Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Lauren Philson.
Lauren, how are you?
Lauren Philson: [0:11] I’m great, Henrik. Thanks for having me.
Henrik: [0:13] Lauren, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Lauren: [0:16] I am involved, typically, with the implementation of new technology in an organization or a company. A lot of that involves analyzing current processes and systems, and then working with the staff and individuals on optimizing those. Taking the organization through vendor selection, building out specs for integration and potential tools, and working with them in terms of change management.
[0:44] I currently am with The Rockefeller Foundation, working with them to upgrade their current system. In the past, I’ve worked in production environments and had a little bit of experience with broadcast as well. Varying ranges.
Henrik: [1:00] How does one of America’s oldest private Foundations use Digital Asset Management?
Lauren: [1:07] The Rockefeller Foundation, as you can imagine, has a very wide reach ‑‑ global organization. We have thousands of grant recipients and external partners that we are working with around the world.
[1:19] A lot of our media traffic centralizes around the acquisition of photography, video that’s coming in, and also making that content available for the creation with our external partners in terms of publication on the work that we’re doing.
[1:35] All of the media that we receive just represents a very, very small piece of a rather large puzzle that we are working on and solving some of the world’s biggest problems. For a 100‑year‑old foundation, Rockefeller is highly innovative and is committed to innovation as part of their mission and role.
[1:54] They really value inter‑connectivity. For that reason, they’re currently placing a huge emphasis on story telling that allows us to use media ‑‑ to use words ‑‑ to provide a context. Each of those little bits of the puzzle can later add up and demonstrate what the larger strides that we are making in these initiatives.
[2:16] There’s also the component of archiving and cultural preservation. Rockefeller has a very impressive archive center in upstate New York. We are not fully connected with them. There’s been a chasm as most organizations experience with DAM and with Digital in general.
[2:36] What we’re doing is working and laying the groundwork so that digital files that are important to history and are important to cultural preservation are able to be more easily routed to those archives.
Henrik: [2:48] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Lauren: [2:53] In general, with both of those ‑‑ the challenges and the successes ‑‑ have usually revolved around governance and user adoption. No matter what the end goal of an organization or a company is, we do see common threads of challenges that come up. Often times, I’ve seen DAM go from being a departmental solution to an enterprise solution, literally, overnight.
[3:15] Priorities change pretty rampantly. Managing expectations and being smart about how one scales and on boards. Just, in general, having a very positive campaign around the tool. Without the users, you can have the best metadata schema, you can have the fanciest tools and integration. you can spend a ton of money on top of one system, but without your users, you’re bound to have some issues.
[3:41] It’s really remarkable once you do have all the individuals that will be involved with the system in alignment how quickly you can see a project turn around in terms of success.
Henrik: [3:53] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Lauren: [3:59] Particularly for folks that are looking into Digital Asset Management and venturing into this field, my biggest piece of advice would be to tap into the community. I’ve never met a group of individuals that are more willing and helpful to share information and knowledge. The reason for that is that there is no single formula to solving the problems that come with DAM.
[4:22] It’s an ongoing and ever growing puzzle to solve for us. Tapping into that wealth of knowledge, building the network and being able to apply others’ experiences to your current situation is the most valuable tool that you can have.
Tapping into that wealth of knowledge, building the network and being able to apply others’ experiences to your current situation is the most valuable tool that you can have.
Henrik: [4:37] Thanks, Lauren.
Lauren: [4:38] Great!
Henrik: [4:39] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. For this and 150 other podcast [episodes], go to AnotherDAMpodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions about Digital Asset Management, please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@Gmail.com.
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.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
In May 2012, the ISO released a new standard regarding a Digital Object Identifier system. Can you tell us more about this new standard you helped develop?
Now, DAM systems (among many other Enterprise Content Management solutions) often use various kinds of Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) or Unique Identifiers (UID). How is this standard applicable across organizations and vendors currently using DOI or UID for a variety digital media?
What advice would you like to share with 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 Norman Paskin.
Norman, how are you? Norman Paskin: [0:10] I am fine. Thank you, Henrik. Thank you for the invitation. Henrik: [0:13] Norman, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Norman: [0:15] I guess my principal involvement is, I manage something called
the DOI system DOI is “digital object identifier” run through an organization
specifically setup to do that, the International DOI Foundation, which I was
involved in founding and I’m currently managing. [0:33] The reason for that is,
if you’re managing digital assets, the first thing you need to do is to be able to
refer to each asset unambiguously and precisely using a short string. Give it an
identifier. That’s what the system was conceived to do back in 1998. It came
out of the publishing industry, but it was deliberately developed with wide
applicability.
