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Another DAM Podcast interview with Brad Boim on Digital Asset Management

Listen to Brad Boim discuss Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

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

Brad:  I’m doing well, Henrik. How are you?

Henrik:  Good. Brad, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Brad:  Well, the NFL cable network launched back in 2003 with a 24/7 linear channel and at that time, we were pretty much like a startup operation, so Digital Asset Management was not really much of a part of the conversation at that point. And I was originally hired as an Avid editor and it was a pretty small operation. We had three Avids and we were working in a pretty scaled down operation from where we are today. So early on, the amount of media files that we were accessing, storing and creating was pretty minimal. And so there really wasn’t a lot of thoughts or concerns about asset management or organization at that point. And our storage was localized to individual Avids and we were running standalone islands at that point and you know, cycling… old school cycling of videotapes between local Avid Systems. So you know, sort of did that for a few years. A couple of years into the network, we scaled out from there. So we deployed a Unity system which was a 13 terabytes Unity. So finally at that point, we had some shared storage and some workspaces across our edits systems and you know 13 terabytes probably at the time seemed like a ton of storage working at DV25. But that quickly was apparent that that was not the case. We were filling the storage up in and we realized we had to kind of address it on some level, but I don’t think that we really placed a high priority on asset management at that point.

Brad:  It was really a few years later when we switched our platform and storage to a SAN environment and we flipped over to Final Cut Pro and at that point, we deployed a MAM [Media Asset Management]. So that’s where we had some tools available to us to control ingesting of game content and various shows through the MAM. And that kind of led us to a place where maybe we needed to start focusing on asset management at that point. So fast forward 15 years from day one and our post operation and asset management needs have grown exponentially. So I had shifted my role from being sort of a hybrid editor and asset manager to really moving completely into the content management side of things here. And so since that point, you know years ago, I been managing all the post-production and asset management workflows here at the NFL media group in LA.

Henrik:  How does the professional American football league use Digital Asset Management?

Brad:  We’re a linear cable channel and we also have multiple digital platforms that we’re supporting. So our website, nfl.com and VOD channel and mobile apps and even delivery to our league sort of controlled social media sites. So you’ve got a lot of different production groups within our facility that are looking to get access to the same media assets and do it quickly. That stuff turned around as quick as possible. So it’s pretty central for us to have the ability to index and organize all these thousands of media assets within our MAM. So we put a lot of effort sort of on the front end to get as much metadata entered into the MAM on the individual assets as possible so that people can get quick access to the content. So adding a lot of metadata tags based on our internal taxonomy system, gives producers the ability to do really quicker searches in the MAM for any specific file or play or content from a specific game or an event that they’re looking to get access to. With NFL content, you can kind of categorize it into pretty distinctive categories. So it can be game footage and all the ways of describing game footage, whether it’s season or week or play description.

Brad:  You have lots of things like press conferences and studio-based content for a lot of our shows that are produced out of our facility here and plenty of other categories that people typically are looking for. So within the MAM, our media asset management system. So we’re running an asset management layer across the facility. So that is indexing the thousands and thousands of media assets. So it’s essentially a search engine for curation of all the media content. You can categorize media assets and a number of ways by team or by media type, whether it’s video content, audio or still images and there are plenty of ways of sort of providing multiple metadata tags on content so that people can really find it. So in most cases, we’re tagging the same piece of media in multiple ways. So one person might do a search based on the team that are associating the search with and then another person might do a search based on a player’s name or on a season and they’re going to get to the same media assets from either of those searches.

Brad:  So the system pretty flexible and intuitive for people to find things once that metadata gets added to the content. So I think our asset management system is the centralized access point for some other metadata that we’re also trying to get in that are pretty crucial to things we do on a day-to-day. So things like, and these are things that we are really sort of developing right now, but the ability to utilize cloud-based services to do things like speech-to-text on sound press conference interviews is becoming a real-valued asset for us. And once the transcripts are received back from the cloud, we’re transferring that metadata back directly into the asset management system where it becomes time aligned with the asset so people can search off of it. So for example, if you had a Bill Belichick press conference and he spoke for 15 minutes and the producer is only interested in the time that he spoke about a certain player’s injury, instead of having to listen to the entire thing, you can search off of that keyword of injury and you would be able to narrow down the specific places where that was referenced in his press conference.

