking a lot about stylistic time to market, we’ve seen some advances on the business enrichment side. And for those of you who are wondering, in my perspective, business enrichment is, you know, when you take something from the DAM, so you have an image and you want to do a banner, and you want to do hero. So there, you know, there are certain breakthroughs that are happening to automate that process, but I look at that as business enrichment. It’s like, we want to pound out various ratios, and various layouts for different contexts. What I think is the number one challenge right now is actually upstream from that. It’s the style portion. It’s like, well, you know, when we’re making the image pretty and we’re making it within the context of the brand. So that’s where I think a lot of the success is coming. You know, very soon, it’s all about how you rapidly decrease your stylistic time to market.

Charles Duncan 4:20
So on the successes side, I think the, sadly, the COVID situation really put us, you know, full throttle into virtual experience, and virtual context. And so we saw a lot of acceleration in the digital space in the commerce online space, there’s tremendous acceleration going on there. And so DAM is really suited to support that. It’s just a matter of us actually putting DAM in the larger context of the pipeline, because it’s one piece of a very large pipeline. And so that’s where I think there’s a lot of things that are exciting now. I think the time is super exciting now because we’re finally able to start looking at data lakes, looking at big data, leveraging the information of our customers, and putting all that together to have a streamlined accelerant across the pipeline.

Henrik de Gyor 5:20
Charles, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Charles Duncan 5:25
What a great question. What I would say, is start looking at DAM as a creative tool. So many times in the industry, the talks around DAM, or the mindset around DAM is really business enrichment. As much as people may not consciously realize that they’re looking at DAM from the perspective of how do I take something from the you know, the art space, and organize it and distribute it, when you’re looking at it that way, you’re looking at it from a business enrichment standpoint. It is a very clear line, where it’s handed over from the artist, and then starts to be consumed as some sort of product or experience. So for those people who really want to excel in this space, I would say start to look at it from the creative perspective. Many artists that I have interfaced with really don’t have a great feel for DAM. They don’t really care about it, because they view it as some sort of commercial piece that is just business. However, if you pivot that, and you start to look at it from the creative perspective, DAM becomes a very large, powerful tool.

Charles Duncan 6:53
So for those people who are getting in, I would say, open up your context a little bit, take yourself from, I have a brand, I have an experience, I have a product, and I’m trying to get it to the consumer. And so then you start to look at the creative supply chain. And then inside the creative supply chain is the DAM. And there’s definitely ins and outs to that component. And if you can understand those ins and outs very clearly, you will massively accelerate in the space. One of the things I think that that we talk about as DAM enthusiasts is metadata. People love, I mean, there’s talks on metadata. And I love metadata as much as anybody but the art, the art side, they don’t care about metadata at all. The other thing I would say, is, metadata can transcend DAM. Metadata really belongs across the organization. And therefore, it’s really across the content supply chain. So when we’re talking about a creative pipeline, a metadata facet on that really needs to have the context of the entire pipeline, from conception to delivery, it happens to be that in DAM, because we were forced to organize creative content, we have a very, you know, good footing inside of metadata, but metadata really doesn’t just reside in the DAM.

Charles Duncan 8:29
So for those people wanting to get in, open up your perspective. Understand the entire pipeline, then start traversing down and looking how you can organize it.

Henrik de Gyor 8:40
Well, thanks, Charles.

Charles Duncan 8:41
Absolutely, absolutely. I appreciate you reaching out, I appreciate this. You know, this medium, I love it, that you’re doing this, this is wonderful. So where I think we’re at now, which is super exciting, is that we’re finally starting to see innovation emerge on the landscape. So at the Henry Stewart event, this year, I was able to unveil how there’s a very distinct inflection point in the content pipeline. And it’s the handoff where we go from the creative world, into the business world. And so if you put picture it on a linear, any on a linear line, there is a, you know, margin on the horizon, where we go from the creative world to the business world. And all that we have seen for years has been about that business point onward.

Charles Duncan 9:34
You’re talking about CMS, you’re talking about content delivery networks [CDN], we’re talking about layouts and how we enrich the content for delivery. But up until this year, we weren’t really seeing anything upstream being innovated on the creative side. So that’s where this year we were finally able to unleash a wave of interest. That starts looking at DAM purely from the artists perspective, imagine putting yourself in the artists’ seat through their creative tool. And they’re now able to start thinking that the the creative strokes that they’re making, the textures they’re making, the branded palettes they’re making are just seamlessly flowing all the way out into the experience, like literally from their desktop, they can now start to draw. And it just flows entirely through the pipeline. Where DAM is just like this conduit that’s taking us from the artistic world, into the business world. And so for the artists, this is fantastic. Because really, the artists get to now connect with their customer in a way that they haven’t connected before. Because what they’re doing is they’re able to go into their creative tool, make changes and see it immediately materialize as they’re coming in doing their comp… composition. And this is the first time you know they’ve ever been able to see this. So it’s fantastic that we are looking at it from the creative perspective, from the experience of where the experience where it manifests from, that they are able to then touch that piece of art and watch it flow in real time all the way out to the consumer.