[0:56] If I drill down a little bit into that involvement, I think there are three sorts
of involvement I have with DAM. The first is using identifiers on digital networks,
what we call resolution. The DOI system actually uses the Handle System. That’s
Handle.net from CNRI , which is the Corporation for National Research Initiatives.
I do work with them, just to be clear, on a consultancy basis.
[1:25] The Handle System was developed by Bob Kahn, who was one of the
co-inventors of TCP/IP to be highly scalable, efficient, extensible, secure and so
forth. It’s ideal for persistent identifiers and managing unique identifiers. That’s
the first area of involvement.
[1:45] The second involvement with DAM is associating descriptions with those
identifiers. For us at management, obviously it’s not sufficient to have an identifier,
you’ve also got to say what that identifier refers to precisely and unambiguously,
particularly if someone else is going to be using it. That takes us into the
world of metadata, particularly for intellectual property assets or what people
call content.
[2:15] I’ve been involved with a number of initiatives dealing with metadata for
enabling persistence and interoperability for well over 15 years. The first was
the INDECS project, 1998. That set the scene for a number of later initiatives.
The most recent of those just starting is something called the Linked Content
Coalition, run by the European Publishers Council.
[2:44] What these all have in common is recognizing that in the digital world,
convergence means you can be dealing with many different types of things, different
content from many different communities with different sets of standards.
They may not have previously had to work with each other, but they now need a
common framework. Norman: [3:03] Also, what’s come out of that, I think, is recognizing that assets
as intellectual property are much more than digital objects. For example,
Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony” is more than an MP3 file. It’s an underlying abstraction,
a creation with all sorts of rights that may be different from the specific
digital manifestation. People have investments in all sorts of different data
schemes, so the aim has to be to enable people to reuse what they have. That’s
part of the effort that we’ve been involved in.
[3:35] One of the things that’s come out of that is something called the
Vocabulary Mapping Framework, VMF. A fundamental basis of things like that is
a structured ontology approach, the same principle as behind the semantic web
and link data. What we’re offering with DOI is a tool to give you a set of data
which is both curated and managed to be reliable.
[4:00] Just to wrap, the third way I’m involved is in social infrastructures and
governance. The DOI Foundation operates as a federation of independent
agencies. We have a governance model and a set of policies and procedures. It
works very well. We’re very pleased with progress, although sometimes it seems
like herding cats. We have agencies from a number of sectors US, Europe,
China, Japan so very different views coming forward.
[4:27] Also in the social infrastructure area, I’ve been involved in a number of
standards activities. Most recently, ISO 26324, which is an effort to take the DOI
system and put it into an ISO framework.
[4:40] Technical involvement in identifiers, metadata, and governance that’s my
involvement. Henrik: [4:46] In May, 2012, the ISO, or International Standards Organization,
released a new standard regarding a digital object identifier system. Can you
tell us more about this new standard you helped develop? Norman: [4:58] Yes. I was the convener of the working group that did that, but
the DOI system, which has now been standardized, actually preceded the ISO
working process itself. In fact, the ISO standard 26324 is codifying what already
existed. [5:16] In the early days of the DOI system, 1998, we worked with ISBN,
the International Standard Book Number people. Through them, we came to
the attention of the ISO group involved in that whole topic of bibliographic
identifiers. They invited us to consider taking the DOI system and putting it
into an ISO standard to gain the advantages of international recognition and a
degree of autonomy and independence.
[5:43] The system that’s now being standardized is, in effect, the DOI system
as it was. The DOI system really took off in 2000. ISO got involved in 2004, a
number of years later. It finally passed as a standard in 2010, quite a number
of years after that. It’s actually only been published now, in May, 2012. The
reason for that delay is purely an ISO thing. They wanted to review all of their
generic registration authority contracts. We got rather caught up in that whole
framework.
[6:18] Seven and a half years from door to door, but in effect what IS O has done
is taken the DOI system and put it into the ISO framework. There’s been a lot of
advantages to that, by the way, from our point of view. In the working group, we
had a number of suggestions for how to improve the wording, for how to consider
in particular interoperability with other standards, make sure that was fully
recognized in the wording, and avoid some initial misunderstandings, I think,
that were about. Norman: [6:47] Which was that in some way, DOI was trying to replace existing
systems. In fact, that’s far from the case. Actually, we’ve encouraged the creation
of new registries and new sorts of identifier standards. We’ve also been
involved in new IS O standards like IS TC, which is a standard for textual abstractions,
and ISNI , the international standards and name identifier.