Brad:  And you know, in a kind of a similar way of harvesting metadata. We’re also bringing in the play by play information for every NFL game and importing that data right into the MAM [Media Asset Management] as well. So for a typical game you’ve got every single play has a play description, that information gets time aligned onto the media asset within the MAM as a marker and then all those plays with those detailed descriptions of the play becomes searchable both in the MAM, but then when the clip gets brought into the NLE [Non-Linear Editing system], the markers come with the media assets so whether you’re a logging or editing, you can search and find pretty much any play from any game. And then a few other things that we’re using tools within our MAM that become pretty useful within the building is the ability to log in, watch proxies of clips within the MAM so that PAs or producers can spend some time prepping and adding their own user-based markers onto media and adding notes into the MAM. And then that information assists the editors because all that information transfers over to the NLE when the clip is moved from the MAM into the NLE and the NLE would be our [Non-Linear] Editing platform.

Henrik:  Brad, what are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset Management?

Brad:  I think that the volume of media that we generate within our facility on a daily basis has really increased significantly over the past few years. So it’s exceeded the support personnel capabilities that we have in our building, which are doing a lot of manual metadata tagging within the asset management system. So this kind of wave of content makes it a little bit difficult to keep up with the pace and get all that metadata applied to the assets so that everything becomes searchable within the building. So some of the things that we have been challenged with and really would like to get to is the ability to bring a real-time stats feed of the play by play from each individual football game to get that data dumped into the MAM in real time and have it time aligned with the game footage itself. And currently, we’re doing it after the fact.

Brad:  So we will get that data and we’ll import it and marry it in the asset management system to the asset after the game is over. But the real value for us would be to have that data streaming in and going associating with the media clip in realtime and that’s something that we’re looking to actively solve right now. And then I think with a lot of the machine learning and AI technology that we’ve been looking at, you know, to try to automate some of the processes that we are currently doing manually. It can be a huge help. But I think some of the tools it’s been a bit slow to try to deploy some of these things. And there’s still a little bit of a level of human interaction to be able to parse through all of this machine learning metadata that you’re generating and determine how accurate it is and what data is really going to be beneficial. And what maybe is extraneous data that you want to toss out. And I think certainly as image and facial recognition technology and the speech to text and these other machine learning tools become more accessible and integrated into our asset management system we’ll be able to figure this out a little bit better and learn how to utilize. And potentially monetize it better. There’s also always been a kind of a challenge in quantifying the benefits of, you know, spending additional time and resources into metadata curation and certainly the added expense and effort of integrating machine learning data from, from end users perspectives. I think the resources are essential for them to do their day to day jobs, you know, they all want more ways to get access to content quicker and more information for them is gonna be beneficial. But translating those benefits and the expenditures on paper to reflect those immediate cost savings benefits can be kind of complicated to push that up the chain. But I think overall, we’ve leveraged our asset management tools here much more over the past few years. We’re starting to see a lot more engagement in adding these resources from our production groups here and they are the ultimate consumers of the tools that we’re providing so it’s gratifying to see them utilize these workflows that we’re building and see that we’re creating more efficiencies for them in their day to day workflows.

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

Brad:  Well, I think you should always be thinking that there’s a better way to do things than maybe what you’re currently doing. Our workflows and approach to organizing content in our asset management system. It is constantly is evolving and sometimes you might come up with an idea to harvest metadata, provide it to your production teams and it just kind of falls flat or they can’t utilize it effectively and from my experience, it really helps to engage with the end users of the workflows that you’re trying to develop and listen to what they’re really trying to accomplish and sometimes a great idea…it might not fit into the aspects of live TV production and the immediacy of what they’re trying to do, but it could be a more beneficial tool for your archival workflows as opposed to the quick turnaround live approach, which doesn’t always work well when you’re trying to add extra layers for them.

Brad:  So in most cases, we’re trying to develop solutions for both sides of that. You know, it really does come down to how you can directly impact the efficiencies or the people that are using the system. Like I was saying before, the emerging tools like AI and machine learning, they can potentially make our lives much better by providing richer set of data that we can all utilize, but it does create a whole new set of challenges and filtering through this mountain of data and making sure you’re using it in a way where it’s being a benefit to everybody in your buildings. So those are some of the real challenges right now. The technology that has been evolving is really keeping us fluid with some of the decisions that we’re making. I think you need to maintain a lot of flexibility with your infrastructure so that you can adapt when new technologies come into play.