Henrik de Gyor 11:24
For more on this, visit anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.


Questions?

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Yonah Levenson about Digital Asset Management

Listen to Another DAM Podcast interview with Yonah Levenson about Digital Asset Management

 

 

Here are the questions asked:

How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

You were involved with the Language Metadata Table. Tell us more about this.

What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:             00:00                This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Yonah Levinson. Yonah, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Yonah Levenson:           00:11                I work in the broadcast and media space and I work on metadata strategy and terminology governance. In my past, I’ve also worked in the publishing industry. That’s where a lot of my background is from and I’ve been heavily involved at DAM throughout my career because it’s very important to make sure that your assets are managed properly. My particular area of specialty is metadata because without the metadata it’s really hard to manage your digital assets in your DAM system.

Henrik de Gyor:             00:42                Yonah, you were involved with the Language Metadata Table. Tell us more about this.

Yonah Levenson:           00:47                The Language Metadata Table, which we refer to as the LMT is basically a table of codes that describe the different languages that can be used throughout really any industry. The initial focus has been on the, in the broadcast and media space. And it came about because I was in meetings at my company where people were talking about, you know, what code were they going to use for Latin American Spanish. And in one system it was Lat Am and another one was LAS for Latin American Spanish and other one was Lat Am Span. And I thought to myself, being the metadata geek that I am, I said, this is crazy. We need something consistent. So we began looking at what codes could be used that would be standard across the industry. You know, I don’t like to reinvent the wheel when it comes to metadata. So if something’s out there that exists already, let’s use it.

Yonah Levenson:           01:42                And at the end of the day, we determined that, IETF BCP 47. So that’s the Internet Engineering Task Force Best Current Practice number 47 fit the bill for what we needed in-house. And we created a table that had about 128 different languages included in it. Now, the next part was that I was at a meeting at MESA Alliance, which is the Media Entertainment Support Alliance, which is very useful in the broadcast immediacy base. And they said we would love you to present this LMT and we think it’s so good that it should become an industry standard. Or a couple of years ago, we published the initial LMT and we’re now on version two and there should be another one coming up in the near future. So basically, there’s over 200 languages in the language metadata table now and it’s being, we have a tremendous amount of support and participation across the, not just the broadcast and media industry, but also standards organizations and other groups as well.

Henrik de Gyor:             02:50                Yonah, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Yonah Levenson:           02:55                I’ve been in this space for a while. That’s a really good question, by the way, Henrik, I appreciate that question. I’ve been in this space for quite a while and what I have noticed is the evolution of DAM. So initially, people had their assets, you know, on their local computers. They would push them up to shared drives, when I started at one of my jobs working in the publishing industry, we were looking for some files. And one of the people on my team said, Oh, I know where those are. They’re at, they’re at Rocky’s house. And so Rocky had them and you know, the assets copied onto a CD or DVD at his home and happened to not have thrown it out yet. So we were able not to have to recreate the entire, it was like a statistics book or something really complicated with Math, there was just.. that would’ve been expensive to recreate.

Yonah Levenson:           03:48                Other assets were in boxes, you know, again, on movable media, under people’s desks. And so what I have seen is that first was getting the assets onto a DAM and then there were challenges in how to better describe them and to get people to put the metadata, to apply the metadata to the assets that they have. So that’s when those are some of the big challenges. I mean, people now understand, are starting to understand better about the value of reuse of assets. They’re looking to monetize what they have already and in a different way. Whereas in metadata, I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. People don’t want to reinvent the wheel with the assets that they may own already. So those are some of the challenges.

Yonah Levenson:           04:37                So the successes end up being that people are because they do understand more. There is more of a metadata capture is included in workflows. Maybe not everything that we need, but it’s getting there.

Henrik de Gyor:             04:53                Yonah, What advice would you like to share with them professionals and people inspire to become DAM professionals?

Yonah Levenson:           04:57                What I have found in my experience is that there are many people who did not necessarily choose a career in DAM. Many of us fell into it, you know, DAM systems were being set up in companies. Somebody needed to run it. Maybe they were working in and you know, just an archival space or some kind of storage or a library. And then it moved over into DAM as people realize that they could do more with the assets if they were available. And not just, you know, tucked away in a, you know, in a system where somebody had to go and retrieve it and burn it to media or to, you know, to call it back from some other kind of system.