[7:11] It’s been quite a long story, but I think our involvement with IS O has all
been good. What it means for the community is, I don’t think the ISO standardization
makes a big deal of difference to people already using DOI . By the time
the standard was published, we’d already assigned 60 million DOI s. Clearly,
people weren’t waiting for the standard to come along to use it. But that was
actually a help in the standards process, the benefit of practical experience of
implementation of what worked.
[7:41] We were able to say, when we, for example, were talking about the metadata
standard that we wanted to associate, “In our experience this is what’s
practical. This may be a better design over here, but we have to deal with reality
at the moment.” That’s been quite a helpful process.
[8:00] ISO standardization is just one of a number of events that’s taken place
with DOI since we started in 2000. We’re quite pleased that we’re still around
after all this time and we haven’t had to make any U-turns. We seem to be getting
a lot of recognition. The publication of the standards actually generated
quite a bit of interest from people who may not have been aware of it before.
For example, this interview is a sign of that. Henrik: [8:25] Digital Asset Management systems, among other enterprise content
management solutions, often use various kinds of digital object identifiers,
or DOI s, or unique identifiers, UIDs. How is this standard applicable across organizations
and vendors currently using DOI or UIDs for a variety of digital media? Norman: [8:47] It’s a good question. I think I need to tease apart a couple of
the terms there. When people talk about digital object identifiers and imagine it
all in lower case, they’re using it generically. When they talk about it with capitalized
DOI , they’re specifically referring to the DOI system, which has got its
own set of rules, policies, and principles. DOI is a trademark, simply because we
wanted to preserve the consistency of the system for that reason. [9:15] If you
want to work with others to manage or you want to pass onto other parties in a
supply chain or you want to simply make available to third parties that you may
not yet know about, you want to simply make them discoverable, then you’ve
probably got to find a way of interoperating and ensuring persistence of your
identifiers.
[9:37] That’s where we come in. We offer a framework which is effectively out of
the box. It’s a shared infrastructure, both technical and social, with the benefits
of economy of scale. You can keep your own identifier system and your own
metadata, but put it into that framework. You can keep your own autonomy of
the community that you’re looking after, but take advantage of a system that’s
becoming increasingly widely known, standardized with standard tools.
[10:09] A couple of good examples. One of the earliest implementations of
DOI was something called CrossRef it’s all one word, CrossRef.org which uses
DOIs to link scholarly publishing articles. That’s a community of now, I think,
approaching 4,000 different publishers, but they have their own rules. The DOI
system, as they use it, is the same as anyone else would use the DOI system,
just the common rules of the road. Norman: [10:35] Another example is the Entertainment Identifier Registry, EIDR.org. They’re using DOI s in the movie assets, commercial television broadcasting area. Again, they’re using the same system technically, same social infrastructure,
but they also lay on top of that their own social infrastructure for their own
community and their own rules about what they cover.
[11:00] What the DOI system offers, I think, is an ability to not throw away what
you’ve already been using, but to make it more usable with other systems and
to make it persistent. Of course, in detail, we offer some common tools free of
charge, licensed to the Handle System for resolution, tools of the Vocabulary
Mapping Framework, some common technical infrastructure and so forth.
[11:23] But that’s not the most important thing. Anyone can build their own
infrastructure if they want to. I think what we offer really is a community, a very
large community of interest, greater together than people would be working on
their own. Henrik: [11:37] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Norman: [11:41] I’ve thought about this. I think a number of points, really.
Almost at the top of the list, I would say don’t reinvent the wheel. I don’t just
mean use DOI s. A lot of useful work has already been done. [11:51] When we
designed the DOI system, again, we didn’t reinvent the wheel. We used existing
components. I think what a lot of technical people don’t necessarily realize is
that things like ontologies and classification work in the ‘60s things like library
cataloguing tools, which people may consider to be rather old fashioned actually
solve an awful lot of problems about organization, information, and contextual
ontologies. Things like FRBR, which the libraries came up with some time
ago. That’s one point. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
[12:21] I would say also look beyond your immediate community. Digital convergence
means you can’t afford to think only about your immediate problems if
you’re going to have something that lasts and is extensible. I do realize there
is a tension there, of course. If you’re looking for cost justification, there is a
tendency to look first of all to your own community and secondly to be relatively
short term.