Henrik:  Well, thanks Brad.

Brad:  Yeah, thank you very much.

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.

 

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Alex Cabal on Digital Asset Management

Alex Cabal talks about Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

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

Alex Cabal:  Doing well, thank you.

Henrik de Gyor:  Alex, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Alex Cabal:  So here at Make-A-Wish America, this is several years ago, we did not have anything at all. We just had a bunch of network drives. No labeling system, naming system of any kind. And so we were looking for a solution, specifically for our creative services department, but in doing so, we thought bigger. We are the national office for Make-A-Wish, so we thought we should probably find something that was an enterprise-wide solution. So we began a search, we narrowed it down, we selected our vendor, I’ve been a part of that entire process. So, and then once we’ve selected that vendor and implemented it. I’m also responsible for the administration and so that the upkeep basically.

Henrik de Gyor:  Alex, how does an organization that grants the wish of critically ill children use Digital Asset Management?

Alex Cabal:  Let me take a step back if I may. Just kind of describe how Make-A-Wish is setup. So I’m with Make-A-Wish America. We are the national office and we provide the structure and the guidance for all of our chapters of which there are 62 across the nation and our territories. The chapters are the ones that actually grant the wishes, so they’re the ones that hire the photographers, videographers. They write the stories for their local websites and such, and they’re the ones that gather all of the assets. At the national office, we have a bunch of designers and they’re the ones creating the collateral, you know, for a lot of our national campaigns, our national sponsors, etc. and they’re the ones that are actually looking for all of these assets. Since we do not grant the wishes ourselves, we rely on what the chapters provide to us and so we needed a mechanism for the chapters to get those assets to us.

And so our DAM system is a part of that. And so what happens is that the wishes are granted. Pictures are taken. The privacy of the wish kids is vital for us. So we’re big into publicity releases, restrictions, that kind of thing. So we structured our DAM system to include all of that information and to allow for attachments of those specific documents so we could see what our restrictions are in addition to all of the assets. The national office and Make-A-Wish in general, we are storytellers basically. We grant wishes for all of these kids across the country and we tell the stories behind those wishes. Not only do they include the wish kids, they also include the volunteers. Many volunteer at the chapter and they’re actually critical for the execution of these wishes. So they work hand in hand with the chapter, with the wish kids themselves, the families, etc.

But these volunteers also include limo drivers, maybe local carpenters, airport greeters, folks like that. So they’re all part of the storytelling. So in the past, we had a reporting style where we would take a story of a kid and you know, if the kid’s wish was to go skiing, we just kind of report what happened. But now we’re taking into account the perspectives of all of the folks involved with the wish. So that might be siblings, that might be the parents of the wish kid, that might be the limo driver or the truck driver or maybe it’s that person working at the ski shop and the example I just gave. So we’re looking at all those different perspectives because they all have a story to tell and when they tell those stories that it affects other people in their sphere and in their community.

So we’re reaching out and just trying to gather as much content and different points of view because everyone has a very specific take on things and we think that it’s very important to share that with the community at large. And then also there’s the donors. So we have donors, they [donate] $5, $10, etc. But we have a lot of also high-level donors where they donate thousands of dollars. So we’re also trying to capture what motivates them. And so a lot of these donors, they might have a relative, a neighbor, a friend that needs a wish. And so that drives them to help out and to be committed to the Make-A-Wish cause. So again, we try to capture those stories as well.

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

Alex Cabal:  With regard to struggles and Make-A-Wish America so I am a party of one and that is very similar to other companies were both for-profit and nonprofit where they might have a DAM department, but that probably constitutes one person, maybe two if they’re lucky.  So I’m not any different in that regard. I think where I am different is that I have two major responsibilities with my position and DAM is the lesser of the two. I’m also responsible for our chapter website platform. It’s the platform that powers not only wish.org, which is the national website, but all of our chapter websites and so that takes up the majority of my time and I try to spend as much time as I can with DAM. I’m different than other DAM administrators and that I specifically don’t look at all of the content per se. I just make sure that the systems are running. I trust that the folks at the chapter, that they’re able to use the system and that we have the metadata structure and all the field setup in a way that they can effectively use the system in that the folks at the national office who are looking for these assets that they can get into the system and find what they’re looking for and use it.