Yonah Levenson:           05:42                But really to have it available. So what I have seen is that the whole field of DAM has really been evolving quite a bit. And I do encourage people to study DAM in a more formal setting in some cases, especially those who are new and coming up in space, you know, or wanting to participate in some kind of an IT field. But they may not necessarily be programmers or developers. Not everybody wants to do project management. And so you need these actual people who are going to do the hands-on work of managing a DAM making sure that the content is, you know, the assets are retrievable. So along those lines, one of the things that I’ve been involved with recently is I’m the co-founder and co-director of Rutgers University’s Online Digital Asset Management Certificate Program. And this is a series of six courses.

Yonah Levenson:           06:42                Each course is four weeks long, where at the end of the six month period of taking all these courses, then you end up with a DAM certificate in Digital Asset Management. So that can really go a long way towards for people who are new to DAM but are interested in it this way. They have the background and awareness of what is needed in either setting up a brand new DAM or updating an existing one and you can come out with a portfolio piece. In addition, I also see a very strong need for people who have the, you know, library science background, particularly, you know, taxonomists and ontologists because in order to really get the most that you can out of your DAM, the content in the DAM and it really needs to be described well, there are many different industry standards that I also encourage people to participate in.

Yonah Levenson:           07:39                You know, first of all, you have to know a little bit about, or a good amount about what area you’re in and what your subject matter is. But, participating in standards and having a voice in the creation and the updates of those standards also could go a long way because you could make sure that your organization’s needs are being met through metadata standards and, and therefore the requirements of what’s needed to describe the assets in your DAM. So, and always read a lot, keep listening to important things like podcasts and other kinds of presentations that are out there and be active and participate so that you can learn lots of great articles out there as well.

Henrik de Gyor:             08:20                Well, thanks Yonah.

Yonah Levenson:           08:22                You’re welcome.

Henrik de Gyor:             08:23                For more on this visit anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email to anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

 

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Meredith Reese on Digital Asset Management

Listen to Meredith Reese talk about Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik:   This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I am speaking with Meredith Reese.

Meredith, how are you?

Meredith:   I’m good, thanks for having me.

Henrik:   Meredith, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Meredith:   I’m the Digital Asset Manager for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. I’ve been here for now just about a year. We implemented a brand new DAM right when I started and it’s been fantastic so far.

Henrik:   Meredith, how does one of the world’s top orchestras use Digital Asset Management?

Meredith:   They use it for just about everything you can think of. I personally sit in the archives department where I’m responsible for preserving all LA Phil historical records and serving requests both internally within the association and for outside users. But we also maintain a complete audio and video archive for our orchestra members to review. So we’re currently using our Digital Asset Management system, not just for historical purposes and research of all types of assets, but also for the orchestra themselves, which makes us pretty unique as far as orchestras go. And then we also support all of the affiliate groups that help out the orchestra. And we’re a nonprofit organization, I should mention. So we have a lot of volunteers, but we do have a full-time staff within the association that is responsible for all the administration of the LA Phil, planning the season, executing the season. So we have a full-time production staff who works directly with the orchestra and our music directors.

Meredith:   We have a full artistic planning staff who actually programs the seasons and we have a marketing team within who does both digital and physical marketing. And really all of those groups are constantly creating assets all the time. And they’ve seen all their assets grow just within the last five years. And also as part of the archives, we manage a museum. We managed the Hollywood Bowl Museum at the Hollywood Bowl. The LA Phil has two homes. We have the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA, designed by Frank Gehry. And then we have the Hollywood Bowl. There is a lot of history to that performance as well. That’s not just, you know, classical music, but, all the pop programming that we do throughout the year. So we’re responsible for exhibiting in that space. At the Hollywood Bowl Museum and then we have a couple of spaces in the Walt Disney concert hall as well. So all of the assets that are being created by the organization are being used and shared and reused on a regular basis. It’s actually surprising that they didn’t have the Digital Asset Management system until now.

Henrik:   Meredith, What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Meredith:   In general or here at the Phil[harmonic]?

Henrik:   Either. Or both.

Meredith:   Either? I would say here at the Phil, it’s been, We’re a small nonprofit on team, but we’re still people who work within those silos. That’s actually been quite surprising to me that there’s not more interaction or collaboration the teams, but that’s starting to change the culture. Starting to be more open, more transparent its definitely, our programming is a lot more dynamic. It’s not just your traditional classical shows anymore. There’s constant overlap. When our music director, Gustavo Dudamel performed elsewhere, also conducts other orchestras, but as well as his collaborations that he does here at the Walt Disney concert hall or at the [Hollywood] Bowl. And so it’s really gotten, people into more of the spirit of collaboration, but they still have a hard grasp on their assets. You know, who owns what, who can see what, who can share. And as they start to get more use of digital asset management system and we’re used to being able to search those assets, they realize first of all that metadata is really important.