[12:44] A related point is, think for the long term. You’ve got to use a technology,
but don’t forget the possibilities for migration to other technologies. Don’t
forget things like thinking at the right level of abstraction, extensibility, and
scalability.
[12:58] A further point is, we often talk about persistence identifiers as being
around for a while and we often talk about interoperability. I think they’re two
sides of the same coin. Persistence is simply interoperability with the future. Norman: [13:12] I would say also something that I found running the social organizations
that I’ve been involved in for 15 years. It’s very easy to get involved
in arguments about definitions. That’s pointless. Don’t argue about definitions.
It’s futile.
[13:25] What you do need to do is try to be explicit. Clarify what you mean, and
understand what someone else means. They may have a legitimate reason for
thinking differently than you. Common terms, I think, like identifier, like stakeholders,
like community. When people use them, they often have a vested interest
or a shading towards their particular understanding of what that term means.
Try to understand where they’re coming from.
[13:55] The final thing, which is not my motto but was attributed to Einstein.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Don’t assume
that the obvious solution is always the right one. Henrik: [14:07] Great points. Well, thanks, Norman. Norman: [14:09] Pleasure. Henrik: [14:11] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments or questions,
please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does the Air Force use Digital Asset Management?
How do you get unstructured assets under control?
How did you develop new metadata panels for use with the Adobe Creative Suite?
What advice would you like to give to 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 Cynthia Hilsinger.
Cynthia, how are you? Cynthia Hilsinger: [0:10] I’m just fine, Henrik. Henrik: [0:12] Great. Cynthia, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Cynthia: [0:14] I manage a series of files, images, et cetera, about a terabyte, at
Headquarters Air Force Information Media Management and Graphics. Henrik: [0:25] Great. How does the Air Force use Digital Asset Management? Cynthia: [0:28] The Air Force uses Digital Asset Management to control its
unstructured assets. These unstructured assets are kept for remanipulation and
repurposing. Information requests come in for the Air Force. We can pull that
information quickly, serve it up to our customers. [0:48] It all becomes part of
telling the Air Force story. This is what we do and having those assets handy,
findable, discoverable, ready to be pulled, served up, made into a product that
can be consumed by the customer or the public, that’s an important storytelling
point for us and our office. Henrik: [1:10] How do you get unstructured assets under control? Cynthia: [1:13] One, you have to deal with people and personalities first, content
makers. That was the most difficult item for me. Making sure people understand
that data is a corporate asset, and it has a very real value, and having
them understand that. Henrik: [1:36] How do you develop new metadata panels for use with the
Adobe Creative Suite? Cynthia: [1:42] We were given new governance that we were required to
add a VIRIN number to our Creative Suite files. We use a lot of Illustrator and
Photoshop. In the military, in the DoD in particular, we have what’s called
a VIRIN number. It’s the Visual Information Record Identification Number.
Currently, there was no way to add that VIRIN number into the metadata panel.
The practice had been to rename a file and give it this long VIRIN number. [2:15]
To give you a sample of what a VIRIN number is, think of your car VIN number,
the Vehicle Identification Number, which is a very long number. We have this
very long VIRIN number, important because each data asset, each visual information
product has its own individual VIRIN number. It’s almost like a thumbprint.
How are we going to add that without changing a lot of file names to a
hard to remember VIRIN number?
[2:47] When I was looking at the metadata panels that come incorporated with
Adobe Creative Suite, I realized that they were powered by XMP. I contacted
that company and tried to develop some way to add that information in and
change those panels around. After some time, they said, “Well, you know, it’s a
little bit difficult. We had a few requests from other people in the military wanting
the same item.” So it was a common pain point for everyone in the DoD.
[3:24] I brought it forward to Defense Media Activity, and between developers,
Pound Hill, and Adobe, and Defense Media Activity, and understand, trying to
get the government from many different arms. Defense Media Activity said,
“Well, let us massage this a bit.” And I was keeping the communication lines
open, adding some insight on how we were developing things in our name
schema, and I wanted to keep the file name the same.
[3:55] Well, everybody signed off. Adobe said, “Not a problem.” DMA said,
“We’ll host this. It can be found on a DoD website free to the government
users.” Now we can open up a metadata panel that is named for us. It’s a metadata
panel, and that allows us now to keep the file name the same and add
metadata in the appropriate places and makes a smooth transition.