So I’m kind of…I’m in the mix, but I’m not a heavy user. I just make sure everything works. And on our side, not only do our designers look for these assets because they’re looking for brochures, they are looking for signs or looking to create signs. Our social media team also uses the system because they’re always looking for new assets to share with our different constituents and so those are the two primary folks that use the system on a daily basis. Part of our struggles, and this kind of goes to how we are set up, we a federated system, so each of our 62 chapters are their own private 501(c)(3)s [nonprofit organization]. So yes, they are a part of the Make-A-Wish family, but they also have a, a certain level of independence from the national office so they can pretty much do their own thing within certain guidelines, of course. As part of that, you know, a lot of the chapters run a lean staff and some chapters might have like two people. You might run into another chapter where there might be 32 people and so it all varies and the person responsible at the chapter for accessing and utilizing this DAM system may also differ. In one chapter, it might be a marketing person. In another, it could be a communications person or in another, it could be a development or a finance person. So there are no steadfast rules. It just kind of…for each chapter the situation is a little different and more often than not, whoever is the more tech-savvy person is probably the person that gets saddled with the DAM responsibilities. So you know, because of that and because at a chapter, they are running lean. They wear multiple hats. They’re basically trying to get through the day, first and foremost for them is to make sure that wishes happen and they also have large events to which are big fundraising opportunities, so they’re trying to make sure that those two things go without a hitch. More often than not, working with a DAM is even though it’s a necessary function, it kinda gets pushed by the wayside a little bit and to be quite honest and that that’s been a big struggle and you combine that with the size of the chapters and the general lack of resources that nonprofits typically have. That’s kind of the meat of where we run into some issues.

Then there’s also the whole taxonomy thing. I come from the school where the more information there is, the better it is and try to be as specific as you can. What we’re finding out is that maybe that’s not the case. And I think in attending the past two DAM conferences in New York, in hearing feedback from other folks, they’re saying the same thing. And that being too specific could be a challenge. And that perhaps taking a step back and trying to be a little bit more vague in your categories or maybe all-encompassing would be a better idea. So I have to take a look at that and that’s one of the things that I’m doing this Summer is taking a look at our current DAM system and how it is set up with the metadata and all the taxonomy and trying to reconfigure that so that going into the Fall we’ve got a more streamlined version and it’ll help the adoption rate for those folks that yeah, they’re, they need to use the DAM system, but they might feel a little intimidated or it’s a little too cumbersome.  Anything that I can do on my end to streamline that and to make it simpler for them, then I need to be doing that. So that’s a lot of the struggles that we typically have.

With successes, one of the cool things that we do is we use our DAM system as a collection vehicle for our annual calendar. So basically, we put a call out to chapters and we asked them to send us with stories and pictures of wish, kids they’d like to see profiled in our annual calendar. We probably get around 30 of those submissions each year. And so from that pool, our creative services team looks at all of those and then they determine which 12 kids get selected for the calendar. So we did a lot of excitement with that. We’re actually thinking of attaching some kind of reward system for folks that use the DAM system and to, you know, that gives us access to pictures for the submission.

So if we select one of their kids to be in the calendar, we make them some kind of an award. So that’s something that we’re thinking about and I think we’ll probably do this year. We also use our DAM as a collection mechanism for some of our large campaigns are Macy’s Believe campaign is one of our bigger ones, which occurs towards the holiday season of the year. And so we use that to gather images for the different Macy’s Believe events that occur across the chapters. So those have worked well. We’ve also connected our DAM to what we call our design studio, and that is basically a marketing portal, so if a chapter in its simplest form, if they want to order business cards with their logo, they can on a larger scale. If they wanted to create a sign for, let’s say a subway or a brochure or something like that. Basically, that system connects to the DAM and then they can pull hig- res images that belongs to their chapter and then they can utilize those.

We also allow for a sharing option so that chapters can share their assets with other chapters. Currently, by default, everything is based on a per chapter use, so our Arizona chapter of can only see Arizona content. Hudson Valley can only see Hudson Valley, etc. However, we do give each chapter the option on a per item basis to share those items. We have some chapters that are very eager to share because they collect great assets and they know some other chapters struggle with that, so they do what they can to make those available so that the enterprise as a whole can benefit. So those are some of the success stories that we’ve had with our DAM.