Meredith:   Making their stuff searchable and, especially information around rights, how they can use these assets, how they can reuse these assets. They’re starting to get more comfortable with that process and the silos are starting to break down little by little. We haven’t definitely a new collaborative spirit around here, but it’s just starting. I think we’re just barely scratching the surface and our DAM tool really does sit as the tool to help that along. So my challenge is really change management challenges, making sure that people are comfortable with the system that’s working for them as well as, how we can innovate later on. That’s I mean innovation is a huge challenge with DAM in general, but it’s something that I believe strongly in, you know, that we have to keep, you know, making this tool better and better and meet the needs, not just why we got the tool in the first place, which was really just to solve the influx of digital assets that are here, the association, but really think about, you know, what are we going to be dealing with in the future?

Meredith:   What type of assets are we going to be seeing from both a technological standpoint and being able to describe them with good metadata and being able just to share them with the best way to share our information. We’re going to be seeing a lot more audio and video content is my guess and we’re going to be seeing a lot more data around that content. That’s going to be really important and we’re also going to have to open our doors to the general public. We’ve got a lot of demand to make audio recordings available to researchers and just music enthusiasts. So we’ll see if we can meet that demand too. That’s on the horizon. Launching a DAM system that the musicians could access as a pretty big success that just happen. So having a team of orchestra, you know, full-time world-class musicians that rarely really interact with the administrative folks and now they’re working in one system is pretty amazing. That definitely has broken down the two biggest silos here in the association and that took a lot of planning just to roll that out, to configure it correctly. I mean, streaming audio from a DAM system. Our DAM is off the shelf. You know we have a software as a service model. So technologically it wasn’t that challenging, but getting people comfortable, training them, making sure that it would meet the needs and that it was compliant with our union contracts and how we treat the musicians. How musicians treat restoration was really, really important. And we’ve got more on the horizon. Another big plan that we’re rolling out is a project management tool to sit within our DAM that will help the marketing group, basically, bring assets in and organize them and share them in a more streamlined way. And it’s also gonna help with scheduling our entire orchestra season.

Meredith:   I come from the entertainment industry and so I’m used to TV seasons and film schedules and tentpole projects. And so working with an orchestra, it’s really all about the concert season for that year. And LA Phil is demanding, we have two seasons, we have the winter season and the summer season at the Bowl. And so being able to schedule that and make sure everybody’s slotted in the right space is a day to day. yeah, it’s just taxing on so many people. So we’re trying to move those processes internally and really associate them to all of the content that people are making along with the performances. Our whole taxonomy, if I can dive into the metadata kind of Geeky side of what I do is based off of performances. We have a hierarchy that’s based on the season. And then the locations that are venues and then the performance dates and then all of the works associated to that date.

Meredith:   And we work directly with our music librarians who actually prepare the music for every single performance that the orchestra does. And then we have guest artists come in and that has its own challenges too. Yeah, it’s all built on the back of how the season is scheduled. So we really needed a system that would address that. And so we’re calling it project management, but really it’s project management and plus scheduling plus asset wrangling plus work in progress collaboration all under one system. It’s going to give our users that one stop shopping experience that I think most people are looking for

Henrik:   Meredith, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Meredith:   I would say just get as much experience as you possibly can and don’t be afraid to take risks and don’t be afraid to try new things and all of your failures are going to be just as valuable learning opportunities as your successes. My past experience definitely taught me that. And so I entered in the LA Phil. I was, you know, just about prepared for anything. And so it’s been nice that I haven’t, you know, had to have as many struggles in previous places and the adoption process has been really, really smooth so far, but I would definitely inspire people to keep at it and be persistent and try new things and dive into your metadata and your data models and really understand them. I think the biggest skills I’m seeing for DAM professionals, you know, are really those that match a data scientist, you know, the analyzing and the ability to, you really get down to good, you know, data model building and good taxonomy structures and, you know, really rich metadata and how that’s mapped, how that all fits together. But then being able to, you know, explain that to all your general users. And I think that’s the biggest skill someone can bring to DAM today.

Henrik:   Well thanks, Meredith

Meredith:   Thank you

Henrik:   For more on this, visit anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

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

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NYC DAM Meetup on Digital Asset Management and Collaboration with IT

On September 27, NYC DAM Meetup organized a panel discussion on Digital Asset Management and Collaboration with IT with the following panelists:

  • Terrance Knight – Technician III at CDS
  • Rob Tarleton – Chief Technology Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
  • Roy Walter – Consultant, Digital Media Solutions
  • Jen McGrath – Senior Director Creative Operations
  • Raj Kumar – Enterprise Architect

In case you missed this NYC DAM Meetup or want to review this discussion again, below is the unedited audio recording of this panel discussion (Duration: 92 minutes)

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

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Schedule a call today