[4:31] My goal was to make each file smarter. With everyone’s cooperation, it all
came together. So now we have a new metadata panel that can be inserted into
our Adobe software, and Adobe is thrilled with it. They’re out saying to their
federal customers, “Hey, look what we have. Please use that.” Federal users
they’re happy, since they don’t have to go some other place. Henrik: [4:59] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become data professionals? Cynthia: [5:05] I would say to begin with, when you come into any organization,
take a survey of the work processes there, and take the survey of all the data
that is in-house. Learn how your office is ingesting data, how it is being moved
throughout the office, and its work processes how it is being made, held,
and kept.
[5:29] Once you have a baseline of what is and when you know what you’re
currently doing and how to do it, getting a DAM system or building a DAM
system and having metrics is quite critically important. That takes a fair amount
of time to understand, so that’s a first critical step. After you know what your
processes are, the next item that I would say to young DAM professionals is get
a naming system.
[6:02] Make sure that you have a schema for how things are organized. Get a
naming system, making sure that there are no blank spaces, no unusual characters
except hyphen and underscore. That way files become platform agnostic.
We use Macs in our office, but many people have PCs. That way they can be
sent across the Internet without adding extra characters.
[6:28] That would be step two. Naming conventions and getting an understanding
of what things are called, and making sure all files fit that naming convention
and that organizational schema. Step one, know your processes. Step two,
naming conventions and schema development. Henrik: [6:50] Excellent. Thank you so much, Cynthia. Cynthia: [6:52] Thank you very much for having me on your blogcast. Henrik: [6:56] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
You are the Conference Chair to Henry Stewart DAM Conferences. How have you seen Digital Asset Management change in the past several years?
What advice would you like to give to 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 David Lipsey. David,
how are you? David Lipsey: [0:11] Good, Henrik. Thanks for asking and thanks for the opportunity
to join you. Henrik: [0:14] David, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? David: [0:19] I had the chance to be involved in Digital Asset Management
before the phrase even existed. I was able to become a part of one of the foundational
software companies, Artesia Technologies, which grew out of work that
I was doing with many other people at its precursor company at Thomson, the
publisher. [0:47] We were looking at what now seems like the quaint and carriage
trade idea of repurposing editorial assets to go from textbooks or the technical
reference materials from Thomson into CDs which could be distributed largely
for reference publishing.
Of course, out of this…Let’s call it something…Out of this spaghetti grew the
DNA of the concept of create once and use many. We weren’t able to grab the
words “content management.” They had become used for web facing applications.
But we did come up with, in some sort of aggregation and a bit asystematic
[1:33] with the phrase “Digital Asset Management.”
[1:37] The first companies I had the chance to with, Henrik, that were involved
with this were a company that’s local to you and I, “The Washington Post,”
as well as General Motors, one of the largest corporations in the world that
has an extraordinary archive of images and thousands of hours of video that
they were looking to put to better work for GM and reduce the cost of finding
that material.
[2:01] I’ve continued through my career, back from this early wandering into what
was then an uncharted map of, “Let’s become Digital Asset Management,”
through several years with Artesia, which was acquisitioned by OpenText. In
subsequent roles as an industry principle for media and entertainment for SAP,
then with FTI Consulting, also in the media and entertainment practice.
[2:31] My concerns go across the entire spectrum of the content industries,
whether it’s for text or image, for audio, for video, or for other kinds of files
where, again, creating once and using again can bring value to organizations, to
companies, to universities, museums, etc. Henrik: [2:54] You’re the conference chair of Henry Stewart DAM conferences,
how have you seen Digital Asset Management change in the past several years? David: [3:03] It would be interesting to plot this and do word maps or kind of
idea clusters. They are fun to reflect on. I think as you and I have talked about,
and as you’ve been good about presenting it at Henry Stewart, there are now
actually job descriptions about, jobs which are entitled Digital Asset Manager.
[3:29] I think that, in and of itself, indicates how DAM is becoming much more
of an enterprise application. I believe there’s a large transition that we’re seeing
occurring right now, where we have… There’s some kind of almost sweet irony in
that this application, which collapses silos between content types, a PowerPoint,
a Word document, an image, a video, an audio file, has been siloed itself into
many departmental applications in the businesses or organizations where DAM
had been deployed.
[4:09] I think, Henrik, that we’re seeing a recognition that DAM is an enterprise
resource application, much the way that payroll is. Payroll could vary if there are
exempt or nonexempt employees. Payroll could certainly vary if they’re union or
nonunion employees, with the complexities of the workflows of that very specialized
compensation methodologies that have to be deployed.