Henrik de Gyor:  And what advice would like to share with DAM professionals and people are aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Alex Cabal:  So with DAM professionals, if there’s anyone looking to select a DAM system that does not currently have one, my advice would be to get your IT team involved in the selection process and the planning and how the IT team will need to understand how this will work with their current infrastructure, you know, especially with permissions, if you deal with single sign-on, there are a lot of considerations there. So it’s important that IT is involved in that entire selection process more often than not they have a process in place for selecting vendors and all of that kind of stuff. So they’re very useful in the vetting process for that. It’s also important to sell the importance of a DAM if you don’t currently have one. I think most leadership probably don’t understand. They probably think, “oh, we can get a bunch of storage, a bunch of external drives, etc. It shouldn’t be that big of a problem” So you have to sell the key benefits of whatever system you’re looking at and how that could potentially benefit your organization and I would also advise to look further on down the road. Not in the immediate sense where, okay, in the short term you have storage, but in the long term, what does this mean? Are there other systems that you currently employ that may benefit from tapping into your DAM? So that’s something to look at too, and if you can find a connection that makes sense between those systems and if there’s a technology that exists that allows your DAM to connect with like Salesforce, for example, then that becomes a little bit of an easier sell. Another piece of advice for taxonomy, spent a lot of time figuring out what makes sense for the organization. What might make sense to the DAM administrator might not make sense to other folks. And I’m learning that by experience and so get those other parties in the room who are going to be the heavy users? Who are going to be the ones that are actually downloading? What are the types of terms that they’re going to be looking for? and that should help guide you in how you create the taxonomy for all, all of that information.

For aspiring professionals, a taxonomy and that was something that I didn’t think was going to be that big of a deal. I kind of took it for granted, but in actually going through the pains of realizing that what makes sense in my head doesn’t necessarily make sense in others heads. It’s a really good idea to understand how things are categorized. What makes sense. Be open to taking in input from other folks that probably organize differently than you.  So that’s a big deal. For the students out there, if there are like library sciences, that probably will be a big help. I think the DAM community as a whole… this to me, and I’m relatively new to this, but this seems like an up and coming thing. I mean, this is what I’m gathering from the conferences that I’ve attended recently and talking with other folks… those of us that are in this community realized the importance of it. Those of us outside of it, although they might be touched by it, they don’t quite get it, and so it’s kind of our job to show the importance and how this can help benefit the organization. So take the time to learn about the taxonomy. If you’re a student, check into library sciences or organization, that’s a big thing. Networking, that’s a big deal. You’ll find other folks that with similar interests or are in similar situations and you could probably get some good advice from them and if you’re serious about becoming a DAM professional, don’t be surprised if you are going to be the only one doing that at whatever company you land at and it might be like that for a while. My gut is that even though people are starting to see or companies are starting to see the importance of this is might not be the highest priority for a lot of companies. So it might be a slow growth type of thing within just become familiar with the different systems that are out there and what’s available. So if you do land somewhere, you’re able to have some information. You may not be an expert in that particular system, but it’s not like you’re completely starting from scratch.

Henrik de Gyor:  Well, thanks Alex.

Alex Cabal:  Yeah, you’re welcome.

Henrik de Gyor:  For more on this, visit Another DAM Podcast for over 200 episodes like this. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

_________

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Lauren Henne on Digital Asset Management

Listen to Lauren Henne discuss Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

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

Lauren Henne:  Great. How are you doing today?

Henrik de Gyor:  Great. Lauren, how are you doing involved with Digital Asset Management?

Lauren Henne:  I assist with creating naming conventions and folder structure on a daily basis. We also create metadata tagging on files to improve search functions for all the production and post-production staff to search for better usability within the staff.

Henrik de Gyor:  Lauren, how does a sports broadcasting company use Digital Asset Management?

Lauren Henne:  We use it for archiving organization file storage mostly. That’s what in any kind of graphics, photographs, mostly digital media for all file-based.

Henrik de Gyor:  Lauren, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Managemen?

Lauren Henne:  I believe that I think most of the biggest challenge is user adoption of the system, a usability and creating a great metadata and taxonomy development. I think that a lot of that as we grow as a company is always a with adding new channels and adding new content is just making searches more cohesive and easier for the user.

Henrik de Gyor:  And what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Lauren Henne:  Be very diligent, organized and analytical, but don’t forget to be creative. Sometimes it takes some of that to organize storage when you don’t have a lot of it.

Henrik de Gyor:  Well thanks, Lauren.

Lauren Henne:  Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Henrik de Gyor:  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 Amazon Alexa, Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Play,  RadioPublic, RSS or TuneIn