[4:36] DAM itself, I think, is moving from something that happened in various
departments, which had the original budgets for this, to an enterprise application.
To tie this to your question, I think we’re seeing that in the caliber of Digital
Asset Management installations that many companies are kind enough to share
at the Henry Stewart Conferences.
[5:03] For example, we now will have, this year, the third or fourth maturing
presentation of the application that goes across Warner Brothers and its allied
organizations at Turner and CNN, which supports not only across business lines,
across asset types. But now, I don’t know how many millions of assets are managed
in that application. That’s a statement we just simply could not have made
earlier on in several years of Henry Stewart Conferences.
[5:36] I think the fact that there are emerging models for what disposition means
and HR policies for hiring. There is a recognition that DAM needs to be a centralized
application and that we now see, across lines of business, repositories
that number in the millions of assets and are just a part of everyday life indicates
some of the maturing of this field. Henrik: [6:01] That’s true. What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals
and people aspiring to become DAM professionals? David: [6:07] I think attending the conferences that are available is a great idea.
I think the chance to understand that we’re only still, in so many ways, at the
beginning of this field. Yes, the more mature vendors have been around for a
dozen years or so, from the late ‘90s to here we are in late 2010. That the demands
on the content and the fundability of content are something that we’re
still seeing very early on. [6:43] I was in a meeting last week where I heard one
of the large repurposers of content in the sports industry talk about that they
currently service 106 separate digital handheld devices. This is October of 2010
when there’s only the iPad and only a nominal amount of Android smartphones.
[7:08] Just imagine, Henrik, a year from now the demand on content. And not
only from industries where publishing is both a noun and a verb our friends in
the book business or the movie business or TV and magazine publishing. But
imagine a year from now that the demand on content from CPG [Consumer
Package Goods] companies and from other manufacturers that have marketing
initiatives will have exquisite tablet devices that their content can be used on.
[7:39] I’m saying this as a note to encourage them to become involved in the
Digital Asset Management space and understanding that it’s a very wide open
field for someone who wants to become a DAM professional.
[7:57] I also think that someone wanting to get involved in digital liquidity within
the company that they’re applying for may encounter some resistance in more
entrenched departmental behaviors or operations. Nothing unusual. It’s just that
the VPs or department managers may have been working with certain workflows
for a long time and someone coming into the field, especially someone who is…
[8:31] There’s Schwinn Bicycle involved in iPhone and digital wheels, if you will, is
going to be, maybe, much more comfortable than the people that are working
for in terms of content sharing, content liquidity, and content repurposing.
[8:50] I guess that would be something that probably both of us would give as
a word of caution to someone entering the field, that someone’s comfort with
living in the connected world may be encountering a department that’s not as
digitally integrated and not as connected within its own organization. Some
education, some patience, and some very private eye rolling may be a good
approach to encountering that.
[9:20] Does that make sense? Henrik: [9:21] Yes, and there’s likely many of those. David: [9:23] Yeah, I think so. I think it’s one of the things that it’s both exciting.
It can also be very frustrating for…I don’t want to say a generation before.
Newer employees who are used to just lightning fast content sharing and have
not encountered the fact that it took, what was it, 20 years to clear the DVD of
the first season of “Saturday Night Live” because a of the complexities of the
rights situation. [9:57] I think that another one of the challenges is that it makes,
with the technology that provides for rapid worldwide ease of access to assets,
that the distance rights systems and governance systems have not nearly kept
pace with this.
[10:15] Rights clearance and rights permissioning, and, in addition, the pricing
models are far from mature about this. We’re sitting here in this conversation
on the cusp of “The New York Times” having an interesting transition coming
up with paywall with metered access to free content. Magazines, finding a new
wealth of opportunity on subscription based and display advertising based revenue
from tablets that didn’t exist a year ago. Henrik: [10:51] Like “Wired”… David: [10:54] Absolutely. We’re only seeing a handful of tablet based magazines
to talk about. It could be easy to come into a job and just assume everything’s
been figured out about the economics of digital content and the rights
that are “the crazy aunt in the basement,” [laughs] use that phrase or “the crazy
uncle in the basement.” [11:22] We have a long ways to go on the econometrics
of digital contentment and on the ease with which rights are, at this point, permitted
because much more maturity is occurring in the negotiation stage than
previously. Henrik: [11:39] Thank you, David. David: [11:40] Henrik, it’s always a delight to spend time with you and appreciate
your contributions to maturing the field. Look forward to talking to
you again. Henrik: [11:49] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
